URANUS & The Radioactive Metals
A system of rings has also been discovered around Uranus, a feature shared by Jupiter and Neptune as well as the famous rings of Saturn. There are at least eight of these narrow, widely spaced Uranianrings, farthinner and more diffuse than those circling Saturn. The stones in these rings appear to consist of big coal-black boulders ‘shepherded’ by tiny orbiting satellites.
But even with the photographs and streams of electronic data gleaned from Uranus by scientists (and the crumbs of information they throw to the public), Uranus remains, as Bradford Smith, head of Voyager 2’s imaging team puts it “…a planet of unfathomable mystery.”4
THE ‘URANIAN’ METAL
While the seven planets of the ancients and their corresponding metals and spheres of activity have been well documented by occult tradition—and more recently ‘verified’ by scientific experiments, especially through the research of Lilly Kolisko — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto lie beyond this traditional body of knowledge. So here we take leave of tradition and branch out into a new exploration of the deep connections which undoubtedly exist between Uranus and the equally mysterious metal uranium; a substance that mirrors the transforming and radical nature of Uranus on earth, an incredibly powerful element which has altered the stream of human evolution with devastating effect.
Among ancient traditions the Native Americans and the Aborigines of Australia were well aware of the existence and power of uranium, but there is no direct reference to this metal in alchemical literature although Czechoslovakia, which has large deposits of uranium ore, was a hotbed of alchemical experimentation in mediaeval days.
The modern story of uranium begins in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, when a German chemist Martin H. Klaproth discovered a very heavy element and named it klaprothium. Shortly afterwards, he renamed it uranium in honor of the newly discovered planet.
Some 50 years later Eugene Peligot, a French chemist, isolated the first metallic uranium, but it remained practically ignored and was regarded as having few practical uses apart from the glass blowers of Bohemia and the porcelain makers of Saxony who used uranium oxide for the beautiful yellow and black colours it produced. The ancient Romans also used uranium oxide for colouring, discovered in a fresco near Naples with its striking colours still bright after 2000 years. Some uranium compounds are used in photography, but its real power of nuclear fission was only discovered a century later, a discovery intuited by Dmitry Mendeleyev who working on his Periodic Table, was convinced that this new element with its great atomic weight (238.03) would be the source of major new discoveries.
It was a French physicist, Henry Becquerel who accidentally discovered the invisible emanations from uranium. During research into phosphorescence he left uranium salts on a photographic plate in a dark drawer waiting for a sunny day to continue his experiments. Later, when he decided to develop the plate he found to his amazement clear outlines of the uranium samples despite the lack of light. He concluded that uranium was’ ‘the first example of a metal revealing a property similar to invisible phosphorescence,”5 or “stored-up light.”
Dr Gustave Le Bon (a true Uranian character) took these experiments a step further and scandalized orthodox physicists by saying, and proving, that the radiations were not any form of light, but an absolutely new force. He also demonstrated that all matter emits radio-activity and the special properties of uranium were’ ‘only a particular case of a very general law.” ‘6
When Becquerel announced the spontaneous fission of uranium, the scientific world pricked up its ears. Among those keen to explore this new element was the physicist Marie Curie who managed to obtain several tons of uranium waste and discovered other more highly radioactive elements including radium, giving great impetus to these researches.
Although in 1934 elementary uranium was considered to have no practical application, by 1939 there was a tremendous change in attitude when the explosive possibilities of nuclear reaction came to the world’s attention. In Italy, Enrico Fermi experimented with uranium by irradiating it with neutrons. Otto Hahn is generally credited with the discovery, in 1939, of the nuclear fission process, but according to other sources it was Marie Curie’s daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, who, after repeating the experiments of Fermi, discovered that when a neutron hit a uranium nucleus it split it into two. She is also credited with establishing that in this splitting, several neutrons were released which, hitting neighbouring nuclei would cause further splitting so beginning a chain reaction.
A chain reaction only happens with human intervention, in naturally occurring uranium there are not enough U-235 atoms.
Soviet physicists, in one case experimenting deep underground in a Moscow Metro station where no cosmic rays could penetrate, proved that uranium nuclei could disintegrate spontaneously.
When Fermi fled from Italy at the end of the 1930s Albert Einstein interceded with the U.S. Government to give financial backing to his uranium research—an element he promoted as an important new source of energy, but more vitally from the government’s point of view, could produce a powerful new weapon.
Millions of Chicago residents were unaware one day in 1942 that the most dangerous experiment in history took place in a city sports stadium — under the bleachers at Stagg Field. This was the controlled chain reaction of splitting uranium nuclei. It is called’ controlled’ when one neutron from each fission goes on to produce another fission. But when multiple fission happens, the reaction increases at catastrophic speed, within millionths of a second, creating an explosion.
Fortunately for Chicago, Fermi’s calculations were correct: the chain reaction continued for 28 minutes and was then halted. If there had been even the slightest error the city would have been devastated along with its inhabitants.
After bis success, Fermi and other prominent scientists involved were taken to the uranium research centre in the desert at Los Alamos and their further experiments shrouded in secrecy. That is, until 1945 when the world witnessed the horror of a deadly new weapon unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.