What did Enrico Fermi’s early neutron experiments reveal about uranium?

In 1934, Enrico Fermi and his team in Rome conducted experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons to study nuclear transformations. When they exposed uranium to these neutrons, they observed several radioactive products that were chemically different from the original element.123

At the time, Fermi and many other scientists interpreted these results as evidence that they had created transuranium elements—elements with an atomic number greater than 92. However, these early experiments actually resulted in the discovery of nuclear fission rather than the creation of new, heavier elements. The confusion was not resolved until 1938, when Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated that the uranium nucleus had instead split into smaller pieces, or fission fragments.132