Wikipedia:Main Page history/2016 September 5

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An Alpha calutron tank removed from the magnet for recovery of uranium-235

A calutron (pictured) is a device that separates isotopes of a chemical element by ionizing, accelerating and deflecting them using electric and magnetic fields. A type of sector mass spectrometer, it was developed by Ernest O. Lawrence at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II, based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Calutrons were used to separate the isotopes of uranium on an industrial scale at the Y-12 plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The enriched uranium produced was used in the Little Boy atomic bomb employed in the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Electromagnetic uranium enrichment was abandoned in the early post-war period in favor of the more complicated, but more efficient, gaseous diffusion method, but calutrons remained in use to produce isotopically enriched samples of naturally occurring elements for military, scientific and medical purposes. (Full article...)

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Rufous-tailed antwren
Rufous-tailed antwren

In the news

Mother Teresa in 1986
Mother Teresa

On this day...

September 5: Ganesh Chaturthi begins (Hinduism, 2016); Labour Day in Canada and Labor Day in the United States (2016)

Interior of the Gotthard Road Tunnel
Interior of the Gotthard Road Tunnel
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From today's featured list

Characters in Millennium, a crime-thriller television series which was broadcast from 1996 to 1999, include Frank Black, an offender profiler for the Millennium Group (a private investigative organisation). Black, played by Lance Henriksen, retires from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to move his wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and daughter Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) to Seattle, where he begins consulting on criminal cases for the group. After the group's attempt to cause an apocalyptic viral outbreak kills his wife, Black returns to the FBI to work with new partner Emma Hollis (Scott) to discredit the group. Black was one of the first elements conceived for the series, the remainder of which were fleshed out by screenwriter Chris Carter around his character. Black has been described by a producer as Millennium's constant, as the series' tone and direction changed around him with each successive season. Except for Frank Black, the series' characters have been criticized as one-dimensional, "generic" and little more than "symbol[s]". (Full list...)

Today's featured picture

Plum Park in Kameido

Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige), a copy of the ukiyo-e woodblock print Plum Park in Kameido by the Japanese artist Hiroshige. Completed in 1887, this painting is one of several Japanese-influenced works created by van Gogh after the opening up of Japan. In his copy, van Gogh ignored the shading present in the trunk and background of Hiroshige's image, which there implied age, and instead used colours with more "passion" and "youthfulness".

See Hiroshige's original version

Painting: Vincent van Gogh, after Hiroshige

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