Anonymous ID: 2e134f May 16, 2020, 2:35 a.m. No.9197843   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>7886

Former national security adviser Susan Rice said she would be Joe Bidenโ€™s running mate if he asked.

 

"I certainly would say yes," Rice told PBSโ€™s Firing Line when asked if she would accept the offer.

 

โ€œI want to help enable him to become the next president of the United States in any way I can,โ€ she said. โ€œItโ€™s not about me. Itโ€™s not about my ambitions. I am not campaigning for anything. But, you know, obviously, if that were the role in which he felt I could best serve, then Iโ€™m not going to say no.โ€

Anonymous ID: 2e134f May 16, 2020, 3:51 a.m. No.9198062   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>8087

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

 

The demon core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War 2 by the US nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb, that was involved in two criticality accidents, on August 21, 1945 and May 21, 1946. The core was intended for use in a possible third nuclear weapon to be dropped on Japan, but after Japan's surrender made this unnecessary it was used for testing. It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a successful explosion of the bomb. The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercritical configurations during two separate experiments intended to guarantee the core was indeed close to the critical point. The incidents happened at the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1945 and 1946, both resulting in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent deaths of scientists: Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the "demon core".

 

The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective tungsten carbide bricks and the addition of each brick moved the assembly closer to criticality. While attempting to stack another brick around the assembly, Daghlian accidentally dropped it onto the core and thereby caused the core to go well into supercriticality, a self-sustaining critical chain reaction. He quickly moved the brick off the assembly, but received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later from acute radiation poisoning.

 

Under Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not used and the only thing preventing the closure was the blade of a standard straight screwdriver manipulated in Slotin's other hand. Slotin, who was given to bravado, became the local expert, performing the test on almost a dozen occasions, often in his trademark blue jeans and cowboy boots, in front of a roomful of observers. Enrico Fermi reportedly told Slotin and others they would be "dead within a year" if they continued performing the test in that manner. Scientists referred to this flirting with the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction as "tickling the dragon's tail", based on a remark by physicist Richard Feynman, who compared the experiments to "tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon".

Anonymous ID: 2e134f May 16, 2020, 3:59 a.m. No.9198087   ๐Ÿ—„๏ธ.is ๐Ÿ”—kun   >>8238

>>9198062

>tickling the dragon's tail

 

On the day of the accident, Slotin's screwdriver slipped outward a fraction of an inch while he was lowering the top reflector, allowing the reflector to fall into place around the core. Instantly there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second. Slotin quickly twisted his wrist, flipping the top shell to the floor. The heating of the core and shells stopped the criticality within seconds of its initiation, while Slotin's reaction prevented a recurrence and ended the accident. The position of Slotin's body over the apparatus also shielded the others from much of the neutron radiation, but he received a lethal dose of radiation in under a second and died nine days later from acute radiation poisoning.