What a great story Michele. That was amazing detective work figuring that out - and I loved how you worked in the international espionage bit with tensions over possible nukes being built in Africa!

I think you have a typo in this sentence:

“Uranium-235 has a half-life of “only” 704 million years, unlike uranium-238, whose half-life is 4.468 million years, more than six times longer.“

U238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years - not millions.

In particular, I love the part bacteria play in this story - I’m a biologist with a fascination for geology and earth sciences… so this hit the sweet spot for me!

Thanks for writing this!