The Fastest Human-Made Object “Many years later, when I was in Baikonur, the subject of Russia being the first to launch something into space came up. I did not raise my hand to add to the discussion, though I thought about doing so.” — Robert Brownlee What is the fastest object ever crafted by humans? If […]
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Trinity Batter my heart, three-person’d God — John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. — Vishnu, Bhagavad Gita In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered the possibility of nuclear fission. Physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch realized the breakdown of radioactive elements could produce a weapon of planetary proportions.
The Sedan Crater In our previous investigation, we learned a bit about the Nevada Test Site, thanks to an assist from Stranger Things. There, the U.S. military tested over a thousand nuclear weapons in the middle of the uninhabited desert. Though atmospheric experiments led to mushroom-cloud tourism in Las Vegas, more than 90% of