As per my promise (or threat?), I’m kicking off my blather about Italy’s contribution to the world with a scientist. His name may sound familiar in the Chicago area and/or if you follow Science stories on NPR because a particle accelerator (aka atom smasher) was named after him. It used to be the place until Hadron in Europe went online and America’s growing disinterest, unless it involves weight loss, spying or sports.
Anyway…on to Enrico. He was born and educated in Italy. He quickly became an internationally recognized physicist over the atom’s mysteries which is amazing, Italy was never considered much of a leader in high tech. Enrico then relocated to NYC before the outbreak of WWII since Mussolini started to emulate Hitler’s racial policies (his wife was Jewish). Yet another mistake on the Axis Power’s part.
During the war, he and his team in Chicago created the first successful nuclear pile, a precursor said energy and weapons. Then he was moved to Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project with Oppenheimer. You should all know the rest there.
Sadly, he died at the age of 53 thanks to cancer from all the radioactive elements he was exposed to. People in his field felt it was a reasonable sacrifice. Years before he perished, Fermi shared other scientists’ fears over humanity’s maturity with nuclear power (energy and weapons). By then it was too late, McCarthyism and paranoia ruled.
For me, Fermi’s coolest contribution was outside nuclear science, it’s called Fermi’s Paradox and it led to the Drake Equation. I recently learned about it from Dr. Plait’s last book Death from the Skies through the alien-invasion chapter. Back in 1950, Fermi openly pondered this question when there was a discussion of UFOs by asking “Where are they?” Let me flesh out the context to a statement that comes off rather flippantly. Since Hubble’s theory about the universe being over five billion year’s old was panning out, Fermi quickly calculated and proposed how the Earth could have possibly been visited by aliens at least a few times, ergo “where are they” if they’re real? Plait followed up with a quick suggestion about how we and/or aliens could do this in a relatively short (by universal standards) time. Say we build a probe and send it to Alpha Centauri, the closest solar system to us. The journey would run about 50 years. When the probe arrives, it explores for a bit and reports its findings to Earth. Afterwards it replicates using materials it finds, like it’s a space factory. Now we have two probes, both head toward the next two closest systems and repeat the process ad infinitum. Based upon Plait’s process, the galaxy would be explored in 50 million years. Earth is over five billion years, the universe is 12-14 billion, we Humans in our current form are a puny 100-200 thousand (at best) so I guess they visited a little too soon.