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Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Volume III, BEYOND FUSION: Antimatter BEYOND FUSION Antimatter Is there anything that lies beyond fusion? When hydrogen undergoes fusion and becomes helium, only 0.7% of the original mass of the hydrogen is converted to energy. Is it possible to take a quantity of mass and convert all of it, every bit, to energy? Surely that would be the ultimate energy source. Mass for mass, that would deliver 140 times as much energy as hydrogen fusion would; it would be as far beyond hydrogen fusion as hydrogen fusion is beyond uranium fission. And, as a matter of fact, total annihilation of matter is conceivable under some circumstances. In 1928 the English physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902- ) presented a treatment of the electron’s properties that made it appear as though there ought also to exist a particle exactly like the electron in every respect except that it would be opposite in charge. It would carry a positive electric charge exactly as large as the electron’s negative one. If the electron is a particle, this suggested positively charged twin would be an “antiparticle”. (The prefix comes from a Greek word meaning “opposite”.) P. A. M. Dirac The first picture of the positron (left) was taken in a Wilson cloud chamber. On the right is C. D. Anderson, the discoverer of the positron. The proton is not the electron’s antiparticle. Though a proton carries the necessary positive charge that is exactly as large as the negative charge of the electron, the proton has a much larger mass than the electron has. Dirac’s theory required that the antiparticle have the same mass as the particle to which it corresponded. In 1932 C. D. Anderson was studying the impact of cosmic particles on lead. In the process, he discovered signs of a particle that left tracks exactly like those of an electron, but tracks that curved the wrong way in a magnetic field. This was a sure sign that it had an electric charge opposite to that of the electron. He had, in short, discovered the electron’s antiparticle and this came to be called the “positron”. Positrons were soon detected elsewhere too. Some radioactive isotopes, formed in the laboratory by the Joliot-Curies and by others, were found to emit positive beta particles—positrons rather than electrons. When an ordinary beta particle, or electron, was emitted from a nucleus, a neutron within the nucleus was converted to a proton. When a positive beta particle, a positron, was emitted, the reverse happened—a proton was converted to a neutron. 160 A positron, however, does not endure long after formation. All about it were atoms containing electrons. It could not move for more than a millionth of a second or so before it encountered one of those electrons. When it did, there was an attraction between the two, since they were of opposite electric charge. Briefly they might circle each other (to form a combination called “positronium”) but only very briefly. Then they collided and, since they were opposites, each cancelled the other. The process whereby an electron and a positron met and cancelled is called “mutual annihilation”. Not everything was gone, though. The mass, in disappearing, was converted into the equivalent amount of energy, which made its appearance in the form of one or more gamma rays. (It works the other way, too. A gamma ray of sufficient energy can be transformed into an electron and a positron. This phenomenon, called “pair production”, was observed as early as 1930 but was only properly understood after the discovery of the positron.) Of course, the mass of electrons and positrons is very small and the amount of energy released per electron is not enormously high. Still, Dirac’s original theory of antiparticles was not confined to electrons. By his theory, any particle ought to have some corresponding antiparticle. Corresponding to the proton, for instance, there ought to be an “antiproton”. This would be just as massive as the proton and would carry a negative charge just as large as the proton’s positive charge. An antiproton, however, is 1836 times as massive as a positron. It would take gamma rays or cosmic particles with 1836 times as much energy to form the proton-antiproton pair as would suffice for the electron-positron pair. Cosmic particles of the necessary energies existed but they were rare and the chance of someone being present with a particle detector just as a rare super-energetic cosmic particle happened to form a proton-antiproton pair was very small. The Bevatron began operation in 1954. Physicists had to wait until they had succeeded in designing particle accelerators that would produce enough energy to allow the creation of proton-antiproton pairs. This came about in the early 1950s when a device called the “Cosmotron” was built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island in 1952 and another called the “Bevatron” at the University of California in Berkeley in 1954. Using the Bevatron in 1956, Segrè (the discoverer of technetium who had, by that time, emigrated to the United States), the American physicist Owen Chamberlain (1920- ), and others succeeded in detecting the antiproton. The antiproton was as unlikely to last as long as the positron was. It was surrounded by myriads of proton-containing nuclei and in a tiny fraction of a second it would encounter one. The antiproton and the proton also underwent mutual annihilation, but having 1836 times the mass, they produced 1836 times the energy that was produced in the case of an electron and a positron. There was even an “antineutron”, a particle reported in 1956 by the Italian-American physicist Oreste Piccioni 162(1915- ) and his co-workers. Since the neutron has no charge, the antineutron has no charge either, and one might wonder how the antineutron would differ from the neutron then. Actually, both have a small magnetic field. In the neutron the magnetic field is pointed in one direction with reference to the neutron’s spin; in the antineutron it is pointed in the other. Bubble chamber photograph of an antiproton annihilation. In 1965 the American physicist Leon Max Lederman (1922- ) and his co-workers produced a combination of an antiproton and an antineutron that together formed an “antideuteron”, which is the nucleus of antihydrogen-2. This is good enough to demonstrate that if antiparticles existed by themselves without the interfering presence of ordinary particles, they could form “antimatter”, which 163would be precisely identical with ordinary matter in every way except for the fact that electric charges and magnetic fields would be turned around. If antimatter were available to us, and if we could control the manner in which it united with matter, we would have a source of energy much greater and, perhaps, simpler to produce than would be involved in hydrogen fusion. To be sure, there is no antimatter on earth, except for the submicroscopic amounts that are formed by the input of tremendous energies. Nor does anyone know of any conceivable way of forming antimatter at less energy than that produced by mutual annihilation, so that we might say that mankind can never make an energy profit out of it—except that with the memory of Rutherford’s prediction that nuclear energy of any kind could never be tapped, one hesitates to be pessimistic about anything. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49821/49821-h/49821-h.htm#c40 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3): Beyond Fusion - Antimatter

A field-ion microscope view of atoms in a crystal. Each tiny white dot is a single atom, and each ring system is a crystal facet or plane. The picture is magnified 1,500,000 times. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 2 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Volume II: MASS AND ENERGY MASS AND ENERGY In 1900 it began to dawn on physicists that there was a vast store of energy within the atom; a store no one earlier had imagined existed. The sheer size of the energy store in the atom—millions of times that known to exist in the form of chemical energy—seemed unbelievable at first. Yet that size quickly came to make sense as a result of a line of research that seemed, at the beginning, to have nothing to do with energy. Suppose a ball were thrown forward at a velocity of 20 kilometers per hour by a man on top of a flatcar that is moving forward at 20 kilometers an hour. To someone watching from the roadside the ball would appear to be travelling at 40 kilometers an hour. The velocity of the thrower is added to the velocity of the ball. If the ball were thrown forward at 20 kilometers an hour by a man on top of a flatcar that is moving backward at 20 kilometers an hour, then the ball (to someone watching from the roadside) would seem to be not moving at all after it left the hand of the thrower. It would just drop to the ground. There seemed no reason in the 19th century to suppose that light didn’t behave in the same fashion. It was known to travel at the enormous speed of just a trifle under 300,000 kilometers per second, while earth moved in its orbit about the sun at a speed of about 30 kilometers per second. Surely if a beam of light beginning at some earth-bound source shone in the direction of earth’s travel, it ought to move at a speed of 300,030 kilometers per second. If it shone in the opposite direction, against earth’s motion, it ought to move at a speed of 299,970 kilometers per second. Could such a small difference in an enormous speed be detected? Albert A. Michelson The German-American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) had invented a delicate instrument, the interferometer, that could compare the velocities of different beams of light with great precision. In 1887 he and a co-worker, the American chemist Edward Williams Morley (1838-1923), tried to measure the comparative speeds of light, using beams headed in different directions. Some of this work was performed at the U. S. Naval Academy and some at the Case Institute. The results of the Michelson-Morley experiment were unexpected. It showed no difference in the measured speed of light. No matter what the direction of the beam—whether it went in the direction of the earth’s movement, or against it, or at any angle to it—the speed of light always appeared to be exactly the same. To explain this, the German-Swiss-American scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) advanced his “special theory of relativity” in 1905. According to Einstein’s view, speeds could not merely be added. A ball thrown forward at 20 kilometers an hour by a man moving at 20 kilometers an hour in the same direction would not seem to be going 40 kilometers an hour to an observer at the roadside. It would seem to be going very slightly less than 40 kilometers an hour; so slightly less that the difference couldn’t be measured. However, as speeds grew higher and higher, the discrepancy in the addition grew greater and greater (according to a formula Einstein derived) until, at velocities of tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, that discrepancy could be easily measured. At the speed of light, which Einstein showed was a limiting velocity that an observer would never reach, the discrepancy became so great that the speed of the light source, however great, added or subtracted zero to or from the speed of light. Accompanying this were all sorts of other effects. It could be shown by Einstein’s reasoning that no object possessing mass could move faster than the speed of light. What’s more, as an object moved faster and faster, its length in the direction of motion (as measured by a stationary 72observer) grew shorter and shorter, while its mass grew greater and greater. At 260,000 kilometers per second, its length in the direction of movement was only half what it was at rest, and its mass was twice what it was. As the speed of light was approached, its length would approach zero in the direction of motion, while its mass would approach the infinite. Could this really be so? Ordinary objects never moved so fast as to make their lengths and masses show any measurable change. What about subatomic particles, however, which moved at tens of thousands of kilometers per second? The German physicist Alfred Heinrich Bucherer (1863-1927) reported in 1908 that speeding electrons did gain in mass just the amount predicted by Einstein’s theory. The increased mass with energy has been confirmed with great precision in recent years. Einstein’s special theory of relativity has met many experimental tests exactly ever since and it is generally accepted by physicists today. Einstein’s theory gave rise to something else as well. Einstein deduced that mass was a form of energy. He worked out a relationship (the “mass-energy equivalence”) that is expressed as follows: E = mc² where represents energy, m is mass, and is the speed of light. E c If mass is measured in grams and the speed of light is measured in centimeters per second, then the equation will yield the energy in a unit called “ergs”. It turns out that 1 gram of mass is equal to 900,000,000,000,000,000,000 (900 billion billion) ergs of energy. The erg is a very small unit of energy, but 900 billion billion of them mount up. The energy equivalent of 1 gram of mass (and remember that a gram, in ordinary units, is only ¹/₂₈ of an ounce) would keep a 100-watt light bulb burning for 35,000 years. It is this vast difference between the tiny quantity of mass and the huge amount of energy to which it is equivalent that obscured the relationship over the years. When a chemical reaction liberates energy, the mass of the materials undergoing the reaction decreases slightly—but very slightly. Suppose, for instance, a gallon of gasoline is burned. The gallon of gasoline has a mass of 2800 grams and combines with about 10,000 grams of oxygen to form carbon dioxide and water, yielding 1.35 million billion ergs. That’s a lot of energy and it will drive an automobile for some 25 to 30 kilometers. But by Einstein’s equation all that energy is equivalent to only a little over a millionth of a gram. You start with 12,800 grams of reacting materials and you end with 12,800 grams minus a millionth of a gram or so that was given off as energy. No instrument known to the chemists of the 19th century could have detected so tiny a loss of mass in such a 74large total. No wonder, then, that from Lavoisier on, scientists thought that the law of conservation of mass held exactly. Radioactive changes gave off much more energy per atom than chemical changes did, and the percentage loss in mass was correspondingly greater. The loss of mass in radioactive changes was found to match the production of energy in just the way Einstein predicted. It was no longer quite accurate to talk about the conservation of mass after 1905 (even though mass was just about conserved in ordinary chemical reactions so that the law could continue to be used by chemists without trouble). Instead, it is more proper to speak of the conservation of energy, and to remember that mass was one form of energy and a very concentrated form. The mass-energy equivalence fully explained why the atom should contain so great a store of energy. Indeed, the surprise was that radioactive changes gave off as little energy as they did. When a uranium atom broke down through a series of steps to a lead atom, it produced a million times as much energy as that same atom would release if it were involved in even the most violent of chemical changes. Nevertheless, that enormous energy change in the radioactive breakdown represented only about one-half of 1% of the total energy to which the mass of the uranium atom was equivalent. Once Rutherford worked out the nuclear theory of the atom, it became clear from the mass-energy equivalence that the source of the energy of radioactivity was likely to be in the atomic nucleus where almost all the mass of the atom was to be found. The attention of physicists therefore turned to the nucleus. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 2 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49820/49820-h/49820-h.htm#c16 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 2 (of 3): Mass and Energy

Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Volume III, NUCLEAR FISSION: The Nuclear Bomb The Nuclear Bomb Although the theory of the nuclear bomb seemed clear and simple, a great many practical difficulties stood in the way. In the first place, if only uranium atoms underwent fission a supply of uranium had at least to be obtained in pure form, for if the neutrons struck nuclei of elements other than uranium, they would simply be absorbed and removed from the system, ending the possibility of a chain reaction. This alone was a heavy task, since there had been so little use for uranium in quantity that there was almost no supply in existence and no experience in how to purify it. Secondly, the supply of uranium might have to be a large one, for neutrons didn’t necessarily enter the first uranium atom they approached. They moved about here and there, making glancing collisions, and travelling quite a distance, perhaps, before striking head-on and entering a nucleus. If in that time they had passed outside the lump of uranium, they were useless. Franklin D. Roosevelt Albert Einstein Old Grove Rd. Nassau Point Peconic, Long Island August 2nd, 1939 F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, White HouseWashington, D.C. Sir: Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations: In the course of the last four months it has been made probable—through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future. This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air. Albert Einstein The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo. In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following: a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States; b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment. I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated. Yours very truly, (Albert Einstein) As the quantity of uranium within which the fission chain reaction was initiated grew larger, more and more of the neutrons produced found a mark and the fission reaction would die out more and more slowly. Finally, at some particular size—the “critical size”—the fission reaction did not die at all, but maintained itself, with enough of the neutrons produced finding their mark to keep the nuclear reaction proceeding at a steady rate. At any greater size the nuclear reaction would accelerate and there would be an explosion. It wasn’t even necessary to send neutrons into the uranium to start the process. In 1941 the Russian physicist Georgii Nikolaevich Flerov (1913- ) found that every once in a while a uranium atom would undergo fission without the introduction of a neutron. Occasionally the random quivering of a nucleus would bring about a shape that the nuclear interaction could not bring back to normal and the nucleus would then break apart. In a gram of ordinary uranium, there is a nucleus undergoing such “spontaneous fission” every 2 minutes on the average. Therefore, enough uranium need only be brought together to surpass critical size and it will explode within seconds, for the first nucleus that undergoes spontaneous fission will start the chain reaction. First estimates made it seem that the quantity of uranium needed to reach critical size was extraordinarily great. Fully 99.3% of the metal is uranium-238, however, and, as soon as fission was discovered, Bohr pointed out that there were theoretical reasons for supposing that it was the uranium-235 isotope (making up only 0.7% of the whole) that was the one undergoing fission. Investigation proved him right. Indeed, the uranium-238 nucleus tended to absorb slow neutrons without fission, and to go on to beta-particle production that formed isotopes of neptunium and plutonium. In this way uranium-238 actually interfered with the chain reaction. In any quantity of uranium, the more uranium-235 present and the less uranium-238, the more easily the chain reaction would proceed and the lower the critical size needed. Vast efforts were therefore made to separate the 2 135isotopes and prepare uranium with a higher than normal concentration of uranium-235 (“enriched uranium”). Of course, there was no great desire for a fearful explosion to get out of hand while the chain reaction was being studied. Before any bomb could be constructed, the mechanism of the chain reaction would have to be studied. Could a chain reaction capable of producing energy (for useful purposes as well as for bombs) be established? To test this, a quantity of uranium was gathered in the hope that a controlled chain reaction of uranium fission could be established. For that purpose, control rods of a substance that would easily absorb neutrons and slow the chain reaction were used. The metal, cadmium, served admirably for this purpose. Then, too, the neutrons released by fission were pretty energetic. They tended to travel too far too soon and get outside the lump of uranium too easily. To produce a chain reaction that could be studied with some safety, the presence of a moderator was needed. This was a supply of small nuclei that did not absorb neutrons readily, but absorbed some of the energy of collision and slowed down any neutron that struck it. Nuclei such as hydrogen-2, beryllium-9, or carbon-12 were useful moderators. When the neutrons produced by fission were slowed, they travelled a smaller distance before being absorbed in their turn and the critical size would again be reduced. Toward the end of 1942 the initial stage of the project reached a climax. Blocks of graphite containing uranium metal and uranium oxide were piled up in huge quantities (enriched uranium was not yet available) in order to approach critical size. This took place under the stands of a football stadium at the University of Chicago, with Enrico Fermi (who had come to the United States in 1938) in charge. [1] 136 The large structure was called an “atomic pile” at first because of the blocks of graphite being piled up. The proper name for such a device, and the one that was eventually adopted, was, however, “nuclear reactor”. On December 2, 1942, calculations showed that the nuclear reactor was large enough to have reached critical size. The only thing preventing the chain reaction from sustaining itself was the cadmium rods that were inserted here and there in the pile and that were soaking up neutrons. Cutaway model of the West Stands of Stagg Field showing the first pile in the squash court beneath it. The exterior of the building. Graphite layers form the base of the pile, left. On the right is the seventh layer of graphite and edges of the sixth layer containing 3¼-inch pseudospheres of black uranium oxide. Beginning with layer 6, alternate courses of graphite containing uranium metal and/or uranium oxide fuel were separated by layers of solid graphite blocks. Tenth layer of graphite blocks containing pseudospheres of black and brown uranium oxide. The brown briquets, slightly richer in uranium, were concentrated in the central area. On the right is the nineteenth layer of graphite covering layer 18 containing slugs of uranium oxide. One by one the cadmium rods were pulled out. The number of uranium atoms undergoing fission each second rose and, finally, at 3:45 p.m., the uranium fission became self-sustaining. It kept going on its own (with the cadmium rods ready to be pushed in if it looked as though it were getting out of hand—something calculations showed was not likely). News of this success was announced to Washington by a cautious telephone call from Arthur Holly Compton (1892-1962) to James Bryant Conant (1893- ). “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world”, said Compton. Conant asked, “How were the natives?”, and the answer was, “Very friendly”. This was the day and moment when the world entered the “nuclear age”. For the first time, mankind had constructed a device in which the nuclear energy being given off was greater than the energy poured in. Mankind had tapped the reservoirs of nuclear energy and could put it to use. Had Rutherford lived but 6 more years, he would have seen how wrong he was to think it could never be done. The people of earth remained unaware of what had taken place in Chicago and physicists continued to work toward the development of the nuclear bomb. Enriched uranium was successfully prepared. Critical sizes were brought low enough to make a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried by plane to some target. Suppose one had 2 slabs of enriched uranium, each below critical size, but which were above critical size if combined. And suppose an explosive device were added that, at some desired moment, could be set off in such a way that it would drive 1 slab of enriched uranium against the other. There would be an instant explosion of devastating power. Or suppose the enriched uranium were arranged in loosely packed pieces to begin with so that the flying neutrons were in open air too often to maintain the chain reaction. A properly arranged explosion might compress the uranium into a dense ball. Neutron absorption would become more efficient and again, an explosion would follow. Nuclear Fission of Uranium: A neutron hits the nucleus of an atom of uranium. The neutron splits the nucleus into two parts and creates huge amounts of energy in the form of heat. At the same time other neutrons are released from the splitting nucleus and these continue the fission process in a chain reaction. On July 16, 1945, a device that would result in a nuclear explosion was set up near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with nervous physicists watching from a safe distance. It worked perfectly; the explosion was tremendous. By that time Nazi Germany had been defeated, but Japan was still fighting. Two more devices were prepared. After a warning, one was exploded over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the other over Nagasaki 2 days later. The Japanese government surrendered and World War II came to an end. It was with the blast over Hiroshima that the world came to know it was in the nuclear age and that the ferocious weapon of the nuclear bomb existed. (The popular name for it at the time was “atomic bomb” or “A-bomb”.) During the war, German scientists may have been trying to develop a nuclear bomb, but, if so, they had not yet succeeded at the time Germany met its final defeat. Soviet physicists, under Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov (1903-1960), were also working on the problem. The dislocation of the war, which inflicted much more damage on the Soviet Union than on the United States, kept the Soviet effort from succeeding while it was on. However, since the Soviets were among the victors, they were able to continue after the war. In 1949 the Soviets exploded their first nuclear bomb. In 1952 the British did the same; in 1960, the French; and in 1964, the Chinese. Although many nuclear bombs have been exploded for test purposes, the two over Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been the only ones used in time of war. Nor need nuclear bombs be considered as having destructive potential only. There is the possibility that, with proper precautions, they might be used to make excavations, blast out harbors or canals, break up underground rock formations 141to recover oil or other resources, and in other ways do the work of chemical explosives with far greater speed and economy. It has even been suggested that a series of nuclear bomb explosions might be used to hurl space vehicles forward in voyages away from earth. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49821/49821-h/49821-h.htm#c33 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Story of Nuclear Energy: The Nuclear Bomb

Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Volume III, NUCLEAR FISSION: New Elements Enrico Fermi (left) and Niels Bohr discuss physics as they stroll along the Appian Way outside Rome in 1931. NUCLEAR FISSION New Elements In 1934 Enrico Fermi began his first experiments involving the bombardment of uranium with neutrons—experiments that were to change the face of the world. Fermi had found that slow neutrons, which had very little energy, were easily absorbed by atomic nuclei—more easily than fast neutrons were absorbed, and certainly more easily than charged particles were. Often what happened was that the neutron was simply absorbed by the nucleus. Since the neutron has a mass number of 1 and an atomic number of 0 (because it is uncharged), a nucleus that absorbs a neutron remains an isotope of the same element, but increases its mass number. For instance, suppose that neutrons are used to bombard hydrogen-1, which then captures one of the neutrons. From a single proton, it will become a proton plus a neutron; from hydrogen-1, it will become hydrogen-2. A new nucleus formed in this way will be at a higher energy and that energy is emitted in the form of a gamma ray. Sometimes the more massive isotope that is formed through neutron absorption is stable, as hydrogen-2 is. Sometimes it is not, but is radioactive instead. Because it has added a neutron, it has too many neutrons for stability. The best way of adjusting the matter is to emit a beta particle (electron). This converts one of the neutrons into a proton. The mass number stays the same but the atomic number increases by one. The element rhodium, for example, which has an atomic number of 45, has only 1 stable isotope, with a mass number of 103. If rhodium-103 (45 protons, 58 neutrons) absorbs a neutron, it becomes rhodium-104 (45 protons, 59 neutrons), which is not stable. Rhodium-104 emits a beta particle, changing a neutron to a proton so that the nuclear combination becomes 46 protons and 58 neutrons. This is palladium-104, which is stable. Fermi’s laboratory in Rome in 1930. As another example, indium-115 (49 protons, 66 neutrons) absorbs a neutron and becomes indium-116 (49 protons, 67 neutrons), which gives off a beta particle and becomes tin-116 (50 protons, 66 neutrons), which is stable. There are over 100 isotopes that will absorb neutrons and end by becoming an isotope of an element one higher in the atomic number scale. Fermi observed a number of these cases. Having done so, he was bound to ask what would happen if uranium were bombarded with neutrons. Would its isotopes also be raised in atomic number—in this case from 92 to 93? If that were so it would be very exciting, for uranium had the highest atomic number in the entire scale. Nobody had ever discovered any sample of element number 93, but perhaps it could be formed in the laboratory. In 1934, therefore, Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons in the hope of obtaining atoms of element 93. Neutrons were absorbed and whatever was formed did give off beta particles, so element 93 should be there. However, four different kinds of beta particles (different in their energy content) were given off and the matter grew very confusing. Fermi could not definitely identify the presence of atoms of element 93 and neither could anyone else for several years. Other things turned up, however, which were even more significant. Before going on to these other things, however, it should be mentioned that undoubtedly element 93 was formed even though Fermi couldn’t clearly demonstrate the fact. In 1939 the American physicists Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907- ) and Philip Hauge Abelson (1913- ), after bombarding uranium atoms with slow neutrons, were able to identify element 93. Since uranium had originally been named for the planet, Uranus, the new element beyond uranium was eventually named for the planet Neptune, which lay beyond Uranus. Element 93 is therefore called “neptunium”. Lise Meitner Emilio Segrè Edwin M. McMillan Otto R. Frisch Glenn T. Seaborg Philip H. Abelson 121 What happened was exactly what was expected. Uranium-238 (92 protons, 146 neutrons) added a neutron to become uranium-239 (92 protons, 147 neutrons), which emitted a beta particle to become neptunium-239 (93 protons, 146 neutrons). In fact, neptunium-239 also emitted a beta particle so it ought to become an isotope of an element even higher in the atomic number scale. This one, element 94, was named “plutonium” after Pluto, the planet beyond Neptune. The isotope, plutonium-239, formed from neptunium-239, was only feebly radioactive, however, and it was not clearly identified until 1941. The actual discovery of the element plutonium came the year before, however, when neptunium-238 was formed. It emitted a beta particle and became plutonium-238, an isotope that was radioactive enough to be easily detected and identified by Glenn Theodore Seaborg (1912- ), and his co-workers, who completed McMillan’s experiments when he was called away to other defense research. Neptunium and plutonium were the first “transuranium elements” to be produced in the laboratory, but they weren’t the last. Over the next 30 years, isotopes were formed that contained more and more protons in the nucleus and therefore had higher and higher atomic numbers. At the moment of writing, isotopes of every element up to and including element 105 have been formed. A number of these new elements have been named for some of the scientists important in the history of nuclear research. Element 96 is “curium”, named for Pierre and Marie Curie; element 99 is “einsteinium” for Albert Einstein; and element 100 is “fermium” for Enrico Fermi. 122 Element 101 is “mendelevium” for the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeléev, who early in 1869 was the first to arrange the elements in a reasonable and useful order. Element 103 is “lawrencium” for Ernest O. Lawrence. “Rutherfordium” for Ernest Rutherford has been proposed for element 104. And “hahnium” for Otto Hahn (1879-1968), a German physical chemist whose contribution we will come to shortly, has been proposed for element 105. Neptunium, however, was not the first new element to be created in the laboratory. In the early 1930s, there were still 2 elements with fairly low atomic numbers that had never been discovered. These were the elements with atomic numbers 43 and 61. In 1937, though, molybdenum (atomic number 42) had been bombarded with neutrons in Lawrence’s laboratory in the United States. It might contain small quantities of element 43 as a result. The Italian physicist Emilio Segrè (1905- ), who had worked with Fermi, obtained a sample of the bombarded molybdenum and indeed obtained indications of the presence of element 43. It was the first new element to be manufactured by artificial means and was called “technetium” from the Greek word for “artificial”. The technetium isotope that was formed was radioactive. Indeed, all the technetium isotopes are radioactive. Element 61, discovered in 1945 and named “promethium”, also has no stable isotopes. Technetium and promethium are the only elements with atomic numbers less than 84 that do not have even a single stable isotope. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 3 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10616/pg10616-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Story of Nuclear Energy: Nuclear Fission | New Elements

Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 (of 3), by Isaac Asimov is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Volume I, ELECTRICITY: Isotopes Isotopes In 1902 Rutherford and his co-worker Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) showed that when uranium atoms gave off alpha particles, a new kind of atom was formed that was not uranium at all. It was this new atom that was eventually found to give off a beta particle, and then another atom of still another element was formed. This work of Rutherford and Soddy began a line of investigation that by 1907 had shown that there was a whole radioactive chain of elements, each one breaking down to the next in line by giving off either an alpha particle or a beta particle, until finally a lead atom was formed that was not radioactive. Frederick Soddy There was, in short, a “radioactive series” beginning with uranium (atomic number 92) and ending with lead (atomic number 82). The same was true of thorium (atomic number 90), which began a series that also ended with lead. Still a third element, actinium (atomic number 89) was, at that time, the first known member of a series that also ended in lead. The various atoms formed in these three radioactive series were not all different in every way. When the uranium atom gives off an alpha particle, it forms an atom originally called “uranium X₁”. On close investigation, it turned out that this uranium X₁ had the chemical properties of thorium. Uranium X₁, had, however, radioactive properties different from ordinary thorium. Uranium X₁ broke down so rapidly, giving off beta particles as it did so, that half of any given quantity would have broken down in 24 days. Another way of saying this (which was introduced by Rutherford) was that the “half-life” of uranium X₁, is 24 days. Ordinary thorium, however, gives off alpha particles, not beta particles, and does so at such a slow rate, that its half-life is 14 billion years! Uranium X₁, and ordinary thorium were in the same place in the list of elements by chemical standards, and yet there was clearly something different about the two. Here is another case. In 1913 the British chemist Alexander Fleck (1889- ) studied “radium B” and “radium D”, the names given to two different kinds of atoms in the uranium radioactive series. He also studied “thorium B” in the thorium radioactive series and “actinium B” in the actinium radioactive series. All four are chemically the same as ordinary lead; all four are in the same place in the list of elements. Yet each is different from the radioactive standpoint. Though all give off beta particles, radium B has a 38half-life of 27 minutes, radium D one of 19 years, thorium B one of 11 hours, and actinium B one of 36 minutes. In 1913 Soddy called atoms that were in the same place in the list of elements, but which had different radioactive properties, “isotopes”, from Greek words meaning “same place”. At first, it seemed that the only difference between isotopes might be in their radioactive properties and that only radioactive atoms were involved. Quickly that proved not to be so. It proved that it was possible to have several forms of the same element that were all different even though none of them were radioactive. The uranium series, the thorium series, and the actinium series all ended in lead. In each case the lead formed was stable (not radioactive). Were the lead atoms identical in every case? Soddy had worked out the way in which atomic weights altered every time an alpha particle or a beta particle was given off by an atom. Working through the three radioactive series he decided that the lead atoms had different atomic weights in each case. The uranium series ought to end with lead atoms that had an atomic weight of 206. The thorium series ought to end in lead atoms with an atomic weight of 208 and the actinium series in lead atoms with an atomic weight of 207. If this were so, there would be 3 lead isotopes that would differ not in radioactive properties, but in atomic weight. The isotopes could be referred to as lead-206, lead-207, and lead-208. If we use the chemical symbol for lead (Pb), we could write the isotopes, ²⁰⁶Pb, ²⁰⁷Pb, and ²⁰⁸Pb. (We read the symbol ²⁰⁶Pb as lead-206.) Atomic weight measurements made in 1914 by Soddy and others supported that theory. All 3 lead isotopes had the same atomic number of 82. The atoms of all 3 isotopes had nuclei with an electric charge of +82 and all 3 had 82 electrons in the atom to balance that positive nuclear charge. The difference was in the mass of the nucleus only. Isotopes of two elements. But what of ordinary lead that existed in the rocks far removed from any radioactive substances and that had presumably been stable through all the history of earth? Its atomic weight was 207.2. Was the stable lead that had no connection with radioactivity made up of atoms of still another isotope, one with a fractional atomic weight? Or could stable lead be made up of a mixture of isotopes, each of a different whole-number atomic weight and was the overall atomic weight a fraction only because it was an average? It was at the moment difficult to tell in the case of lead, but an answer came in connection with another element, the rare gas neon (atomic symbol Ne), which has an atomic weight of 20.2. Was that fractional atomic weight something that was possessed by all neon atoms without exception or was it the average of some lightweight atoms and some heavyweight ones? It would be a matter of crucial importance if isotopes of neon could be found, for neon had nothing to do with any of the radioactive series. If neon had isotopes then any element might have them. In 1912 Thomson was working on neon. He sent a stream of cathode-ray electrons through neon gas. The electrons smashed into the neon atoms and knocked an electron off some of them. That left a neon ion carrying a single positive charge—an ion that could be written Ne⁺. The neon ions move in the electric field as electrons do, but in the opposite direction since they have an opposite charge. In the combined presence of a magnet and of an electric field, the neon ions move in a curved path. If all the neon ions had the same mass, all would follow the same curve. If some were more massive than others, the more massive ones would curve less. The neon ions ended on a photographic plate, which was darkened at the point of landing. There were two regions of 41darkening, because there were neon ions of two different masses that curved in two different degrees and ended in two different places. Thomson showed, from the amount of curving, that there was a neon isotope with an atomic weight of 20 and one with an atomic weight of 22—²⁰Ne and ²²Ne. What’s more, from the intensity of darkening, it could be seen that ordinary neon was made up of atoms that were roughly 90% ²⁰Ne and 10% ²²Ne. The overall atomic weight of neon, 20.2, was the average atomic weight of these 2 isotopes. Thomson’s instrument was the first one capable of separating isotopes and such instruments came to be called “mass spectrometers”. The first to use the name was the English physicist Francis William Aston (1877-1945), who built the first efficient instrument of this type in 1919. He used it to study as many elements as he could. He and those who followed him located many isotopes and determined the frequency of their occurrence with considerable precision. It turned out, for instance, that neon is actually 90.9% ²⁰Ne, and 8.8% ²²Ne. Very small quantities of still a third isotope, ²¹Ne, are also present, making up 0.3%. As for ordinary lead in nonradioactive rocks, it is made up of 23.6% ²⁰⁶Pb, 22.6% ²⁰⁷Pb, and 52.3% ²⁰⁸Pb. There is still a fourth isotope, ²⁰⁴Pb, which makes up the remaining 1.5% and which is not the product of any radioactive series at all. The isotopes always have atomic weights that are close to, but not quite, whole numbers. Any atomic weight of an element that departs appreciably from an integer does so only because it is an average of different isotopes. For instance, the atomic weight of chlorine (chemical symbol Cl) is 35.5, but this is because it is made up of a mixture of 2 isotopes. About one quarter of chlorine’s atoms are ³⁷Cl and about three-quarters are ³⁵Cl. Francis W. Aston Mass spectrograph as used by Thomson and Aston to measure the atomic weight of neon. To avoid confusion, the average mass of the isotopes that make up a particular element is still called the atomic weight of that element. The integer closest to the mass of the individual isotope is spoken of as the “mass number” of that isotope. Thus, chlorine is made up of isotopes with mass numbers 35 and 37, but the atomic weight of chlorine as it is found in nature is 35.5 (or, to be more accurate, 35.453). In the same way, ordinary lead is made up of isotopes with mass numbers 204, 206, 207, and 208, and its atomic weight is 207.19; neon is made up of isotopes with mass numbers 20, 21, and 22, and its atomic weight is 20.183, and so on. If the atomic weight of some element happens to be very close to a whole number to begin with, it may consist of a single kind of atom. For instance, the gas fluorine (chemical symbol F) has an atomic weight of nearly 19, while that of the metal sodium (chemical symbol Na) is nearly 23. As it turns out, all the atoms of fluorine are of the single variety ¹⁹F, while all the atoms of sodium are ²³Na. 44 Sometimes the atomic weight of an element, as it occurs in nature, is nearly a whole number and yet it is made up of more than 1 isotope. In that case, one of the isotopes makes up very nearly all of it, while the others are present in such minor quantities that the average is hardly affected. Helium, for instance (atomic symbol He) has an atomic weight of just about 4 and, indeed, almost all the atoms making it up are ⁴He. However, 0.0001% of the atoms, or one out of a million, are ³He. Again, 99.6% of all the nitrogen atoms (atomic symbol N) are ¹⁴N, but 0.4% are ¹⁵N. Then, 98.9% of all carbon atoms (atomic symbol C) are ¹²C, but 1.1% are ¹³C. It is not surprising that the atomic weights of nitrogen and carbon are just about 14 and 12, respectively. Harold Urey Even hydrogen does not escape. Its atomic weight is just about 1 and most of its atoms are ¹H. The American chemist Harold Clayton Urey (1893- ) detected the existence of a 45more massive isotope, ²H. This isotope has almost twice the mass of the lighter one. No other isotopes of a particular atom differ in mass by so large a factor. For that reason ²H and ¹H differ in ordinary chemical properties more than isotopes usually do and Urey therefore gave ²H the special name of “deuterium” from a Greek word meaning “second”. W. F. Giauque In 1929 the American chemist William Francis Giauque (1895- ) found that oxygen was composed of more than 1 isotope. Its atomic weight had been set arbitrarily at 16.0000 so it was a relief that 99.76% of its atoms were ¹⁶O. However, 0.20% were ¹⁸O, and 0.04% were ¹⁷O. As you see, ¹⁶O must have a mass number of slightly less than 16.0000 and it must be the more massive isotopes ¹⁷O and ¹⁸O that pull the average up to 16.0000. Disregarding this, chemists clung to a standard atomic weight of 16.000 for oxygen as it appeared in nature, preferring not to concern themselves with the separate isotopes. 46 Physicists, however, felt uneasy at using an average as standard for they were more interested in working with individual isotopes. They preferred to set ¹⁶O at 16.0000 so that the average atomic weight of oxygen was 16.0044 and all other atomic weights rose in proportion. Atomic weights determined by this system were “physical atomic weights”. Finally, in 1961, a compromise was struck. Chemists and physicists alike decided to consider the atomic weight of ¹²C as exactly 12 and to use that as a standard. By this system, the atomic weight of oxygen became 15.9994, which is only very slightly less than 16. The radioactive elements did not escape this new view either. The atomic weight of uranium (chemical symbol U) is just about 238 and, indeed, most of its atoms are ²³⁸U. In 1935, however, the Canadian-American physicist, Arthur Jeffrey Dempster (1886-1950), found that 0.7% of its atoms were a lighter isotope, ²³⁵U. These differed considerably in radioactive properties. The common uranium isotope, ²³⁸U, had a half-life of 4500 million years, while ²³⁵U had a half-life of only 700 million years. Furthermore ²³⁵U broke down in three stages to actinium. It was ²³⁵U, not actinium itself, that was the beginning of the actinium radioactive series. As for thorium (atomic symbol Th) with an atomic weight of 232, it did indeed turn out that in the naturally occurring element virtually all the atoms were ²³²Th. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Isaac Asimov. 2015. Worlds Within Worlds: The Story of Nuclear Energy, Volume 1 (of 3). Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49819/49819-h/49819-h.htm#c9 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

 Volume 1:   Electricity from Isotopes

In 2021, hosted the first-ever awards!! HackerNoon Startup of the Year The goal of this campaign was to give recognition to the hardworking startups who pulled through the pandemic -- growing and thriving (despite all of the challenges). More than 44,000 startups were nominated all across the globe! They were selected from over 4,553 cities, with a total number of * cough * “4 billion” votes. Insane, right? To see who is a winner in each respective city, visit and pick a city. The name at the top of the list is the winner. (Compromised awards are under review. Cities with tie votes will be updated to have two winners!) startups.hackernoon.com The will announce the winners per region in their respective cities. Startups Winners Announcement series Here are the winners in the : Asia region Top Startup Cities in East Asia Seoul The Startup of the Year in is with 377 votes! Seoul dable Central is the Startup of the Year! It came out ahead with 121 votes. 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It came out ahead with 186 votes. SmartWindows Lahore Bangalore, India When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year with 210 votes! Bangalore vBridge Hub Pune, India couldn’t be beaten for Startup of the Year in , it won with 129 votes! InfraCloud Pune Jaipur, India The Startup of the Year in is with 166 votes Jaipur Emizen Tech Lucknow, India is the Startup of the Year! It came out ahead with 279 votes. Keeros Superfoods Lucknow Noida, India came out as the Startup of the Year in with 156 votes! Bagisto Noida Mumbai, India When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year with 96 votes! Mumbai Sequretek Sylhet couldn’t be beaten for Startup of the Year in , it won with 122 votes! DataXpie Sylhet Mylapore, India In , is the winner! Mylapore Yalimart Goa, India In , the Startup of the Year is Goa Filter Coffee Delhi, India In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Delhi EkAnek Networks Karachi, Pakistan The winner in is Karachi Bykea Ahmedabad, India In , is the winner Ahmedabad MageComp Dhaka, Bangladesh The winner in is Dhaka SOLshare Islamabad, Pakistan In Islamabad, is declared the Startup of the Year! TAG Gurgaon, India In , the Startup of the Year is Gurgaon ixigo Bengaluru, India In , is the winner! Bengaluru Prakshep Private Limited Haryana, India couldn’t be beaten for Startup of the Year in ! Footprints Childcare Haryana Kolkata, India In , is the winner! Kolkata Wow! Momo New Delhi, India In , is declared the Startup of the Year! New Delhi Rusk Media Indore, India The winner in is Indore Chattar Patar Kormangala In , is the winner Kormangala Sanctum Technologies Ghaziabad came out as the Startup of the Year in Craftfurnish.com Ghaziabad! Mohali In , the Startup of the Year is Mohali DataKund Mysore The Startup of the Year in is Mysore Excelsoft Karnal came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Dunar Karnal Kolhapur In , is the winner! Kolhapur Zanvar Group Patiya In , the Startup of the Year is Patiya Kloud Project Kathmandu In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Kathmandu Vairav Technology Bangalore City, India In is the winner! Bangalore City, PagarBook Ernakulam The winner in is Ernakulam Epixel Solutions Colombo, Sri Lanka couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in MAs Foods Colombo Andheri, India When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Andheri DoorMint Kanpur, India came out as the Startup of the Year in ! ServiceWalaa Kanpur Faisalabad In , is the winner! Faisalabad DigiKhata Nasik The Startup of the Year in is Nasik Sahyadri Farms Patna came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Asvin Tech Patna Chennai, India In , is the winner! Chennai Agnikul Cosmos Faridabad, India In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Faridabad UClean Panjim, India The winner in is Panjim TempoGO Ranchi, India In , is the winner Ranchi Osam Dairy Surat, India In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Surat Wishbook Thane, India In , is the winner! Thane Delight Foods Trivandrum, India came out as the Startup of the Year in ! GenRobotic Trivandrum Vijayawada, India In , the Startup of the Year is Vijayawada Eruvaka Technologies Visakhapatnam, India In , Ltd is declared the Startup of the Year! Visakhapatnam Greenline Labs Pvt Ahmadabad In , is the winner! Ahmadabad KiwiQA Services Bandra came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Car Club Bandra Bombay In , is the winner! Bombay Locobuddy Mobile Technology (Sportobuddy) Cochin In , the Startup of the Year is Cochin Tuttifrutti Interactive Gandhinagar In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Gandhinagar Kroop AI Guwahati In , the Startup of the Year is Guwahati GNRC Hospitals Jamshedpur In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Jamshedpur Intelliber Kabul The winner in is Kabul Miracle Shop (Vocinno Technology) Karur In , is the winner Karur Karur Vysya Bank Kochi The winner in is Kochi BestDoc Kozhikode In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Kozhikode OfficeKit HR Ludhiana In , the Startup of the Year is Ludhiana Trendy Beat Network Madhapur In , is the winner! Madhapur Head Digital Works Mangalore When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year Mangalore Hangyo Nagpur came out as the Startup of the Year in ! UPrudence Agro Nagpur Rawalpindi The Startup of the Year in is Rawalpindi Pro Options Marketing Rishikesh came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Descatuk Rishikesh Secunderabad couldn’t be beaten for Startup of the Year in Prakriti Biosystems Engineering Secunderabad Tirupur In , is the winner! Tirupur Tubeknit Fashions Udupi The winner in is Udupi Krishitantra Top Startup Cities in Southeast Asia Singapore, Singapore The Startup of the Year in is with 6556 votes! Singapore Cake DeFi Hanoi, Vietnam is the Startup of the Year! It came out ahead with 683 votes. DeFi For You Hanoi Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia came out as the Startup of the Year in with 109 votes! Trambellir Kuala Lumpur Pasig, Philippines When it comes to , . is the Startup of the Year with 110 votes! Pasig Quickreach Inc Bangkok, Thailand couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in , it won with 60 votes! Perception Codes Bangkok Johor Bahru In , the Startup of the Year is . Johor Bahru AGR1 Bandung, Indonesia In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Bandung Prosa Portugal The winner in is . Portugal SCEMAI Tangerang, Indonesia In , is the winner Tangerang Yummy Corp Jakarta, Indonesia In , is the winner! Jakarta Tokocrypto Dki Jakarta, Indonesia In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Dki Jakarta Limakilo Bangkok Metropolis In , is the winner! Bangkok Meticuly Medan The winner in is ! Medan DIKA Manila, Philippines In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Manila PawnHero Phnom Penh, Cambodia In , the Startup of the Year is Phnom Penh vKirirom Bali In , is the winner! Bali Radius App Penang When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year Penang EasyParcel Surabaya came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Super Surabaya Setiabudi, Indonesia The Startup of the Year in is Setiabudi Chilibeli Cebu City came out as the Startup of the Year in MiCab Cebu City! Jawa couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in DAUR Jawa Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam In , is the winner! Ho Chi Minh City Pharmacity Selangor, Malaysia is the Startup of the Year! BabyDash Selangor Jakarta Pusat, Indonesia In , is the winner! Jakarta Pusat StickEarn Semarang When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Semarang Food Bear Petaling Jaya, Malaysia The winner in is . Petaling Jaya Deemples Kebayoran Baru, Indonesia couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! Yogrt Kebayoran Baru Kuningan The winner in is . Kuningan Prinzio Bukit Merah came out as the Startup of the Year in ! DC Alliance Bukit Merah Huai Khwang In , the Startup of the Year is . Huai Khwang AppMan Co.,Ltd Kuta In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Kuta Gringgo Mandaluyong came out ahead as the Startup of the Year! Work Inspire Mandaluyong Midview City In , is the winner! Midview City BioMers Phuket The Startup of the Year in is ! Phuket Sapahn Yangon, Myanmar The winner in is . Yangon Wave Money Denpasar When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Denpasar Revasi Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand The winner in is . Nakhon Ratchasima Siam Lottery co., Ltd Taguig, Philippines In , is the winner! Taguig PayMongo Bogor came out as the Startup of the Year in ! TIRANYX Bogor Senai, Malaysia won as the Startup of the Year. Nutrition Technologies Senai Bekasi Kota couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! 8villages Bekasi Kota Top Startup Cities in Middle East Tel Aviv, Israel The Startup of the Year in is with 1,065 votes! Tel Aviv hyro Beirut, Lebanon is the Startup of the Year! It came out ahead with 1,276 votes. Hovi Digital Lab Beirut Riyadh, Saudi Arabia With 350 votes, came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Flicron Riyadh Tel Aviv-yafo, Israel When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year with 167 votes! Tel Aviv-yafo Cymbio Haifa, Israel couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in , it won with 183 votes! Pico Haifa Amman, Jordan In , with 141 votes, is the winner! Amman Edexy Dubai, United Arab Emirates In , the Startup of the Year is with 74 votes. Dubai Ziina Doha, Qatar In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Doha SkipCash Tehran, Iran The winner in is . BeyondBoard AR Tehran Jerusalem, Israel In , is the winner! Jerusalem SolidBlock Rishon Le Zion The Startup of the Year in is ! Rishon Le Zion Passparto Ness Ziona, Israel is the Startup of the Year! Soapy Ness Ziona Kuwait, Kuwait came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Brapper Shop Kuwait Manama, Bahrain couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! Doctori Manama Lod, Israel is the winner in ! Phinergy Lod Agudat Israel, Israel When it comes to is the Startup of the Year with [vote ] votes! Agudat Israel, Aqaurius Engines Beersheba, Israel In , the Startup of the Year is . Beersheba Visual Estate Ltd Giv'atayim, Israel In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Giv'atayim WSC Sports Modi'in, Israel The winner in is . Modi'in Loginno Nazareth, Israel In , is the winner! Nazareth AR Guide In Medical Ramat Gan, Israel The Startup of the Year in is . Ramat Gan Datos Health Baghdad When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Baghdad Mishwar Khobar In , the Startup of the Year is . Khobar Garage Misgav couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! Eden Shield Misgav Sharjah came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Bookends Sharjah Affula In , the Startup of the Year is . Affula eMotion Technologies Bene Beraq, Israel In , is the winner Bene Beraq Reflectiz Caesarea, Israel In , the Startup of the Year is . Caesarea CardiacSense Dubayy In , is declared the Startup of the Year! Dubayy North Ladder Muscat couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in ! iLab Marine Muscat Tirat Carmel In , the Startup of the Year is . Tirat Carmel PassCall Advanced Technologies Hod Hasharon, Israel The winner in is . Hod Hasharon Idomoo Holon, Israel came out ahead as the Startup of the Year! OptimalPlus Holon Jeddah, Saudi Arabia When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Jeddah Arabian Combustion Technologies Ramat Hasharon, Israel is the Startup of the Year! Lumen Ramat Hasharon Al Khobar came out as the Startup of the Year in ! Swyft Al Khobar Bet Shemesh In , is the winner! Bet Shemesh Degania Medical Binyamina When it comes to , is the Startup of the Year! Binyamina OncoHost Makkah In , the Startup of the Year is Makkah Scimagine Or Akiva Last but not least, couldn’t be beaten for Startup in the Year in the city of ! WMT Or Akiva More Information: If you’re a winner, please answer ! If you’re a reader, participant, just a curious individual, consider answering one of our interviews . this interview here Read the FAQs about or . Startups here here To see all of the winners you may visit , pick any city and view the name that appears at the top. this site If you’re interested in partnering with us, we invite you to look through some of these or reach out to our business department. unique sponsorship options Perhaps creating your very own tickles your fancy or maybe you have a whole new idea for how we can partner! writing contest Thank you to all of our sponsors! We truly appreciate your contribution to the tech world and thus the future! The Startups Awards are sponsored by: , , , , , , , , , , Blockster Brex FreeCodeCamp LaunchDarkly Coil Udacity Udemy Vercel Asia Pacific Transgender Network Bybit Everscale Network The post was written by Kushal Tamrakar and Valerie Ejegi, edited by Hang Ngo. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to report a discrepancy please email ellen@hackernoon.com.

Meet the Winners of Startups in Asia

In 2021, the global economy was recovering and adapting to the new reality. Some directions, like air carriers, were coming back to the game very slowly; technology companies, on the other hand, showed high growth rates. The companies from the Nasdaq 100 list, FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google), vaccine developers, IT, and e-commerce are still on the fast track. On the one hand, the return to the usual way of life depends on them, on the other, the transition to a new stage of economic evolution. Next year they will continue to give, maybe not the highest, but stable dividends. However, a few more interesting points for investment have been added. I would like to break them down for you. 1. Metal trends Although gold remains the king of metals, I will tell you about those that have raised a lot of demand in recent years. These are lithium, aluminum, and magnesium. Lithium carbonate is the cheapest and easiest source for the production of Li-ion batteries. The prices of lithium compounds are breaking records in the entire history and continue to rise. Manufacturers of batteries for machinery and vehicles require more and more raw materials. This year, the global industry has of lithium carbonate. According to forecasts, by 2030 this figure will grow to 1.8 million tons. The extraction of lithium is a complex and time-consuming process. This explains its deficit and the rise in prices for its compounds. Recently, analysts at the consulting company Evercore the beginning of the "lithium decade" and advised investors to invest in this metal. used 430,000 tons announced Prices for aluminum and magnesium skyrocketed as well. Most of all — because of the situation in China. The production of both metals requires huge electricity costs, and after the flooding in Shaanxi province, the energy crisis in the country. On the other hand, before the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Celestial Empire continues to struggle with harmful emissions and set quotas for industry, which limits production. worsened Therefore, aluminum showed a 13-year high, from $2000 per ton in January to $3160 in October. Wood Mackenzie consulting company that the situation in China has led to a 7% reduction in annual aluminum production. jumping reports Metal imports to China are , as is the demand of the world economy. Statista that the aluminum market will grow 2.6% per year and will reach 78.4 million tonnes by 2029. And Goldman Sachs that by 2023 the price of aluminum will reach $3250 per ton, and by 2025 — up to $3500. growing predicts claims Magnesium deficiency in the world, is also produced by China, is leading to a severe crisis in the automotive industry. Magnesium is required for the production of light and ultra-light alloys. 87% of which Until recently, of the country's magnesium was smelted in Shaanxi. This September, 35 of the 50 factories in the province shut down. It is no surprise that the metal jumped in price from $2,000 per ton at the beginning of the year to $10,000 in September. Due to that, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association has even . 60% warned against catastrophic impact The situation seems to be stable for now. Chinese factories resumed production in October and the price of magnesium to $5,500 per ton. Warren Buffett would recommend investing in this sector immediately. Moreover, according to the CRU Group , due to the dominance of China in the segment, magnesium deficiency will remain. dropped forecast 2. Semiconductors Last year, the capitalization of the semiconductor segment amounted to $426 billion, and by 2028 it will to $803 billion. The main growth factor is the soaring demand for microchips based on semiconductors. And so far it can not be completely satisfied: either the automotive sector or the production of gaming and household appliances complain about disruptions in supplies and production. increase Almost everything related to semiconductors is profitable. The exception is Intel, which temporarily dropped out of the microprocessor race after a change of leadership and got stuck in 10nm technology. In addition, since 2020, Apple has been transferring its desktops and laptops from Intel chips to its own developments. AMD, for example, is already working hard on 7nm technology. AMD shares started from $92 at the beginning of the year and rose to $157 by the end. Tesla cars and Sony PlayStation consoles are equipped with AMD chips. They are also used for Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Meta Oculus services. But Intel isn't giving up. As the Nikkei Asian Review this summer, by the end of 2022, the company may immediately step into the 3nm era in cooperation with the largest Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC. However, Apple is also starting such cooperation at the same time. reported 3. Small cap companies It’s quite simple: it is more difficult for a large company to grow, and your dividends from long-term investments in large business will be less compared to investments in a promising, but small company. For example, the 2021 edition study says that if you invested in a high-cap company in early 1926 and reinvested all dividends by the end of 2020, you would earn 10% per annum. Each dollar invested back then would turn into $11,000. Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation But if under the same conditions, you were to invest in a small-cap company, then every dollar would turn into $42,000. By comparison, corporate bonds would yield only $300. Factoring out inflation. Getting back to our reality, remember: at the end of February 2020, the shares of many technology companies went down dramatically, but after a month they began to rise again. For the rest of 2020 and throughout 2021, Nasdaq top positions have grown by leaps and bounds. For example, Alphabet shares have grown from $1,100 to $2,900 since early April 2020. Most investors still continue to invest in large companies, but will soon switch to other indices. The most attractive small caps are monitored by several indices, the main ones being the and . S&P SmallCap 600 Russell 2000 In early November, both indices climbed to record highs and are likely to continue to rise, as the overwhelming demand for shares in large projects has remained neglected. They are still cheap in an overheated market. Zacks Investment Research this sector to grow in the next year as the US economy recovers. predicts 4. India It looks like next year the interest of international investment companies will be riveted on India. Morgan Stanley a strong recovery in the Indian economy and 7% GDP growth over the next four years. predicts Initially, Indian stock markets have outperformed other emerging markets over the past year and a half. Morgan Stanley that after India is included in the global bond indices, the Bombay Stock Exchange will begin to grow even faster. This rate will reach 16% by December 2022. believes Next, while in other jurisdictions, such as the United States and China, the topic of raising corporate taxes is really hot, the Indian government, concerned about GDP growth, is taking measures to stimulate corporate profits. And last but not least, the pandemic had a positive impact on the country's export potential, in particular, on the software outsourcing market. 5. Bitcoin The Collins English Dictionary, published by one of the world's largest companies, HarperCollins Publishers, NFT as 2021 word. named Blockchain is here to stay with us for a long time. Like its most famous project — bitcoin, which is the top cryptocurrency because it is the first, and the rest of the crypto appeared later. Conventionally, you can invest in modern hypercars, but the most expensive car still the 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO worth $70 million this year. remains Despite criticism, the price of bitcoin is constantly growing: having reached a capitalization of $ 1trillion, it is among the , with giants like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Saudi Aramco, Amazon, and Tesla. In 2021, its rate increased by 50%. top 7 most expensive projects Of course, Bitcoin has problems. Firstly, it is not the most advanced protocol in terms of code. Secondly, Bitcoin still exists, parallel to the modern financial system, and this situation is changing very slowly. Third, it remains a high-risk asset. However, top crypto assets are gradually taking over the role of an alternative store of value. Among the owners of Bitcoin are Tesla founder Elon Musk, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, investment bank Morgan Stanley, TIME magazine. My advice is still the same, that is - to invest as much as you don't mind losing. Do not engage in synchronized jumps with sharp market fluctuations, but be ready to play long and feel periodic anxiety of your nervous system.

Investment Areas for 2022: Lithium, Small Businesses, India, and More

With global digitalization, technologies are taking over all aspects of our lives. We see automation of business processes and services, smart homes and much more. However, what else we see is the gradual isolation of individuals from each other as they have their own small worlds, locked in their smart devices. In the last few years, people have been investing into social media heavily. The rise of bloggers does not seem strange now — but we did not expect it to be a real job, say, 5 years ago. Today, most millennials dream of becoming a YouTuber or an Instagram blogger (and most of them succeed, to be honest). As well, we now surround ourselves with more and more “smart” devices that are able to communicate with us. Google Home and Alexa do not bother us, as we perceive them as fully legitimate family members. So where does this invasion of smart technologies lead us and what should we expect from our lives in the future? Let’s try and find out. The problem: people don’t need people anymore People are social animals and that’s a fact. Since the very beginning, we tend to live in groups, socialize and exist together. Such way of living was more of a necessity than an option: first it was a tactics of survival, then it became more of a habit. But today the situation is different. Most of us are becoming introverted and tend to spend time indoors, selectively choosing their preferred activity rather than going out. This can be explained: in the Internet, we choose what kind of content we see and hear, while outside we have to deal with something that we cannot affect. We choose whom we talk to in social network and we strictly limit our social network there. We can block users or we can follow (or stalk) unknown people. This cannot be done in real life — and that’s what makes virtual world so good. The development of technology today is partially aimed at social isolation too. For example, we see great boom in robotics: like robot pets or drone delivery. Heck, we even have driverless cars — even though they still need a bit of improvement, they are already in action. And we don’t even get started with smart homes and smart devices, like your alarm or coffee machine communicating with you, because this is something we already perceive as integral part of our lives. No wonder biggest companies in the world (Google, Amazon, Spotify, Facebook) are investing heavily into the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence — because they see the potential profit these technologies will bring, in addition to high demand from the users. Smart technologies dominate even our sex life — one of the primary instincts that always involved another human being in the process. But now we are offered with remote control, sex robots and who knows, what else we’ll see in the future! And since people are selfish by their nature, the opportunity to concentrate on own satisfaction solely (with no need to look for the suitable partner) seems like panacea for majority of people. sex toys So the roots of this voluntary isolation lie deep down in our own psychology. The question is: where will it take us? Neither good nor bad We cannot state that the shift towards isolation is either bad or good and there are some reasons for that. First of all, the choice of an individual. This is something no one can affect or change except for the person who makes the decision and this is OK. As long as their behavior stays within social convention, everyone are free to do whatever makes them happy (even though it’s a tickler). Secondly, the gap between generations. Something that seems weird to baby boomers is totally normal for the millennials and vice versa. Therefore, while some people may perceive this “digital loneliness” as a curse, others will see it a blessing that 100% corresponds to their desired lifestyle. After all, today we are living in a world that once was described by sci-fi authors as something completely unimaginable and strange. Who knows: maybe we’ll soon be living in a world that’s beyond even our own imagination? Written by Natalia Kukushkina

“Smart Isolation”: How Artificial Intelligence Sets People Apart

Sceptics say current VR headsets are clunky, heavy, uncomfortable diving masks that won’t make their way to people’s homes. Well, I agree, but with one significant exception — the technology is moving lightning fast. Even if you are a true VR evangelist with a tattooed Oculus or Vive logo on a shoulder, you have to admit current-gen headsets will never get mass adoption. Because for now, Virtual Reality means being tied up to an expensive PC in the prison cell of a Guardian system. It’s just not that virtual freedom we were all dreaming about. However, there is one crucial thing that we forgot. It’s called “progress.” And it smashes everything on its way. In less than 2 years of VR-consumer-version era headsets became completely wireless, field of view doubled, and the resolution tripled. In fact, VR technologies are evolving much faster than consumer versions of headsets can be released. In the series of weekly articles called “ ” I will guide you through the world of the latest and most promising tech that will finally make the next computing platform. Behold The Next Generation VR Technology VR Mostly on the early stage of development, all this tech will be implemented in consumer version headsets during the next 10 years. Some sooner, some later. I divided this series into parts — one part for every vital aspect of VR . This one is about: technology Avatars VR is not only for being anywhere you want, it’s also for being anyone(or anything) you want. A photorealistic scan of yourself, a bounty hunter from space or a can of beans with cartoony hands — you are free to choose. Corporate meetings in VR app Rumii / Source: DOGHEAD SIMULATIONS Avatar diversity in VRChat / Source: VRChat Inc. From a corporate-style photo on LinkedIn to the Solid Snake picture on Steam, your online representation changes depending on context, mood, environment, goals and a bunch of other circumstances. So will your VR avatars. For corporate style VR meetings some stylized lookalike version of you is perfect. It’ll help others get a clue who they are talking to. For some dating activities or a conference, it’s more likely that you use a more realistic version, like a 3D scan. And in some fun social VR apps, boundaries are erased completely. Minutes ago you joined the ranks of annoying Uganda Knuckles, and now you are marching with cute anime Neko cats as one of them. So, it’s clear there is a bunch of different uses of avatars, but only two options to create one (know more? add in comments). First is to use an in-app editor, second is to upload a pre-made 3D model. And creating is fun: you can choose hairstyles, sunglasses, makeup, and eye color, make it taller or lower. But if you want to make a somewhat realistic copy of you(for a company profile, for example), choosing the right face parts from the range of thumbnails might become a little hard to tackle. Rather than going through the process of choosing face parts that match your appearance, wouldn’t it be awesome if an avatar could be created automatically? / Source Loom.ai Full video That’s exactly what Y-Combinator’s is working on. Their technology lets you create a 3D avatar face merely from one selfie. Loom.ai They are using a trained AI, which can identify the geometry of your face using visual clues from the 2D picture. As a result, it creates a 3D model provided with a facial musculature rig that has been adapted to fit any face. They also claim they factored out the lighting from the photograph, so your 3D avatar can be immersed into new environments with different light conditions. That means you get the fully interactive and ready to use model of your face, that can be utilized in any virtual world you want. At first, I was surprised that Oculus hadn’t bought them yet, especially since Facebook has photos of more than 2 billion people. But it turned out they are already working on their own solution. While the face 3D model creation is cool, there might be a demand for full-body scanning. Why “might be”? You see, it’s not that clear yet. As for avatars, I believe users might want their look more similar to the original than their . Because why do they need to scan their body in the first place, if they can use a model of let’s say an interplanetary space suit or a medieval armor? face torso The only use-case I came up with is virtual dating. When things get serious, you know 😉. doob 3D scanning booth / Source: doob usa inc. ShapeScale’s sensor scans the athlete — / Source: SHAPE LABS INC. Full video For that(avatar creation, of course!) you can already find an extremely rare scanning booth, take off your clothes and let it go. Or use a similar tech uses for its fitness app. doob 3D ShapeScale The Kinect-like sensor captures your body from close-up at a high resolution and uses infrared(IR) light dots to measure the distance between you and the sensor. First, it scans those IR dots to form a point cloud of over 2 million points that line up in the shape of your body. Connected they generate a mesh, and the 3D model is created. The sensor also takes hundreds of pictures and stitches them together to map a realistic texture of your body and clothing. The result is a highly precise scan of yourself. While this tech is nothing new, it could replace 2D photography in future smartphones, so we could scan everything and use it in VR later. Just imagine what it would be if Snapchat becomes a Scanchat? I bet you get the point 😉. The truth is, there are already some prototypes out there, so the consumer version is close. Oh wait, what about the fun use-cases? What to do if you want to become a small red hedgehog-like creature wearing white spiky gloves? (God, I can’t stop doing it) For now, to create one of these you have to deal with the game engine, 3D modeling software, rigging software. You have to spend hours to create a new avatar if there’s no in-app editor. And it should not be there! People of OASIS, the action adventure movie “Ready Player One” — / Source: Warner Bros. Pictures Full video Creating an avatar is about total freedom. No editor in the whole world can make such a boast. And thank God some devs understand that and let you upload avatar models to their apps. Unfortunately, there is no other way than mastering some 3D modeling software. I haven’t seen the technology, that can create an avatar based on what you tell it or, for example, what picture you upload. But what is clear that as social VR will arise, the demand for avatar creation will be increasing. For the next 10 years, there will be a shift in a virtual identity. As in real life, in Virtual Reality, everybody will want to be unique. And who knows to what solution this need will lead us to. A platform for avatar artists(new job?), AI 3D modeling algorithms? VR is an infinite world with an endless possibility to be who you want to be, at any time. It’s an integral part of its magic. And digitalization of yourself is just the first step for virtual and real worlds to become more connected. But not only your self will become virtual, the environment will become too. How? You’ll see it in the next episode. Learned something? Follow me to learn even more next time.

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