Latest news with #LeoSzilard
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Albert Einstein Invented A Kitchen Appliance. Here's Why It No Longer Exists
Modern-day refrigeration fixes usually take the form of Dollar Tree organization hacks or in-fridge thermometers that prevent food waste, but what if this common appliance was also a known lethal threat? The 1920s were the early days of refrigeration, one of the most important inventions in food and drink, but early versions of these appliances compressed toxic and flammable gases to cool the air inside. Refrigerator gas leaks, fires, and even explosions were major problems that German scientist Albert Einstein and his Hungarian colleague, Leo Szilard, sought to solve with their own invention. In 1926, they created a unique pump system meant to replace the faulty valves responsible for refrigerators' poisonous gas leaks. Instead of relying on moving parts that were prone to malfunction, Einstein and Szilard's pump compressed refrigerant gases using an electromagnetic field. Additionally, it didn't require electricity to function — only a heat source. The pair had a U.S. patent pending by 1927. The following decade, however, was shaped by significant turmoil. Economic disaster rocked the world, and the rise of fascism threatened the Jewish inventors' very lives. But it wasn't just world-moving forces of history that derailed the so-called Einstein fridge. Market forces were also at play: Someone else invented something better. Read more: 14 Condiments That Don't Need To Be Refrigerated Depression, Prejudice, And Competition Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard successfully sold their pending patent to the Swedish company Electrolux in 1927, but two years later the Great Depression crushed economies all over the world. With businesses, governments, and consumers all feeling the pressure, the pair's pump design didn't see much enthusiasm. The early 1930s were especially hard on the inventors' home country of Germany, which already faced significant economic difficulty throughout the 1920s. The Great Depression helped accelerate the rise of the Nazis who, driven by a violent hatred of Judaism, scapegoated Jewish people for the country's woes. Rising antisemitic violence and discrimination made Germany unsafe for men like Einstein and Szilard, both of whom fled continental Europe by 1933. Technology, however, had already advanced beyond their pump design. The American company General Motors invested in Thomas Midgely, who in 1928 invented Freon, a brand name for several chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which were a safer alternative to poisonous and explosive gases. They were also more efficient than the electromagnetic pump. By the time Einstein moved to America in 1933 and Szilard followed five years later, Freon was already making refrigerators a standard kitchen appliance as the U.S. economy slowly recovered. What Happened To The Einstein Refrigerator? Their refrigeration dreams dashed, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard moved on to other projects, including the frontiers of nuclear energy. This resulted in their 1939 letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him that Nazi Germany was likely to invent a nuclear weapon. Roosevelt took action, and what historians know as the Einstein-Szilard letter led to the Manhattan Project, the atomic bombing of Japan, and the post-war age of nuclear weapons. In the world of refrigeration, the popular Freon formula known as R22 eventually became known as a major culprit of ozone layer depletion. Its gradual phase-out in favor of less harmful gases, including some that still go by the brand name Freon, is nearly complete. The decline of the original Freon, however, did not mean the rise of the Einstein fridge. Its electricity-free design briefly showed promise for delivering refrigeration to areas without reliable power, but this revival has not yet come to fruition. The Einstein refrigerator mostly remains a historical footnote, like the lifelong digestive issues that briefly made Einstein a vegetarian before his death. Hungry for more? Sign up for the free Daily Meal newsletter for delicious recipes, cooking tips, kitchen hacks, and more, delivered straight to your inbox. Read the original article on The Daily Meal. Solve the daily Crossword
WIRED
06-08-2025
- Science
- WIRED
The History and Physics of the Atomic Bomb
Aug 6, 2025 6:00 AM First came the idea of splitting the atom; then, a chain of events leading to a moment forever etched in collective memory—the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Photograph: CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images On August 6, 1945, the sky above the Japanese city of Hiroshima opened. A blinding flash, then a deafening sonic boom. An entire city pulverized in seconds. Thus began the nuclear age. Today, 80 years after the explosion of the first atomic bomb, Hiroshima remains etched in our memories and in our fear of a new catastrophe. Although nuclear bombs have been used only twice—at Hiroshima and three days later at Nagasaki—their continued existence poses a significant danger. Today, despite efforts at disarmament and numerous international treaties, there are still more than 12,000 nuclear warheads in the world. The mushroom cloud created by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Photograph: UniversalIn 1933, Adolf Hitler took office as chancellor of Germany, launching the Third Reich, the Nazi state that quickly became a totalitarian regime. The impacts of Nazism quickly became international, and then, in 1939, global, with the outbreak of World War II. Something else also happened in 1933: A Hungarian scientist of Jewish origins, Leo Szilard, who had fled to the United Kingdom to escape the Nazi regime, had an idea. If you could hit an atom with a neutron, and if that atom split and emitted two or more neutrons in the process, then a chain of self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions would be generated. Each of those reactions would release a huge amount of energy. The potential to turn this into a weapon was clear. Leo Szilard. Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images In 1938, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, who had fled to New York to escape fascism, discovered a material in which a process of this type occurred: uranium. Fearing that the Nazis might also discover this element's capability of producing a chain reaction, the Manhattan Project was born in 1940, a secret program for the development of nuclear weapons led by Arthur Compton. Compton formed a research group, which also included Fermi and Szilard, that would continue to conduct experiments on nuclear chain reactions. Theoretical physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer was also part of the team. On December 2, 1942, the first actual experiment took place beneath the University of Chicago football field; in a squash court, physicists built a reactor nicknamed 'Chicago Pile 1' that achieved the first ever sustained nuclear reaction created by humans, providing confirmation of Szilard's idea. In 1943, Oppenheimer became project manager at the Los Alamos laboratories in New Mexico, where the first true nuclear device in history would be designed and built. On July 16, 1945, the United States detonated it in the New Mexico desert. Twenty days later, on August 6, a similar bomb fell on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and on August 9 on the city of Nagasaki, leading to the surrender of Japan several days later and the end of World War II. As we all learn in school, atoms are composed of a nucleus of neutrons and protons, around which electrons orbit. Atomic nuclei can unite to form larger atoms, or fragment to form smaller atoms. The first case is called nuclear fusion, and it's the process that occurs in stars, and which researchers today are trying to recreate in the lab as a means of producing energy. Under hellish heat and pressure, atoms fuse together to form heavier atoms. For example, in a star like the sun, hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium nuclei. This process releases energy, which radiates out into the solar system, creating livable conditions on Earth. When a nucleus splits, however, we call it nuclear fission, which we exploit in a controlled manner in nuclear power plants and in a deliberately uncontrolled manner in nuclear bombs. In this case, heavier unstable atoms are fragmented into lighter atoms, a process that also releases energy. In addition to energy, excess neutrons are also released, triggering precisely the fission chain reaction conceived by Szilard. To sustain a chain reaction, however, the fissile material must reach criticality—a state where enough neutrons are being released and hitting other atoms to keep triggering further atoms to split. In a nuclear reactor, achieving criticality is the aim; in an atomic bomb, it needs to be surpassed, where one reaction triggers multiple further reactions and causes the process to escalate. Those weapons discussed so far are 'classic' atomic bombs, based on fission. Typically, an atomic bomb is triggered by a chemical explosion, which compresses a mass of uranium or plutonium until it surpasses criticality. Subsequent developments in this field of research, however, led to another type of nuclear device, called a fusion bomb. These are called thermonuclear bombs, in which a sequence of two explosions occurs. The primary explosion is equivalent to a fission bomb, with the aforementioned sequence of chemical explosion and fission chain. The energy released by the primary explosion then leads to a secondary explosion, used to trigger the fusion of hydrogen atoms. The most powerful device of this type ever designed and tested is the famous Tsar bomb, which was detonated in the Arctic in 1961 by the Soviet Union. We all have the image of a mushroom cloud in our minds. But how does it originate? As soon as an atomic bomb explodes, within the first second, there is a sudden release of energy in the form of free neutrons and gamma rays. The explosion appears as a fiery sphere that expands up to tens of kilometers from the trigger point. This fiery explosion, rising into the atmosphere, creates the typical mushroom shape. A thermal flash occurs; the heat emitted can start fires and cause burns even kilometers away from the center of the explosion (depending on the bomb's power). Expanding so rapidly, the explosion creates a shock wave, a sudden change in atmospheric pressure that creates much of the destruction associated with atomic bombs. The peculiarity of atomic bombs, however, is the radioactive fallout: a shower of fission products that spreads over the area surrounding the explosion and which can contaminate it with radioactive elements for decades. This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
South China Morning Post
14-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Trump's attack on science risks dismantling a century of innovation
American dominance in science and innovation was not inevitable. It was a deliberate, strategic achievement born of open borders, inclusive institutions and forward-looking investment in education and research. That edge, forged over a century, is eroding – quietly but rapidly threatening the foundations of US leadership worldwide. In today's polarised national discourse, headlines focus on tariffs, immigration and the culture wars. But behind the noise lies a far more consequential trend: the systematic dismantling of America's scientific and research enterprise. Unlike a stock market crash or a military misstep, this decline is less visible, but the long-term costs could be far greater. For much of modern history, the United States was a scientific follower, not a leader. In the early 20th century, Germany reigned supreme in chemistry, physics and engineering. British universities set the global research agenda. Between 1901 and 1930, Germany received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science; the US garnered just 6 per cent. Three critical developments changed that. First, the exodus of talent from Europe in the 1930s and 1940s brought brilliance to America's shores. Fleeing fascism and antisemitism , Jewish and other persecuted scientists – including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard – reinvigorated US academia and spearheaded advances from quantum physics to nuclear energy. Though Jews comprised less than 1 per cent of Germany's population at the time, they earned over 25 per cent of its scientific Nobels – a staggering figure that illustrates the calibre of minds who fled. Second, the devastation of World War II levelled Europe's research infrastructure. The Soviet Union lost more than 24 million people; Britain, France and Germany lay in ruins. The US, by contrast, emerged with its economy, institutions and innovation hubs intact and ascendant.
