John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Roughly what we got OTL in 1938.
Preferably with no PoDs before 1870, otherwise latest one possible.
Preferably with no PoDs before 1870, otherwise latest one possible.
You're confusing nuclear fission with a nuclear fission chain reaction because, like too many people, you assume the word fission only means "Bombs!!!" and "Reactors!!!"
While work with what we now call cathode ray tubes began as early as the 1870s and the electrons making up cathode rays were proven to consist of tiny particles as opposed to atoms or molecules, Millikan didn't perform his flawed oil drop experiment until 1909.
An earlier understanding of radioactivity would be required too. Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous emission, that fluorescent materials didn't need outside energy sources, didn't occur until 1896 when Becquerel was duplicating Roentgen's work with, you guessed it, cathode ray tubes.
First, let me explain that nuclear fission does not equate many of the assumptions you're making. Neutrons need not be involved and neither do radioactive elements... Rutherford split atoms in 1917, but he lacked the theory to even guess at what was occurring let alone look for the proofs.
Sorry, my bad...
Becquerel's happy accident in 1896 occurred when he was investigating Roentgen's reports of 1895. You can't get much faster than that.Radiation, I thought as much; I was thinking Becquerel's "accident" with uranium salt could plausibly have happened earlier...
You're putting the cart before the horse again. Let me explain.Did not know this -- but it could be the key to what I'm going forWhat would Rutherford have needed to be able to know what he was looking for?
Becquerel's happy accident in 1896 occurred when he was investigating Roentgen's reports of 1895. You can't get much faster than that.
OK, when is the earliest that a pump like that could have been developed?
How much earlier can the development of cathode ray tubes occur?
The key problem there is the invention of the dry process which allowed Bequerel to put a uranium salt sample next to a *ready to develop* glass plate and have it actually do something--that couldn't happen with the wet processes, since it wouldn't be ready to develop, and the radiation would just go through without doing anything.
Don Lardo said:You're putting the cart before the horse again. Let me explain.
<snip>
Sure you can.
Given earlier photography, someone could have easily stumbled across the effect Bequerel noted. However, that effect would have been called 'salt shadows" or some sort. It most certainly not would have been called "radiation" and no one seeing it would have clapped a hand to their forehead, shrieked "EUREKA!", and immediately began babbling about subatomic particles, fission, and all the rest.
But they would know something funny was going on...
... have an effect on nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics ...
... an effect on chemistry...
... you're presuming things like "chemistry", "physics", "experiments", and many, many other things that didn't even begin to exist until roughly the 18th Century....start experimenting...
Interest, yes. But it won't spur anything resembling actual reproducible scientific experimentation until the paradigm shift I mentioned occurs.But it IS going to spur interest and experimentation--just not what happened IOTL, and in a different order.
Don Lardo said:However, absent Crooke's developments, the subsequent realization that "something" is streaming through those tubes, Roentgen's observation that that "something" also streamed beyond the tube though his hand and made images on a photographic plate, Bequerel isn't going to realize that the same "something" or a similar "something" also streamed out of his uranium salts and into his dry plates.
Well, if the "accident" happens around or after 1876, that just leaves out Roentegen's discovery; even there, wasn't Ivan Pulyui making some headway in X-Rays around this time as well?
That could happen and Hertz was publishing his theory about electromagnetic radiation. So we have a theory and an observed effect which may be related to it. Now what?
Thomson "proved" Hertz' ideas in 1897 when he was able to measure the weight of the particles in a cathode ray tube's stream. What physical tools did he use to do that? What tool did he have in 1897 that weren't available in 1876? What advances would need to be made earlier for those 1897 tools to be available twenty years earlier?
Moving on, Thomson's discovery of the electron pointed the way to subatomic particles and Millikan measured the charge of an electron in 1909. Again, what physical tools did Millikan have that Thomson didn't? Or that someone in 1876 didn't? Again, what advances are necessary for those tools to be available earlier.
Now ask yourself the same questions about theories and tools for Rutherford's experiments, Chadwick's experiments, and up through Hahn's, Strassmann's, and Meitner's experiments.
Those are very good questions; I certainly do not know the answers...