RARE -- CHAPTER 5 -- A SCIENTIFIC COLD WAR

CHAPTER 5 – A SCIENTIFIC COLD WAR

In this chapter, the author addresses the cultural and political impact of the US-Soviet Union Cold War on elemental discovery.  Initially aimed toward finding a new substance to create new weapons, the competition between the US and the Soviet eventually evolved into one where the discovery of a new element became a source of national pride and not just for national security purposes.  Many of these discoveries are of synthetic origin, produced in particle accelerator like the cyclotron.  The first synthetically created element is element 43, now called technetium. In 1925, Ida Tacke Noddack reported the observation of element 43 but due to doubts about the method used to confirm its existence, the credit for discovery went to a pair of Italian scientists twelve years later who synthesized what is now called technetium using cyclotron methods.  In 1941, Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium as a product of the high energy collision between deuterium and uranium (it was soon discovered that a trace amount naturally exists in the earth’s crust).  In 1952, einsteinium and fermium were discovered in the fallout of the hydrogen bomb test explosion in the Marshall Islands. Of the synthetic elements discovered since the 1980’s, only one of them is not a metal or not expected to behave as one (in many cases, very few atoms were observed that no actual test can be done).  These synthetic elements, not found anywhere in the earth as far as we know, comprise 19 of the 118 elements currently listed in the periodic table.  Despite the Cold War being over, research in the use of rare earth metals for military applications continues to this day.  Currently, many of these rare earth metals have found diverse uses in weapons devices.  For example, neodymium and samarium are critical components in the manufacture of smart bombs and precision-guided missiles.  Ytterbium, terbium, and europium are used in lasers used for locating mines on land and underwater.  Other rare earth metals are used in motors and actuators in predator drones and electronics like jamming devices.  Toward the end, the author reiterates his previous admonition of the risk of allowing one powerful country like China to have control over all but 3-5% of the production of such critical elements.

·         The scientific cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960’s and 1970’s brought on a slew of newly discovered elements.  Initially the goal was to find new elements useful in creating weapons. But the author points out that the competition to discover new elements eventually evolved to one based on a source of national pride.

·         All but one of the synthetic elements discovered since the early 1980’s using particle accelerators are metals or expected to have metallic properties (not enough atoms to test):

o   Hassium

o   Meitnerium

o   Roentgenium

o   Copernicium

o   Flerovium

o   Livermorium

o   5 generically named “unun” elements

·         Of the 118 elements currently listed in the periodic table, 19 do not exist in any form in the earth, elements that are produced by “scientists and engineers slamming atoms and particles together at speeds of thousands of feet per second”.

·         The author credits the cyclotron for the “most important elemental discoveries of the twentieth century: the 1940 discovery that plutonium and neptunium are created when neutron-heavy forms of hydrogen traveling at near-relativistic speeds impact a uranium target”.

·         In the section “Element of War”, the author is referring to plutonium.  Plutonium was discovered by Glenn Seaborg and his team at UC Berkeley in 1940 by bombarding a uranium-238 target with deuterium atoms; a trace amount of it has since been discovered to exist naturally (estimated at 1/20^th of a gram).  Plutonium-239 is the useful isotope but Pu-240 and Pu-241 also exist as contaminants in samples.  Weapons-grade plutonium contains the highest concentration of Pu-239, nuclear reactor-grade plutonium contains only about half Pu-239.

·         The elements einsteinium and fermium were discovered as products of the hydrogen bomb test explosion in the Marshall Islands in 1952.  As the author colorfully relates the story: “The energy and neutrons released in the course of the twelve-kiloton explosion – four times the combined might of the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days of World War II – provided the proper environment for a nuclear ‘primordial soup’, leading to creation of two never-before-observed metal elements”.

·         Discovery of technetium (the first synthetically created element):  In 1925, German-born Ida Tacke Noddack first observed the existence of element number 43 and named it masurium after a region in Poland.  She received many criticisms (for various reasons pointed out by the author) including one claiming that she based her confirmations on a very weak signal. Some independent researchers also claimed that they could reproduce her and her husband’s work.  twelve years later, Italian scientists Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segre detected and isolated element 43, subsequently receiving the credit for the discovery of technetium.  Despite Ida Noddack’s loss of being the discoverer of element 43, she is now credited for having developed the early theories suggesting the possibility of nuclear fission.  She also discovered the element rhenium.

·         Technetium is used in nuclear medicine as a radioactive tracer.

·         Research in the use of rare earth metals for military applications continues to this day.  Currently, many of these rare earth metals have found diverse uses in weapons devices:

o   Neodymium and samarium are critical components in the manufacture of smart bombs and precision-guided missiles.

o   Ytterbium, terbium, and europium are used in lasers used for locating mines on land and underwater.

o   Other rare earth metals are used in motors and actuators in predator drones and electronics like jamming devices.