So many experiments had been done bombarding atoms—by Bohr, Fermi, and others. Why hadn’t this happened before? The answer, Meitner saw, was that it had. They’d all been splitting atoms. But they hadn’t known it. They didn’t think it was possible, so they hadn’t realized what was happening right in front of them.
“They didn’t think it was possible”—blinded by what they thought they knew to be true.
