FRIDAY SURPRISE: Gone fission.

Friday, February 20, 2009 Filed in: Friday Surprise!, Completely irrelevant

Way back in the mid-70s I was a geeky high school student whose career dreams were split between playing trumpet in the Stan Kenton band, or designing optical systems for spy satellites. Kenton died in 1979, which quashed my first ambition, and a dismal showing in differential calculus (don't ask) convinced me that engineering wasn't my forte, either.

(What happened between then and now is a long story...)

Anyhow, back to high school. Our science teacher was an ex-JPL scientist who'd taken early retirement and ended up in our small Oregon town. This was a major score for a backward mountain community, and he was a wealth of information. I took every advanced physics and chemistry course our little school offered.

One day, he presented to the class what was then a very recent scientific find: the existence of a natural nuclear fission reactor. That's right, a nuclear reactor where atoms were split without human design or interference, and long before humans walked the earth. At the time, despite learning all the details, I found it hard to believe that such a thing had happened. I understood that it was theoretically possible, but it seemed fantastic that just the right physical conditions necessary to sustain natural fission had occurred anywhere.

But they had - more than once - in the tiny nation of Gabon in west Africa. Here's a great story about the reactors were discovered (warning: science content)

Here's a Wikipedia synopsis of what happened.

-=[ Grant ]=-

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