Another avenue of research, spearheaded by Meitner, was to determine if other elements could fission after being irradiated with neutrons. It was soon determined that thorium and protactinium could. Measurements were also made of the amount of energy released. Hans von Halban, Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Lew Kowarski demonstrated that uranium bombarded by neutrons emitted more neutrons than it absorbed, suggesting the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. Fermi and Anderson did so too a few weeks later. It was apparent to many scientists that, in theory at least, an extremely powerful energy source could be created, although most still considered an atomic bomb an impossibility.