How understanding nature made the atomic bomb inevitable
Atomic bombs hastened the end of World War II. But they launched another kind of war, a cold one, that threatened the entire planet with nuclear annihilation. So it’s understandable that on the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb explosion that devastated Hiroshima (August 6, 1945), reflections tend to emphasize the geopolitical dramas during the decades that followed. But it’s also worth reflecting on the scientific story of how the bombs came to be. It’s not easy to pinpoint that story’s beginning. Nuclear fission — the source of the bomb’s energy — was discovered in 1938, less than seven years before Hiroshima. But the science behind nuclear energy originated decades earlier. You could say 1905, when Einstein revealed to the world that E = mc2. Or perhaps it’s better to begin with Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity in 1896. Radioactivity revealed a new sort of energy, of vast quantity, hidden within the...