The Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb wasn't without its own dangers. Experiments on a so-called "demon core" of plutonium caused the deaths of two Manhattan Project physicists. Both ...

Less than a year later, on May 21, 1946, Louis Slotin would become the demon core’s second victim. Slotin, a 35-year-old physicist, was performing another test to verify how close to criticality the ...

In The True Story of the Demon Core, Dr. Ben Miles dives into the chilling and tragic events surrounding the infamous ...

I think we can all agree that the physicists, engineers, and chemists who worked on the Manhattan Project -- which ultimately ended World War II -- were consummate geniuses and paragons of ...

(via Kyle Hill) In Russia in 1997, an unfortunate technician answered the question, “what would have happened if the ‘Demon Core’ was never stopped in 1946?” This episode of [HALF-LIFE HISTORIES] ...

The fabled Demon Core was a radioactive plutonium sphere housed in a beryllium hemisphere. By holding the hemisphere in place with one hand and levering it with a screwdriver in the other, scientists ...

Nuclear fission is a powerful phenomenon. When the conditions are right, atomic nuclei split, releasing neutrons that then split other nuclei in an ongoing chain reaction that releases enormous ...