Ancient Man May Have Used Fire 1.5 Million Years Ago
Friday, April 6th, 2012Of all the discoveries of ancient man, none made a greater impact on humanity than fire. Although fire was certainly developed independently by many groups, its discovery is none the less one of the greatest moments in mankind becoming what we are today. Without fire there could be no cooking, no warmth beyond what nature or body heat can provide, no light after dark. Fire was man’s first discovery that allowed the utilization of energy on demand. It would later drive our engines, smelt our metals and even propel rockets to the moon and beyond.
Anyone who has started a campfire without an accelerate knows that it can be surprisingly difficult to get a good strong self-sustaining flame going, even with the aid of matches or a lighter. For early man, it was much more difficult still. Simply being able to consistently create a fire and contain it for use demonstrates a high degree of intelligence and the ability to learn.
Now scientists have discovered evidence that it may have happened earlier than we had previously believed.
Humans used fire 1 million years ago, says study
(AP) NEW YORK – When did our ancestors first use fire? That’s been a long-running debate, and now a new study concludes the earliest firm evidence comes from about 1 million years ago in a South African cave.The ash and burnt bone samples found there suggest fires frequently burned in that spot, researchers said Monday.
Over the years, some experts have cited evidence of fire from as long as 1.5 million years ago, and some have argued it was used even earlier, a key step toward evolution of a larger brain. It’s a tricky issue. Even if you find evidence of an ancient blaze, how do you know it wasn’t just a wildfire?
The new research makes “a pretty strong case” for the site in South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, said Francesco Berna of Boston University, who presents the work with colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One expert said the new finding should be considered together with a previous discovery nearby, of about the same age. Burnt bones also have been found in the Swartkrans cave, not far from the new site, and the combination makes a stronger case than either one alone, said Anne Skinner of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who was not involved in the new study.
Another expert unconnected with the work, Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in The Netherlands, said by email that while the new research does not provide “rock solid” evidence, it suggests our ancestors probably did use fire there at that time.
One thing I have always wondered about, and of course, we will never know, is how many ancients may have learned of fire only to abandon it out of fear. Certainly not all of early man’s encounters with fire were pleasant. It may first have been experienced in the wildfires started by spontaneous combustion of overheated turf or from a lightning strike. Such an experience would be terrifying, and once man began to experiment with fire, it’s all but certain that some mishaps and burns occurred.
Yet some groups stuck with it. Perhaps it was because it was recognized as useful or maybe because it frightened others. Maybe it was just curiosity. Whatever the case, at some point, someone began to create fires and, despite perhaps suffering a few burns or coughing on smoke and enduring the frustration of seeing the tiny smoldering embers go out, they learned how to tame and use fire.
Might there have been some tribes that had mastered fire and others that did not? If so, it’s almost certain that this advantage would have lead to those with fire succeeding and those who didn’t falling by the wayside. This could have even been a factor in early human evolution.
But what i early mankind looked at fire the way we look at new forms of energy today? Would they have used fire at all? It’s a sobering thought to consider that if our ancestors had the same attitude we have today, we might still be eating raw meat, huddled in mud huts at the mercy of the cold darkness of night…



Despite these dangers, radium-226 was once far more valuable than gold. For the first half of the 20th century, radium and its decay products were the most widely used radioisotope source for any purpose that required radioactive materials. It was used for cancer treatment, in the form of radium needles, external sources and devices that collected radon for use in irradiating tissue. Radium was commonly used in any circumstance where calibration sources were required, with many earth geiger counters coming with a radium-based test source. It was used in ion and moisture gauges, cold cathode vacuum tubes and combined with beryllium to produce small neutron sources. Radium was well known for its use in radiolumonescent paints. The paint was commonly used for clock and watch faces, allowing them to glow brightly without first having to be exposed to light. Larger concentrations were used for aircraft instrument dials, illuminated markers and
Radium-226 exists in small concentrations in uranium ore. To recover a single gram of the material, several tons of uranium ore must be processed. Still, because the material had so many uses and was so valuable, large operations existed all over the world to produce it.
The choice of isotope for space missions has always been, and continues to be
There are other isotopes that can also be used to provide power for RTG’s, but none are as desirable as Pu-238.
Shooting down an ICBM has always been an extremely challenging problem. There is very little time to react to the missile and they travel at extreme speed. The distances involved are enormous and because an interceptor must also travel at extreme speed, it can easily shoot right past the target. This is made even more difficult by the fact that modern missiles have penetration aids and decoys that are hard to distinguish from the actual warhead. Some also have the ability to maneuver and change course, making it difficult to plot an interception point. The earliest systems addressed this in a simplistic, though likely effective way: They would try to destroy the incoming warhead with a massive nuclear explosion.
Fission was recognized as a potential energy source after the possibility of a fission chain reaction was realized. A chain reaction occurs when neutrons produced by nuclear fission strike other fissile nuclei, releasing more energy in a self-sustaining reaction.
All this changed in 1972, when an unusual discrepancy in the concentration of uranium-235 from a mine in Gabon Africa was detected










