Donald Trump screwed up like never before with his latest statements.

Donald Trump The whole country was turned against him as soon as he began to fulfill his mandate. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true that, in addition to demonstrating some general lack of culture, it has created a lot of discontent among many New Zealanders. The reason for such a stir is that it added atomic fission on the list of American feats, although the first to accomplish this was a New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford.

At best, they could make this claim in the United Kingdom, since Rutherford achieved this scientific milestone in laboratory in Manchesterin which the experiment was later repeated by the British John Douglas Cockroft and the Irish Ernest Walton. We might think that perhaps it was confused with later experiments nuclear fission. However, this discovery was made by two German and two Austrian scientists.

The last thing we’re left with is what Donald Trump really meant. atomic bomb. It was the work of an American: Robert Oppenheimer. So a New Zealander, an Englishman, an Irishman, two Germans and two Austrians researched how the nucleus of a heavy atom could be split into smaller ones, generating large amounts of energy so that later an American, pushed by his country’s government, decided to use this sudden burst of energy to make a bomb. which ended the lives of millions of people. This describes much better what Donald Trump was talking about. But it might have sounded a little worse.

Donald Trump’s first speech

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump mentioned the greatness of Americans. As examples of some of the great exploits of this people, he noted that “they crossed deserts, climbed mountains, faced innumerable dangers, conquered the Wild West, ended slavery, saved millions from tyranny, lifted millions out of poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom , launched humanity into the heavens and placed the universe of human knowledge in the palm of the human hand.”

All of this can be summed up by the fact that they crossed deserts and climbed mountains like everyone else, they stole land from the Native Americans in the Old West, they took advantage of slavery and then abolished it and continued to undermine the rights of racialized people. in a more Sibylline way, some were tyrants and others saved the population from those tyrants, they banned the poor from entering the country, they embraced electricity, becoming the second most emitting country of greenhouse gases, they launched humanity into the sky. (after the Soviet Union) and contributed not only to the democratization, but also to the privatization of space. It might have sounded less epic that way, I must say. But, in the case of the atom, it’s not about epicness, but about reality.

Who split the atom?

Atoms can split apart naturally. This is not a scientific invention. However, in 1919, Ernest Rutherford became the first scientist to direct an experiment in which such a separation was made. In this experiment, he confirmed that the atom had somehow broken apart to form new elements. He called this phenomenon decay. It was not yet a division as such. However, in 1932, he himself conducted another experiment in which he succeeded in splitting the atomic nucleus into two parts.

Soon after this, two German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmannand two Austrian physicists, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, They discovered nuclear fission. This is a process in which, by dividing an atom, as Rutherford had already done, a large amount of energy could be obtained. True, some of these scientists worked in American universitiesbut the dawn of discovery did not occur there.

Despite all this, Nick Smith, the mayor of Nelson, the New Zealand city where Rutherford was born, immediately took to social media to react to Donald Trump speech. In addition to correcting the error, he did not hesitate to invite the US Ambassador to New Zealand to visit Lord Rutherford Memorial so that, they say, together they will be able to “preserve accurately the historical record of who first split the atom.”

Once Donald Trump’s mistake is exposed, we can only hope that this is the most serious thing his mandate will bring us. With hope.