Reply #17: From the same article... [View All]

[Junkdrawer]

Why didn't he know? Why hadn't pure intellectual curiosity led him to investigate the properties of uranium-235 with fast neutrons? He could have made a small amount using the cyclotrons available in both Paris and Copenhagen. But he never asked that these properties be measured. The best proof of his lack of interest came at the end of the war. Heisenberg and about ten other German nuclear scientists were interned at Farm Hall, a country estate in England. All of their conversations were secretly taped. When the news of the Hiroshima atomic bomb was broadcast, these scientists could not believe it. When they recognized that it was real, they asked Heisenberg how it could have been done. His first attempt at explanation was totally wrong! He hypothesized something like a nuclear reactor, with the neutrons slowed by many collisions with a moderator.