Since the greatest and most effective use of the non-rigged H-bomb would

thus be as a tactical weapon against armies in the field, while its

strategic use against civilian populations would be simple wanton

destruction from the point of view of both victor and vanquished, then

not only morality and Christian civilization but plain common sense

would dictate the wisdom of our solemnly declaring right now that we

will never be the first to use either the non-rigged H-bomb or even the

A-bomb against civilian populations, and that the only circumstance that

would compel us to use them so would be in retaliation for their use

against us or our allies. In fact, we could renounce strategic bombing

altogether. By doing so we would gain one of the greatest moral

victories, for then if Russia failed to make a similar declaration, as

she most likely would, she would stand before the world as a nation bent

on wholesale slaughter of civilian populations. We have nothing to lose

and everything to gain by such a declaration, and the sooner we make it

the better.

Should we make such a declaration, it would place Russia in an

embarrassing position indeed. For while as a tactical weapon the

non-rigged H-bomb offers us great advantages as a counterforce to

neutralize her huge army, she can use the H-bomb, both the rigged and

the non-rigged, as a constant threat against our densely populated

cities. As Senator Brien McMahon, of Connecticut, chairman of the Joint

Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, has warned, an H-bomb attack

“might incinerate 50,000,000 Americans—not in the space of an evening

but in the space of a few minutes.” We have eleven cities of one million

or more inhabitants, whereas Russia has only three or four. We have

forty cities of 200,000 and over, inhabited by 40,000,000, or 27 per

cent of our population, whereas Russia has only twenty cities of 200,000

and over, inhabited by only 20,000,000, or 10 per cent of her

population. Furthermore, her industries are now largely dispersed,

whereas our industries are highly centralized. Russia would thus get

much the worse of the bargain if she were to accept our challenge to

renounce the use of strategic bombing, particularly that of the A- and

H-bombs, while we still retain the right to use them in tactical bombing

against her armies.

Suppose Russia in this dilemma, and recognizing the need to avoid the

moral opprobrium of the peoples of the world that her refusal to meet

our renunciation would entail, comes forth with a counterproposal to

renounce the use of both A- and H-bombs altogether, as strategic as well

as tactical weapons, thus exchanging the elimination of the threat of

the annihilation of our teeming cities and industries, for the removal

of the threat of destruction to her armies. Suppose that at the same

time she repeats her demand, frequently voiced by her in the United

Nations, that all stockpiles of A- and H-bombs be destroyed and a

convention signed to outlaw their uses. The world already knows the

answer, for we have already made it again and again.

Immediately after the close of the last war we declared our readiness to

give up the A-bomb. In 1946, at a time when we were the sole possessor

of the bomb, when we had every reason to believe that our monopoly would

last for a number of years, we submitted a far-reaching plan for the

international control of atomic energy, the most generous offer by far

ever made by any nation in history. In this historic plan we not only

declared our readiness to give up our stockpile of A-bombs and to agree

to refrain from further production; we even offered to give up our

sovereignty over our multibillion-dollar atomic plants to an

international agency. We further agreed to submit to unhindered, free

inspection by such an agency to assure the world, and Russia in

particular, that we were not manufacturing A-bombs, or A-bomb materials,

in secret. No nation in history had ever gone so far in its desire to

show its goodwill and its peaceful intentions as to make a voluntary

offer to surrender the world’s most powerful weapon of war, and an

important part of its sovereignty to boot. The offer still stands. It

has been enthusiastically endorsed by all the members of the United

Nations except Russia and her satellites. After three years of futile

negotiations and discussions Russia still insists that she would not

surrender any part of her sovereignty or submit to the only kind of

inspection that could assure the world against clandestine production of

atomic bombs and materials.

Hence, should Russia demand that we renounce the right to use the A- and

H-bombs not only as strategic but also as tactical weapons against her

armies in exchange for a similar offer on her part, it would on the face

of it be a mere repetition of her earlier efforts to trick us into

giving up our greatest weapons while she remained free to produce them

in secret, since she insists upon her right to retain ownership of the

atomic plants and materials and upon the inspection of only those plants

she acknowledges to exist, thus making it impossible to find plants

whose existence she does not admit. To accept such an offer would be

tantamount to surrender, since our giving up the right to use the H-bomb

as a tactical weapon against her armies would leave her free to march

into the countries of western Europe. It would then be too late to stop

her, for we could not drop the H-bomb on the cities of western Europe.

The only time to stop Russia’s armies is before they cross into the

territory of our allies, during the crucial period when they are

mobilized in large numbers and on the march.

The American people, and the other free peoples of the world, could not

agree to such a scheme to disarm them in advance and thus give the

masters of the Kremlin a free hand. To do so would not prevent war, it

would encourage it. It would not even delay it, it would hasten it.

Instead of being preventable, it would become inevitable. We wouldn’t

even save our cities from the fate of strategic bombing with A- and

H-bombs, since the Kremlin has never kept its promises when they did not

suit its purposes. When we had lost our greatest chance to wipe out her

armies in one mighty blow, Russia would be in a position to trade our

industries and cities for her dispersed and still primitive industrial

plants and cities. If at that stage she should offer us, as well as our

neighbors to the south and Britain and her Dominions, independence and

complete sovereignty, while she assumed hegemony over all of Europe and

Asia, could we then refuse, at the risk of the lives of our millions?

Supposing the nations of western Europe, overrun by the Red Army, become

“people’s democracies,” Russian style, would we risk our millions to

liberate nations whose governments would by then have joined the ranks

of our enemy?

These are the brutal facts that would confront us were we to renounce

the right to use A- and H-bombs as tactical weapons against armies in

the field. As long as we retain that right, the chances are good that we

could prevent global war, for no nation would be likely to risk such a

war in the face of the possibility that the main bulk of its armies

might be wiped out at the outset. If we give up that right, we would

also prevent war—by surrendering in advance. Russia, of course, might

figure that she could still make war, when she decides the time is ripe,

taking the calculated risk that we would not use the A- and H-bombs

against her armies for fear of her retaliation against our cities and

industries. But whether she would consider that calculated risk worth

taking would depend on how good our defenses were. Senator McMahon’s

warning that an H-bomb attack “might incinerate 50,000,000 Americans ...

in the space of a few minutes” would become a possibility only if we

allowed ourselves to be surprised for a second time by a “super Pearl

Harbor,” which, of course, is inconceivable. While it is generally

agreed that it is impossible to decentralize our cities and industries,

because of the tremendous cost (estimated at $300 billion) and the short

time at our disposal between now and the ultimate showdown, when Russia

is expected to be ready to make major moves at the risk of “accepting”

war, we have many advantages not possessed by Britain and Germany during

the last war as far as defenses against strategic bombing were

concerned. Britain, as well as Poland, Holland, and Belgium—little,

densely populated countries—were within very short range of Germany’s

airfields. So was Germany, in her turn, within easy range from Britain.

Radar, as compared with its modern types, was primitive in quality and

inadequate in quantity. Automatic antiaircraft guns, interceptor planes,

and night fighters were either nonexistent in the early days of the

blitz or in a crude stage of development compared with present

equivalents.

How vastly different is our situation today vis-à-vis Russia! Instead of

a short hop across the English Channel she would have to cross the

Atlantic or the Pacific to reach our continent, whereas we can reach her

heartland from bases all around her borders. It is unthinkable that any

of her bombers can cross either ocean without being detected hundreds of

miles before they reach our shores. With modern radar devices, which are

constantly being improved, and fleets of fast interceptors far in

advance of anything Russia could develop, we would destroy them long

before they would do us any harm. If she attempts to fly over the North

Pole, she will still have to cross all of Canada before she can reach

us, and if we and our Canadian friends are on the alert, as we must and

shall be, any hostile planes could be detected and destroyed over the

Arctic.

There is, of course, the possibility of exploding an H-bomb some

distance off shore from a submarine or from a tramp steamer, but here,

too, eternal vigilance will be the price of our liberties and our lives.

There can be no question that we shall succeed in finding the answer to

the detection of the Snorkel-type submarine and master it just as we

mastered the earlier types. American ingenuity and superior technology

have never failed yet in the face of an emergency, and it is unthinkable

that they should fail now.

We often hear it said that an enemy could smuggle an A-bomb in small

parts into this country and assemble it here. While such an operation is

possible, its successful execution against a nation fully on guard is

highly improbable. As for the H-bomb, it requires large quantities of

liquefied gas, which must be kept in a vacuum surrounded by large

vessels of liquid air. In addition it must have its A-bomb trigger and

other complicated devices. All this makes its surreptitious smuggling

into a country such as ours even more improbable.

We have had it dinned into our ears for so long that there is no defense

against the atomic bomb, and that the only choice confronting us is “one

world or none,” without anyone taking the trouble to challenge these two

pernicious catch-phrases, that we have accepted them as gospel truth,

particularly since they were uttered by some of our more articulate

atomic scientists. That scientists should at last step out from their

laboratories and classrooms to take an active interest in public affairs

is highly commendable and welcome. But that does not give them the right

to take advantage of the great respect and confidence the public has for

them with utterances that serve only to create fear and hysteria and a

sense of helplessness, while at the same time offering remedies they

know to be unattainable.

The truth of the matter is that there can be and there is a defense

against atomic weapons, as against any other weapon. Basically it is the

same as the defense against submarines or enemy bombers: detect them and

destroy them before they reach you. The difference is largely a matter

of degree. Since the atomic-bomb carrier can do greater damage, the

measures of defense against it must be correspondingly greater. With the

aid of the vast stretches of the Atlantic and the Pacific, augmented by

an effective radar and interceptor system, on the one hand; and with

effective counter-submarine measures on the other, the odds would be

against a single A- or H-bomb reaching our shores.

Faced with such an impregnable system of defense, and with a threat of

the swift annihilation of its armies as soon as they begin marching for

war, the Kremlin could no longer, unless its masters went completely

berserk, regard war, or even a challenge to war, a risk worth taking.

The cold war may get warmer, as it did in Korea, but as long as we keep

our heads and don’t give way to fear and hysteria, trusting in God and

keeping our H-bombs “wet,” it may never reach the boilingpoint.

And we have in addition a weapon even more powerful than the H-bomb or

any other physical weapon, which instead of bringing misery and death

would bring new life and new hope to hundreds of millions now enslaved.

We have not yet even begun to fight on the battlefield of ideas, in

which we can match freedom against tyranny, friendship against class

hatred, truth against lies, a society based on the respect and dignity

of the individual and the giving of full scope to human aspirations

against a society modeled after the beehive and the ant-heap.

“Real peace,” former Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr.,

said in the _New Leader_, “is deeper than absence of war. That will be

won in the realm of philosophy and ideas. Indeed, the great reason for

preventing war is to permit ideas to meet ideas on their own merits....

The statesman’s business is to keep the conflagration at bay and give

ideas their chance, relying on the moral strength of the ideals he

represents to bring to their support the masses throughout the world.”

In such a war of ideas, he adds, there could be no doubt about the

outcome, as the West can oppose all its positives against Moscow’s

negatives. We meet “a betrayed revolution, in a decadent, imperialist,

dictatorial phase, building an empire on the negatives of human

behavior. Such empires engage no permanent loyalties; they invariably

break up. War would defeat this empire in any case. First rate

statesmanship can avoid that war.”

In the words of General George C. Marshall, “the most important thing

for the world today is a spiritual regeneration.... We must present

democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited

progress for the human race. We should make it clear that it is a means

to a better way of life within nations and to a better understanding

among nations. Tyranny inevitably must fall back before the tremendous

moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the

individual.”

As an advance army in this war of ideas we already have a fifth column

of millions waiting for our signal to march, the millions of the

enslaved satellite countries—Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Baltic

countries, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania—as well as millions upon millions

behind the Iron Curtain in Russia itself. The greatest mistake made by

Hitler was his failure to utilize the readiness and eagerness of a large

percentage of the Russian masses to turn against their oppressors. When

the Nazi armies marched into the Ukraine, large numbers of Ukrainians,

who had been longing for independence for centuries, greeted them as

their liberators with the traditional bread and salt, symbol of welcome.

Russian soldiers surrendered by the thousands and they, along with the

men of the villages, volunteered in great numbers to fight against their

enslavers. In the hearts of millions of Russians behind the front, the

longing for liberty, never extinguished, was given its greatest stimulus

since the days when they overthrew the Czarist regime. They, too, were

waiting for the Germans to give them back the revolution the Communists

had stolen from them with lies and deceit.

With the stupidity characteristic of all criminals, Hitler and Himmler

proclaimed that the Russians were to be treated as an “inferior race.”

Everywhere their armies went they burned and pillaged and raped. Instead

of liberators they turned out to be most savage barbarians, who behaved

even worse than the commissars. It was this inconceivable folly of

Hitler, as well as our Lend-Lease, that played a major role in enabling

the Kremlin to win the war.

The Russian masses and those of the enslaved satellite countries are

still waiting for their liberators. The masters of the Kremlin know it,

but they hope that, like the Nazis, we will be too stupid to take

advantage of it. If a war ever breaks out, we shall have millions

joining our ranks provided we do not destroy these millions, those not

in uniform, with A- or H-bombs in the strategic bombing of their cities.

But we should not wait until a war breaks out. We must begin mobilizing

them right now for the war of ideas.

The so-called Iron Curtain is a fake, like the rest of the Communist

set-up. It is made of tinsel and is full of thousands of holes, through

which we can pass if we will. Those thousands of miles of border ringing

the vast Russian Empire could be utilized as great thoroughfares of

ideas, to be smuggled to the millions waiting for them. There isn’t a

guard on those borders who couldn’t, with the proper approach and

inducements, be enlisted in our army of ideas. In addition to flooding

the air over Russia with tiny balloons, each carrying a message of

freedom and hope, we could also smuggle into the country small radio

receiving sets by the millions to bring the Voice of America to millions

of Russian homes. We could attach to those balloons small loaves of

bread, packages of cigarettes, little trinkets for babies, nylon

stockings for women, on a scale that no police could cope with. Nor

could the Kremlin risk forbidding it, as that would place it in the

position of further depriving its starved and hungry people of things

they badly need and want.

With these weapons on the battlefront in the war of ideas, and with the

A- and H-bomb to give the Kremlin pause, we would be well on the way to

win any war, cold or hot. Our justification for building the hydrogen

bomb is thus not merely to prevent its use, but to prevent World War

III, and to win it if it comes. We are not building it to bring Russia

to her knees. We are building it to bring her to her senses. We must

make the Kremlin realize with General Marshall that “tyranny inevitably

must fall back before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of

freedom and self-respect for the individual.”

IV

KOREA CLEARED THE AIR

As this is being written, the Korean war is just one month old. By the

time these lines appear in print we may know whether the naked Communist

aggression on the Republic of South Korea was an episode, a prelude, or

the first act of World War III. But whatever history records, the first

flash of the Communist guns, supplied by the Kremlin, has revealed to

the free world at last the face of the enemy in all its hideousness. It

brought the first phase of the so-called cold war to a definite end. It

aroused freedom-loving peoples everywhere and put them on the alert. It

served as a powerful headlight in the night, revealing many dangerous

curves on the road ahead. It has given the United Nations its first

great opportunity to display its vitality for all the world to see.

Among other things, the flash of the North Korean guns has illumined for

us more clearly than ever before the path we must follow in our policy

on atomic weapons, both the A-bomb and the H-bomb. It has revealed the

extreme danger lurking in any plan to outlaw production and use of

atomic weapons in a world constantly threatened by a savage

dictatorship, ready to pounce on it at the first sign of weakening in

its armor.

The flash of the Red guns, in the first place, made it clear to free men

everywhere that to renounce our right to the production of atomic

weapons as potentially the greatest deterrents against the further

spread of Communist aggression, and as the most powerful defenders of

the spiritual and moral values without which our way of life would

become meaningless, would allow the Red Army to overrun what remains of

the free world. Such a move on our part, for the present and the

foreseeable future, may herald the last appearance of free men on the

stage of history. It would be, as the Goncourt brothers feared, “closing

time, gentlemen!”

In addition to warning us what we must not do, the Red guns also gave

warning of a more positive nature. They warned us to make all haste in

the construction of the hydrogen bomb, to get it ready as soon as

possible, against the eventuality that Russia may decide it would be to

her advantage to precipitate World War III before our H-bomb is ready.

Instead of the estimated pre-Korea time-table of three years, it now

becomes a vital necessity for us to complete our H-bomb, and facilities

for its production at a speedy rate, within a year. And if the history

of our development of the A-bomb may serve as an example, it almost

becomes a certainty that we shall do so. While we may not announce it to

the world, we have good reason to expect that the first H-bomb will be

ready for testing sometime in 1951, possibly in early summer.

This forecast is not based on merely guesswork. When we decided to go

all out in developing the A-bomb—and we didn’t really go to work in

earnest until May 1943—nobody knew that it could be successfully made.

There were two enormous major problems to be solved, and solved in time

to be of use in winning the war. One was to produce unheard-of

quantities of fissionable materials (U-235 and plutonium), literally in

quantities billions of times greater than had ever been produced before.

Nobody knew whether it could be done or how it could be done. Three

gigantic plants were built, at a cost of $1,500,000,000, on the mere

chance, “calculated risk” we called it, that one of them would work. As

it turned out, they all worked, some more efficiently than others,

though all contributed to the shortening of the war. The second major

problem, among a host of smaller ones, all important to the successful

attainment of the goal, was how to assemble the materials produced in

the billion-dollar plants into a bomb that would live up to

expectations. Both major problems had to be solved simultaneously. The

designing of the bomb went on for more than two years with only trickles

of the active material.

Yet despite all these enormous difficulties the A-bomb was completed for

testing in about two years and three months after the beginning of the

large-scale effort. Compared with the enormousness of the problems that

had to be solved, and were solved successfully in this remarkably short

time, the problems still to be solved for building the hydrogen bomb

appear relatively simple, since all the materials required and the

plants to produce them are already built, paid for, and operating

successfully. As already pointed out, we have the A-bombs to serve as

triggers, large stockpiles of deuterium, and the refrigeration equipment

and techniques to liquefy it. We have an adequate supply of lithium for

the production of tritium, which, as explained earlier, would be used as

the extra kindling to the A-bomb match. And we have, of course, our

gigantic plutonium factories at Hanford, Washington, in which the

lithium could be converted into tritium in the desired amounts.

Thus, instead of having to start from scratch as we were forced to do

with the A-bomb, we have at hand all the necessary ingredients for the

H-bomb with the possible exception of sufficient tritium, and since we

have the plutonium plants, greatly expanded and improved since the end

of the war, it is reasonable to make a “guestimate,” to use a word

popular in wartime, that a few months should suffice for them, if they

are employed exclusively for that purpose, to produce tritium in proper

amounts.

That we have decided to complete the construction of the H-bomb in the

shortest possible time was made clear on July 7, two weeks following the

Communist attack on South Korea, when President Truman asked Congress to

furnish $260,000,000 in cash “to build additional and more efficient

plants and related facilities” for materials that can be used either for

weapons or for fuels potentially useful for power purposes. The

appropriation, he said, was required “in furtherance of my directive of

January 31, 1950,” in which he had ordered the Atomic Energy Commission

“to continue its work on the so-called hydrogen bomb”; and this was

further clarified in a letter to the President by the Budget Director,

Frederick J. Lawton, recommending the money request, to the effect that

the materials to be produced in the proposed plants could be used for

either atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs. Since the only type of plant that

could produce materials for both the A-bomb and the H-bomb is a nuclear

reactor for producing plutonium, and since tritium is the only H-bomb

element that could be produced in a plutonium plant, the request by the

President may be interpreted as the first, though indirect, official

confirmation that tritium is looked upon as one of the ingredients

necessary for a successful H-bomb. We were given a hint of a possible

time-table when it was revealed that the all-cash request would have to

be obligated in one year though its actual disbursal could be spread

over four years. This suggests the possibility that the nuclear reactors

for the large-scale production of tritium might be rushed to completion

within one year.

While these new reactors for the production of tritium are being built,

we can convert all our Hanford reactors for that purpose so that no time

need be lost. Whatever amounts of plutonium would have to be sacrificed

by diverting the Hanford plants from plutonium to tritium would be

offset by the new uranium concentration plants at Oak Ridge, and by the

fact that we already have a large stockpile of both U-235 and plutonium

accumulated over a period of five years.

The one and only major problem to be solved is how to assemble into an

efficient H-bomb the materials we already have at hand or will have in a

few months. Here, too, we are much farther advanced than we were at the

time we decided to build the A-bomb, as we are not called upon to start

from scratch. For whereas in the early days of the A-bomb development

scientists were doubtful whether it could be made at all and were

actually hoping that their investigations would prove that it was

impossible, for the Nazis as well as for us, no such doubts seem to

exist in the minds of those most intimately associated with the problem.

On this score we have had more than hints from a number of those in the

know, among them Senator McMahon. “The scientists,” he said in a

historic address to the United States Senate on February 2, 1950, “feel

more confident that this most horrible of armaments [the hydrogen bomb]

can be developed successfully than they felt in 1940 when the original

bomb was under consideration. The hydrogen development will be cheaper

than its uranium forerunner. Theoretically, it is without limit in

destructive capacity. A weapon made of such material would destroy any

military or other target, including the largest city on earth.”

What is this confidence based on? Scientists are a very conservative

lot, not given to jumping to conclusions without experimental evidence

on which to base them. I remember well the agonizing hours preceding the

test of the first A-bomb in New Mexico, when everyone present,

particularly the intellectual hierarchy that was most responsible, was

beset by grave doubts whether the A-bomb would go off at all, and if it

did, whether it would live up to expectations or turn out to be no more

than an improved blockbuster. Very few, if any, felt confident that it

would be as good as it finally turned out to be. For example, in a pool

in which everyone bet a dollar to guess the ultimate power of the bomb

in terms of TNT, Dr. Oppenheimer placed his bet on 300 tons. This makes

it evident that the scientists were not very confident even as late as

1945, up to the very last minute, when “the brain child of many minds

came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do.”

If the scientists are more confident today than they were in 1940, and

even, it would seem, in 1945, when the bomb stood on its steel tower

ready for its first test, it can only mean that their confidence is

based on innumerable experiments carried out during the five years that

have elapsed since Hiroshima. By the semiannual reports to Congress by

the Atomic Energy Commission, and reports presented before the American

Physical Society, or published in official publications, by members of

the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and other leading institutions, we

have been officially informed of many experiments that have been carried

out on nuclear reactions between deuterons and deuterons, tritons and

tritons, and deuterons and tritons—namely, the very reactions to be

expected in an H-bomb using deuterium, tritium, or a mixture of the two.

This makes it obvious that during the five years since Hiroshima we have

accumulated a vast body of knowledge about the reactions necessary for a

successful H-bomb. Furthermore, this gives us the assurance that we are

five years ahead of Russia on the H-bomb as well as the A-bomb, since we

have had plutonium plants in which to make tritium for at least five

years, whereas she has just placed her plutonium plants in operation

and, as we have seen, can ill afford to sacrifice the vital plutonium

she needs for building up her A-bomb stockpile to begin experiments we

had most likely carried out five years ago.

The best evidence so far that we have made much progress during the past

five years on the design of the H-bomb—evidence strongly indicating that

it had passed the blueprint stage and was ready for construction—was

supplied recently by Lewis L. Strauss, a member of the original Atomic

Energy Commission, when he revealed that “the greatest issue of

division” (between himself and other members of the AEC) “was whether or

not to proceed with the hydrogen bomb, as for some time I had strongly

urged to do.” Now, Strauss, who went into the Navy in World War II as a

lieutenant commander and rose to be a rear admiral, is a leading

financier of wide experience, so it may be taken for granted that if for

some time he had “strongly urged” proceeding with the hydrogen bomb, it

must have been because he had been assured by the scientific experts

that it was feasible. Men of his background and experience do not

“strongly urge” the diversion of resources to projects unless they are

strongly convinced that the project is both practical and feasible. His

words, when read in the light of statements by other members of the AEC,

suggest that the division of opinion on this score among the members of

the Commission was not over the feasibility of the H-bomb but over the

belief that the A-bomb was good enough as long as we were its sole

possessors and that we could maintain our advantage for a long time by

building more and better A-bombs.

On the other hand, the fact that the majority of the AEC did not agree

with Strauss on the necessity of proceeding with the hydrogen bomb must

certainly not be interpreted to mean that they halted all studies on the

subject, for that would be charging them with gross negligence. It is

much more reasonable to assume that the “greatest issue of division”

(mark the use of the word “greatest,” which indicates many a heated

debate) was whether or not to proceed at once with the actual building

of the bomb, after it had been fully designed and shown to be feasible

in a host of painstaking studies over a period of at least four years.

There can therefore be no question that as soon as the President issued

his directive to the AEC “to continue” its work on the hydrogen bomb,

the first item on the program was to proceed at once with the production

of tritium in sizable amounts, since all known facts point to the need

of tritium as extra kindling for the A-bomb trigger. We can also be sure

that the production of whatever other auxiliary paraphernalia may be

necessary was at once placed on the top-priority list. By the end of

1950, if not earlier, we should thus have all the necessary materials

ready in the desired amounts. Meantime, we can be sure that our top

scientists have been putting the finishing touches on designs for

assembling the materials—the _finishing_ touches, since there can be no

doubt that the blueprints for a successful H-bomb have been completed

for at least a year and possibly for three or four. It would be

unthinkable that we were so careless as to drop all work on such a vital

matter, which as far back as 1945 appeared to be a definite possibility.

For this we have no less an authority than Dr. Oppenheimer. In an

article in the book _One World or None_, published late in 1945,

discussing atomic weapons of the future, he described bombs “that would

reduce the cost of destruction per square mile probably by a factor of

10 or more,” which, as we now know, would be a bomb of a thousand times

the power that destroyed Hiroshima—namely, a hydrogen bomb. “Preliminary

investigations” of proposals for such a bomb, Dr. Oppenheimer wrote at

that early date, “appeared sound.” If the preliminary investigations

“appeared sound” to scientists such as Dr. Oppenheimer in 1945, and

bearing in mind President Truman’s orders to the AEC in 1950 “to

continue its work,” we can only conclude that the interim years produced

results far beyond the preliminary stage, when they merely “appeared” to

be sound. Judging by the reaction of some leading physicists to the

President’s order, the H-bomb appears to be an ominous reality, a

completed architectural plan requiring only a few polishing touches. In

a word, we are almost ready to go.

And while Dr. Bethe estimated that it would take three years to complete

the first H-bomb, we must remember that he spoke several months before

the guns of Korea gave the alarm. And we must not forget that had it not

been for the threat of the Nazis we might not have had the A-bomb in

less than twenty-five and possibly fifty years, according to the best

estimates, though the present Communist threat might have reduced the

time considerably.

Furthermore, we also have the word of Senator McMahon, who should know,

that “the hydrogen development will be cheaper than its uranium

forerunner.” This lends weight to the earlier deduction that only

relatively small amounts of tritium will be necessary, since, as we have

seen, large amounts would be prohibitively costly in terms of vast

quantities of plutonium. Small amounts of tritium, in turn, mean that it

would take a relatively short time to produce them. A reasonable

“guestimate,” assuming that 150 to 300 grams of tritium would be

required, is that such amounts could be produced within a few months,

particularly if we employ all our huge plutonium plants at Hanford on

the task of producing tritium.

It is therefore within the realm of possibility that when we carry out

the announced tests of the latest models of our A-bombs at Eniwetok,

sometime in the spring or summer of 1951, one of them will be the first

H-bomb. It may not be the best model, and it need not be the equal in

power to a thousand wartime model A-bombs. In fact, it would be highly

inadvisable to use such a bomb in a mere test. It will be an H-bomb,

nevertheless, and from it we shall learn how to make bigger and better

ones, which is all that a test is supposed to do. For unlike the A-bomb,

which cannot be made below or above a certain size, the H-bomb can be

made as small or as large as the designer wants it to be. As Professor

Bacher has pointed out, the H-bomb is “an open-ended weapon.”

One of the major outcomes of the Korean aggression instigated by the

Kremlin has thus been to bring the H-bomb into being much sooner than it

would otherwise have been. And that is only one branch of the chain

reaction that the Korean guns have set in motion.

In addition to unmasking completely the Kremlin’s ultimate intentions to

enslave mankind, and alerting the free nations of the world to the

danger facing them as they had not been alerted since Hitler’s attack on

Poland, the flash of the Korean guns has also shed new light on the

Politburo’s strategy of conquest. The best-informed opinion in the

summer of 1950 holds that the Kremlin has decided on a series of little

wars that would slowly drain our lifeblood and ruin our economy, and

thus bring about the collapse and ruin of the rest of the world’s free

nations, rather than force a global war, German style. Among other

reasons for such a strategy—and there are many logical reasons for it

from Russia’s point of view—is the fact, already become evident in

Korea, that in such little wars, fought with Russian equipment and other

people’s blood, we would not use atomic weapons of any kind, not only

because there are no suitable targets, but because dictates of humanity

make the use of such weapons on little peoples, caught in the net of

Communism, wholly inconceivable. By deciding on a series of little wars,

over a prolonged period, one following the other or coming

simultaneously, Russia may thus figure that she could gain her ultimate

objective in the cheapest possible way, while at the same time making

sure that our atomic-bomb stockpile is wholly neutralized.

If this turns out to be true, we would at least escape atomic warfare,

and since we, and the rest of the civilized world, fervently wish to

avoid being forced to use atomic weapons, this would be all to the good.

But we must also take into consideration the possibility that the very

decision on Russia’s part to wage little wars and avoid a global war may

have been greatly influenced by the fact that we have a large stockpile

of A-bombs while her stockpile is still negligible, forcing her to adopt

a strategy in which our superiority would be nullified. It is also

possible that after her first experience with the production of A-bombs

she may have realized that it would be much too costly to try to catch

up with us and have therefore decided on a strategy in which atomic

weapons could not possibly play any part. On the other hand, it may also

mean that she will not risk a global war until she has built up an

adequate stockpile of her own, meantime softening us up with a series of

little wars.

With all this in mind, it behooves us to take a closer look at our

program for the outlawing of atomic weapons and the placing of atomic

energy under international control. It was a noble ideal, one of the

noblest conceived by man: the most powerful nation in the world

voluntarily offered to give up the right to produce or use the greatest

weapon ever designed. Alas, it almost died at birth, and now, after four

years of nursing in an incubator, the Korean guns have given it a fatal

blow. We might as well face the facts squarely: the majority plan for

the international control of atomic energy, the only acceptable plan

possible, is dead, one of the first casualties of the Korean guns.

We still talk about trying to find ways for compromise between our plan,

accepted by all the nations outside the Iron Curtain, and that of

Russia. We are still talking, at least officially, as though somehow a

compromise can and will be found. The truth of the matter is that the

plan as it stands today is completely out of tune with the times. As we

look on it by the light of the North Korean guns, it becomes clear that

it is wholly visionary, without any relation to the realities.

We still talk as though our original offer still stands. The truth of

the matter is that even were the impossible to happen and Russia were to

say to the world: “We have been mistaken. We accept the American and the

majority plan _in toto_ without any reservations,” we should be forced

to say: “Sorry, it is too late, you have missed your chance. Your

actions have made the plan unworkable, since it cannot possibly work in

an atmosphere of mutual distrust and the constant threat of little

wars!”

And even if wise diplomacy prevented us from saying it in such blunt

language, and though we may still find it expedient to pay lip service

to the majority plan, so that Russia could not use it in her propaganda

war as evidence that we were insincere from the very beginning, we would

have to wriggle to get out of the very serious predicament in which

Russia’s acceptance would place us. And even if diplomacy dictated that

we sign a convention with Russia to outlaw production and use of all

atomic weapons, to destroy our stockpiles and hand over all our atomic

plants to an international atomic authority, as our present plan calls

for, there can be no question that such a convention could never muster

the approval of even a majority of the Senate, and certainly not the

required consent of two thirds of the Senate called for by the

Constitution. What is more, such a rejection would have the overwhelming

approval of American people, once the facts were made clear to them, and

any administration daring to enter such a pact would be overwhelmingly

defeated.

All this has been so evident for more than two years that it is

remarkable that the Russians have failed so far to take advantage of our

potential embarrassment and thus win one of their greatest victories on

the propaganda front. In fact, their failure to do so, with the sure

knowledge that they would risk nothing by accepting a plan that would

most certainly be rejected by our own people, not only reveals lack of

subtlety on their part, but appears on the surface as crass stupidity,

the same type of stupidity displayed by Hitler, which appears to be an

inevitable trait of all monolithic dictatorships that must lead to their

ultimate undoing.

The time has come for us to stop talking about giving away our greatest

weapons, the only ones, as President Truman and Winston Churchill have

told us, that have kept the Red Army hordes from overrunning the free

world. It is time for us to face reality and place the blame where it

belongs. The evil does not lie in weapons per se. It lies in war itself.

It is no evil to build and possess the most powerful weapons at our

command with which to defend ourselves against a ruthless aggressor. On

the contrary, it would be an evil thing to throw away the principal

weapon standing between us and possible defeat. It is no evil to use a

weapon to destroy your enemy just because your weapon happens to be the

most powerful in existence. It is no greater evil to destroy thousands

of your enemy in one great flash than to destroy them by goring them

with bayonets. The real evildoer is the nation that starts an aggressive

war. Those attacked have the right and duty to defend themselves by all

means at their command.

Our confusion has been the result of our first use of the A-bomb to

destroy a city with thousands of its civilian population. Let us admit

that the mass bombing of large populated cities (which, by the way, was

started by the Nazis) is wholly inexcusable with any kind of weapons,

and that we should never resort to such strategic bombing again. That

does not mean that we should renounce our right to use A-bombs to

destroy an enemy’s armies, navies, and airfields, his transportation

facilities and his oil wells—in a word, his capacity to make war against

us. And as long as we use the A-bomb and the H-bomb only as weapons of

tremendous power to destroy by blast and by fire, they are no different

from ordinary blockbusters or incendiaries except that they concentrate

their power in a small package. Is there any difference, morally

speaking, between the use of thousands of blockbusters and tens of

thousands of incendiaries and a weapon that concentrates all their power

in one?

Probably the main reason for the confused thinking that has singled out

atomic weapons as a greater evil than other weapons of mass destruction

has been their radioactivity. But even the A-bombs exploded over Japan

were purposely dropped from a height that carried most of the

radioactivity away into the upper atmosphere. Nor will the H-bomb, as

explained earlier, release great quantities of radioactivity unless it

is purposely rigged to do so. We should, therefore, lose nothing and

gain much if we renounced the use of A- and H-bombs as radioactive

weapons except in retaliation against the use of such weapons on us or

our allies. But to renounce their use altogether would be tantamount not

only to physical but to spiritual suicide as well, for it would mean

condoning the advance of the Red Army.

It has become customary to talk about Russia’s atom bomb as though she

already was, or soon will be, on a par with us. It is true that

eventually she will catch up with us in the development of a large

stockpile of her own and in designing more efficient models. But that is

only one side of the picture. As of 1950, and for at least until 1952,

years that may well be crucial, our superiority in A-bombs will remain

unchallenged, not only qualitatively but quantitatively. By that time we

shall have greatly increased our lead by the possession of an effective

stockpile of H-bombs. Since Russia cannot build H-bombs at the present

stage without sacrificing quantities of plutonium she needs to build up

her A-bomb stockpile, she will find herself compelled to build

additional plutonium plants, which not only will greatly strain her

resources but, more important from our point of view, will gain us

additional time.

How many A-bombs can Russia make? Former Secretary of War Henry L.

Stimson has told us that the A-bombs we dropped on Japan “were the only

ones we had ready.” Counting the test bomb at Alamogordo, we had thus

produced three bombs by mid-August 1945. This represented the total

output of a two-billion-dollar plant, employing three major methods of

production, after the plants had been in operation for an average of

about six months. In other words, it took our two-billion-dollar plant

about six months to produce three A-bombs—a rate of six A-bombs a year.

Now all the evidence at hand, as already pointed out, indicates that,

instead of building three different types of plants for producing A-bomb

materials, Russia is concentrating entirely on plutonium. Hence, if we

assume that she built a plutonium plant equal in output to the total

capacity of our wartime uranium and plutonium plants, and further

assuming that her methods for producing plutonium are as efficient as

ours, the best she could do at present would be at the rate of six

plutonium bombs a year. At this rate she would have about eighteen by

the middle of 1952. This would be a sizable stockpile for a nation in

sole possession of such a weapon. But would any nation with such a

stockpile dare challenge a nation with a stockpile many times bigger,

consisting of bombs many times more powerful, and possessing a few

hydrogen bombs to boot?

Russia will, no doubt, improve her production methods. But to improve

them to the extent of producing, let us say, two bombs per month, she

would have to step up her production by four hundred per cent. It is

doubtful if such a step-up could be achieved in less than three years.

Then there are other factors to be considered that greatly balance the

scales in our favor. To produce plutonium bombs requires tremendous

quantities of uranium, something that cannot be conjured up by just

dialectic materialism. It so happens that we have access to the only two

rich uranium deposits known in the world: the Belgian Congo, and the

Great Bear Lake area in Canada. There were no known rich uranium

deposits in Russia proper or in the territories of her satellites, with

the possible exception of Czechoslovakia. We know this from the fact

that she never competed for the world markets for radium, extracted

economically only from rich uranium ores, which sold before the war at

$25,000 per gram, or at the rate of nearly $12,000,000 a pound. The best

evidence, however, that she does not have at her command rich uranium

deposits either in Russia or elsewhere is her ruthless exploitation, at

the cost of thousands of human lives, of the depleted uranium mines in

the mountains of Saxony, which had long been abandoned by their German

owners. The only other known source of pitchblende (the mineral richest

in uranium) under Russian control is Joachimsthal (Jachymov) in Bohemia,

from which came the first radium sample isolated by Mme Curie about

fifty years ago. This mine, too, has been largely depleted, though much

of its uranium may possibly be recoverable from the dump-heaps, if they

have not in the meantime been disposed of.

Now, every ton of pure uranium metal contains just fourteen pounds of

the fissionable element uranium 235. The latter, when split, releases

the neutrons that create plutonium out of nonfissionable uranium 238. On

the basis of one hundred per cent efficiency, impossible in this

operation, the yield of plutonium would thus be fourteen pounds per ton.

Since the plutonium must be extracted long before all the U-235 atoms

have been split, however, the likelihood is that the yield would be no

more than two to four pounds per ton. Russia would thus need tens of

thousands of tons of uranium ore to build up a sizable stockpile of

A-bombs, and while she may be able to process low-grade ores, it would

take her much longer to produce a given quantity of plutonium than it

takes us to produce it from our much richer ores. For example, an ore

containing fifty per cent uranium would yield a given quantity of

plutonium ten times faster than an ore containing only five per cent,

unless a refining plant ten times the size is built at ten times the

cost of construction and of operation.

If we take Professor Oliphant’s published estimate that the critical

mass (that is, the minimum amount) needed for an A-bomb is between 10

and 30 kilograms (22 and 66 pounds), we get a clear picture of the

enormous difference there is between rich ores and poor ores for the

building up of an A-bomb stockpile, and a further concept of the

difficulties that Russia will face in trying to produce an H-bomb.

According to the best available prewar information, the pitchblende of

the Belgian Congo has a uranium content as high as 60 to 80 per cent;

the Canadian ore yields from 30 to 40 per cent. A conservative estimate

would thus place the average uranium content of Belgian and Canadian

ores at somewhere around 50 per cent. This contrasts sharply with a

prewar figure of around 3 per cent uranium for the pitchblende of

Czechoslovakia, and the ore in the mountains of Saxony is of even lower

grade.

Hence on the basis of two to four pounds of plutonium per ton of uranium

metal, it would require the mining and processing of only 2 tons of

Belgian and Canadian ore to obtain that amount as compared with 34 tons

for the ore from Czechoslovakia, and a larger amount for the Saxon ore.

To make a bomb containing 22 pounds of plutonium would thus require us

to mine and process from 11 to 22 tons of ore, whereas Russia would need

from 187 to 374 tons. For a bomb requiring 66 pounds, the amount, of

course, would be correspondingly tripled, reaching a possible figure of

1,122 tons of ore to produce one A-bomb, as compared with a maximum of

no more than 66 tons of the ores available to us. In a state employing

slave labor and heedless of the wastage of human lives, the production

cost does not count. But even Russia’s manpower is not unlimited, and

workers removed from other lines of production must inevitably hurt the

economy. This factor must put a definite limit to Russia’s capacity to

produce A-bombs and will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for

her to produce a large stockpile in a short time.

When it comes to producing an H-bomb, the disparity between ourselves

and Russia assumes astronomical proportions. It takes 80 pounds of

uranium 235 to produce one pound of tritium. Since, as we have seen,

there are only 14 pounds of U-235 in a ton of natural uranium metal,

this means that 5.7 tons of uranium metal would be required, assuming

one hundred per cent efficiency of utilization, which is out of the

question. On the basis of figures already given, it can be seen that we

would require the mining and processing of only 11.4 tons of ore whereas

Russia would have to use as much as 194 tons to produce that single

pound of the element which, as the facts cited earlier appear to

demonstrate, is vital for the construction of a successful H-bomb.

All these basic facts, never presented before, should convince us that,

despite the fact that Russia has exploded her first A-bomb, we still

have tremendous advantages over her that she will find extremely

difficult to overcome. And we must not forget other advantages on our

side that may prove decisive even after Russia succeeds in building up a

sizable stockpile. Bombs can be delivered against us at present only by

airplane or by submarine. A look at the map will show that whereas the

Atlantic and Pacific Oceans stand between us and Russia’s nearest bases,

we are in a much better position to deliver A-bombs to her vital

centers, such as the oil fields in the Caucasus, for example, from bases

close by. It is, furthermore, not unreasonable to assume that we, as the

most advanced industrial nation in the world, will manage to maintain

our lead not only in methods of delivery by superior and faster

airplanes, or by guided missiles, but also in the development of radar,

sonar, and other detection devices, as well as of superior interceptors

and other defensive measures, which would make delivery of A-bombs

against us much more difficult than it would be for us to deliver them

against Russia.

For the next three years, it can thus be seen, and possibly for a

considerably longer period, the initiative, as far as atomic weapons are

concerned, will remain with us. Let us therefore be done with all

visionary plans for destroying the shield that now protects civilization

as we know it, and proceed to build bigger and better shields, hoping

that by our very act of doing so we can prevent the ultimate cataclysm.

Right now the outlook is not bright, but our strength, physical and

spiritual, should give us faith that the forces of good will prevail in

the end over the forces of evil, as they have always done throughout

history; that the four freedoms will triumph over the Four Horsemen of

the Apocalypse.

V

A PRIMER OF ATOMIC ENERGY

The material universe, the earth and everything in it, all things living

and non-living, the sun and its planets, the stars and the

constellations, the galaxies and the supergalaxies, the infinitely large

and the infinitesimally small, manifests itself to our senses in two

forms, matter and energy. We do not know, and probably never can know,

how the material universe began, and whether, indeed, it ever had a

beginning, but we do know that it is constantly changing and that it did

not always exist in its present form. We also know that in whatever form

the universe may have existed, matter and energy have always been

inseparable, no energy being possible without matter, and no matter

without energy, each being a form of the other.

While we do not know how and when matter and energy came into being, or

whether they ever had a beginning in time as we perceive it, we do know

that while the relative amounts of matter and energy are constantly

changing, the total amount of both, in one form or the other, always

remains the same. When a plant grows, energy from the sun, in the form

of heat and light, is converted into matter, so that the total weight of

the plant is greater than that of the elementary material constituents,

water and carbon-dioxide gas, out of which its substance is built up.

When the substance of the plant is again broken up into its original

constituents by burning, the residual ashes and gases weigh less than

the total weight of the intact plant, the difference corresponding to

the amount of matter that had been converted into energy, liberated once

again in the form of heat and light.

All energy as we know it manifests itself through motion or change in

the physical or chemical state of matter, or both, though these changes

and motions may be so slow as to be imperceptible. As the ancient Greek

philosopher Heraclitus perceived more than two thousand years ago, all

things are in a constant state of flux, this flux being due to an

everlasting conversion of matter into energy and energy into matter,

everywhere over the vast stretches of the material universe, to its

outermost and innermost limits, if any limits there be.

Each manifestation of energy involves either matter in motion or a

change in its physical state, which we designate as physical energy; a

change in the chemical constitution of matter, which we know as chemical

energy; or a combination of the two. Physical energy can be converted

into chemical energy and vice versa. For example, heat and light are

forms of physical energy, each consisting of a definite band of waves of

definite wave lengths in violent, regular, rhythmic oscillations. A

mysterious mechanism in the plant, known as photosynthesis, uses the

heat and light energy from the sun to create complex substances, such as

sugars, starches, and cellulose, out of simpler substances, such as

carbon dioxide and water, converting physical energy, heat, and light

into the chemical energy required to hold together the complex

substances the plant produces. When we burn the cellulose in the form of

wood or coal (coal is petrified wood), the chemical energy is once again

converted into physical energy in the form of the original heat and

light. As we have seen, the chemical energy stored in the plant

manifested itself by an increase in the plant’s weight as compared with

that of its original constituents. Similarly, the release of the energy

manifests itself through a loss in the total weight of the plant’s

substance.

It can thus be seen that neither matter nor energy can be created. All

we can do is to manipulate certain types of matter in a way that

liberates whatever energy had been in existence, in one form or another,

since the beginning of time. All the energy that we had been using on

earth until the advent of the atomic age had originally come from the

sun. Coal, as already said, is a petrified plant that had stored up the

energy of the sun in the form of chemical energy millions of years ago,

before man made his appearance on the earth. Oil comes from organic

matter that also had stored up light and heat from the sun in the form

of chemical energy. Water power and wind power are also made possible by

the sun’s heat, since all water would freeze and no winds would blow

were it not for the sun’s heat energy keeping the waters flowing and the

air moving, the latter by creating differences in the temperature of air

masses.

There are two forms of energy that we take advantage of which are not

due directly to the sun’s radiations—gravitation and magnetism—but the

only way we can utilize these is by employing energy derived from the

sun’s heat. In harnessing Niagara, or in the building of great dams, we

utilize the fall of the water because of gravitation. But as I have

already pointed out, without the sun’s heat water could not flow. To

produce electricity we begin with the chemical energy in coal or oil,

which is first converted into heat energy, then to mechanical energy,

and finally, through the agency of magnetism, into electrical energy.

The radiations of the sun, of the giant stars millions of times larger

than the sun, come from an entirely different source, the greatest

source of energy in the universe, known as atomic or, more correctly,

nuclear energy. But even here the energy comes as the result of the

transformation of matter. The difference between nuclear energy and

chemical energy is twofold. In chemical energy, such as the burning of

coal, the matter lost in the process comes from the outer shell of the

atoms, and the amount of matter lost is so small that it cannot be

weighed directly by any human scale or other device. In nuclear energy,

on the other hand, the matter lost by being transformed into energy

comes from the nucleus, the heavy inner core, of the atom, and the

amount of matter lost is millions of times greater than in coal, great

enough to be weighed.

An atom is the smallest unit of any of the elements of which the

physical universe is constituted. Atoms are so small that if a drop of

water were magnified to the size of the earth the atoms in the drop

would be smaller than oranges.

The structure of atoms is like that of a minuscule solar system, with a

heavy nucleus in the center as the sun, and much smaller bodies

revolving around it as the planets. The nucleus is made up of two types

of particles: protons, carrying a positive charge of electricity, and

neutrons, electrically neutral. The planets revolving about the nucleus

are electrons, units of negative electricity, which have a mass about

one two-thousandth the mass of the proton or the neutron. The number of

protons in the nucleus determines the chemical nature of the element,

and also the number of planetary electrons, each proton being

electrically balanced by an electron in the atom’s outer shells. The

total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus is known as the mass

number, which is very close to the atomic weight of the element but not

quite equal. Protons and neutrons are known under the common name

“nucleons.”

There are two important facts to keep constantly in mind about protons

and neutrons. The first is that the two are interchangeable. A proton,

under certain conditions, loses its positive charge by emitting a

positive electron (positron) and thus becomes a neutron. Similarly, a

neutron, when agitated, emits a negative electron and becomes a proton.

As we shall see, the latter process is taken advantage of in the

transmutation of nonfissionable uranium into plutonium, and of thorium

into fissionable uranium 233. The transmutation of all other elements,

age-old dream of the alchemists, is made possible by the

interchangeability of protons into neutrons, and vice versa.

The second all-important fact about protons and neutrons, basic to the

understanding of atomic energy, is that each proton and neutron in the

nuclei of the elements weighs less than it does in the free state, the

loss of weight being equal to the energy binding the nucleons. This loss

becomes progressively greater for the elements in the first half of the

periodic table, reaching its maximum in the nucleus of silver, element

47. After that the loss gets progressively smaller. Hence, if we were to

combine (fuse) two elements in the first half of the periodic table, the

protons and the neutrons would lose weight if the newly formed nucleus

is not heavier than that of silver, but would gain weight if the new

nucleus thus formed is heavier than silver. The opposite is true with

the elements in the second half of the periodic table, the protons and

neutrons losing weight when a heavy element is split into two lighter

ones, and gaining weight if two elements are fused into one.

Since each loss of mass manifests itself by the release of energy, it

can be seen that to obtain energy from the atom’s nucleus requires

either the fusion of two elements in the first half of the periodic

table or the fission of an element in the second half. From a practical

point of view, however, fusion is possible only with two isotopes

(twins) of hydrogen, at the beginning of the periodic table, while

fission is possible only with twins of uranium, U-233 and U-235, and

with plutonium, at the lower end of the table.

The diameter of the atom is 100,000 times greater than the diameter of

the nucleus. This means that the atom is mostly empty space, the volume

of the atom being 500,000 billion times the volume of the nucleus. It

can thus be seen that most of the matter in the universe is concentrated

in the nuclei of the atoms. The density of matter in the nucleus is such

that a dime would weigh 600 million tons if its atoms were as tightly

packed as are the protons and neutrons in the nucleus.

The atoms of the elements (of which there are ninety-two in nature, and

six more man-made elements) have twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc.,

known as isotopes. The nuclei of these twins all contain the same number

of protons and hence all have the same chemical properties. They differ,

however, in the number of neutrons in their nuclei and hence have

different atomic weights. For example, an ordinary hydrogen atom has a

nucleus of one proton. The isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, has one

proton plus one neutron in its nucleus. It is thus twice as heavy as

ordinary hydrogen. The second hydrogen isotope, tritium, has one proton

and two neutrons in its nucleus and hence an atomic mass of three. On

the other hand, a nucleus containing two protons and one neutron is no

longer hydrogen but helium, also of atomic mass three.

There are hundreds of isotopes, some occurring in nature, others

produced artificially by shooting atomic bullets, such as neutrons, into

the nuclei of the atoms of various elements. A natural isotope of

uranium, the ninety-second and last of the natural elements, contains 92

protons and 143 neutrons in its nucleus, hence its name U-235, one of

the two atomic-bomb elements. The most common isotope of uranium has 92

protons and 146 neutrons in its nucleus and hence is known as U-238. It

is 140 times more plentiful than U-235, but cannot be used for the

release of atomic energy.

Atomic, or rather nuclear, energy is the cosmic force that binds

together the protons and the neutrons in the nucleus. It is a force

millions of times greater than the electrical repulsion force existing

in the nucleus because of the fact that the protons all have like

charges. This force, known as the coulomb force, is tremendous, varying

inversely as the square of the distance separating the positively

charged particles. Professor Frederick Soddy, the noted English

physicist, has figured out that two grams (less than the weight of a

dime) of protons placed at the opposite poles of the earth would repel

each other with a force of twenty-six tons. Yet the nuclear force is

millions of times greater than the coulomb force. This force acts as the

cosmic cement that holds the material universe together and is

responsible for the great density of matter in the nucleus.

We as yet know very little about the basic nature of this force, but we

can measure its magnitude by a famous mathematical equation originally

presented by Dr. Einstein in his special theory of relativity in 1905.

This formula, one of the great intellectual achievements of man,

together with the discovery of the radioactive elements by Henri

Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie, provided the original clues as

well as the key to the discovery and the harnessing of nuclear energy.

Einstein’s formula, E = mc², revealed that matter and energy are two

different manifestations of one and the same cosmic entity, instead of

being two different entities, as had been generally believed. It led to

the revolutionary concept that matter, instead of being immutable, was

energy in a frozen state, while, conversely, energy was matter in a

fluid state. The equation revealed that any one gram of matter was the

equivalent in ergs (small units of energy) to the square of the velocity

of light in centimeters per second—namely, 900 billion billion ergs. In

more familiar terms, this means that one gram of matter represents

25,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy in the frozen state. This equals the

energy liberated in the burning of three billion grams (three thousand

tons) of coal.

The liberation of energy in any form, chemical, electrical, or nuclear,

involves the loss of an equivalent amount of mass, in accordance with

the Einstein formula. When 3,000 metric tons of coal are burned to

ashes, the residual ashes and the gaseous products weigh one gram less

than 3,000 tons; that is, one three-billionth part of the original mass

will have been converted into energy. The same is true with the

liberation of nuclear energy by the splitting or fusing (as will be

explained later) of the nuclei of certain elements. The difference is

merely that of magnitude. In the liberation of chemical energy by the

burning of coal, the energy comes from a very small loss of mass

resulting from the rearrangement of electrons on the surface of the

atoms. The nucleus of the coal atoms is not involved in any way,

remaining exactly the same as before. The amount of mass lost by the

surface electrons is one thirtieth of one millionth of one per cent.

On the other hand, nuclear energy involves vital changes in the atomic

nucleus itself, with a consequent loss of as high as one tenth to nearly

eight tenths of one per cent in the original mass of the nuclei. This

means that from one to nearly eight grams per thousand grams are

liberated in the form of energy, as compared with only one gram in three

billion grams liberated in the burning of coal. In other words, the

amount of nuclear energy liberated in the transmutation of atomic nuclei

is from 3,000,000 to 24,000,000 times as great as the chemical energy

released by the burning of an equal amount of coal. In terms of TNT the

figure is seven times greater than for coal, as the energy from TNT,

while liberated at an explosive rate, is about one seventh the total

energy content for an equivalent amount of coal. This means that the

nuclear energy from one kilogram of uranium 235, or plutonium, when

released at an explosive rate, is equal to the explosion of twenty

thousand tons of TNT.

Nuclear energy can be utilized by two diametrically opposed methods. One

is fission—the splitting of the nuclei of the heaviest chemical elements

into two uneven fragments consisting of nuclei of two lighter elements.

The other is fusion—combining, or fusing, two nuclei of the lightest

elements into one nucleus of a heavier element. In both methods the

resulting elements are lighter than the original nuclei. The loss of

mass in each case manifests itself in the release of enormous amounts of

nuclear energy.

When two light atoms are combined to form a heavier atom, the weight of

the heavier is less than the total weight of the two light atoms. If the

heavier atom could again be split into the two lighter ones, the latter

would resume their original weight. As explained before, however, this

is true only with the light elements, such as hydrogen, deuterium, and

tritium, in the first half of the periodic table of the elements. The

opposite is true with the heavier elements of the second half of the

periodic table. For example, if krypton and barium, elements 36 and 56,

were to be combined to form uranium, element 92, the protons and the

neutrons in the uranium nucleus would each weigh about 0.1 per cent more

than they weighed in the krypton and barium nuclei. It can thus be seen

that energy could be gained either through the loss of mass resulting

from the fusion of two light elements, or from the similar loss of mass

resulting from the fission of one heavy atom into two lighter ones.

In the fusion of two lighter atoms, the addition of one and one yields

less than two, and yet half of two will be more than one. In the case of

the heavy elements the addition of one and one yields more than two, yet

half of two makes less than one. This is the seeming paradox of atomic

energy.

Three elements are known to be fissionable. Only one of these is found

in nature: the uranium isotope 235 (U-235). The other two are man-made.

One is plutonium, transmuted by means of neutrons from the

nonfissionable U-238, by the addition of one neutron to the 146 present

in the nucleus, which leads to the conversion of two of the 147 neutrons

into protons, thus creating an element with a nucleus of 94 protons and

145 neutrons. The second man-made element (not yet in wide use, as far

as is known) is uranium isotope 233 (92 protons and 141 neutrons),

created out of the element thorium (90 protons, 142 neutrons) by the

same method used in the production of plutonium.

When the nucleus of any one of these elements is fissioned, each proton

and neutron in the two resulting fragments weighs one tenth of one per

cent less than it weighed in the original nucleus. For example, if U-235

atoms totaling 1,000 grams in weight are split, the total weight of the

fragments will be 999 grams. The one missing gram is liberated in the

form of 25,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, equivalent in explosive

terms to 20,000 tons of TNT. But the original number of protons and

neutrons in the 1,000 grams does not change.

The fission process, the equivalent of the “burning” of nuclear fuels,

is maintained by what is known as a chain reaction. The bullets used for

splitting are neutrons, which, because they do not have an electric

charge, can penetrate the heavily fortified electrical wall surrounding

the positively charged nuclei. Just as a coal fire needs oxygen to keep

it going, a nuclear fire needs the neutrons to maintain it.

Neutrons do not exist free in nature, all being tightly locked up within

the nuclei of atoms. They are liberated, however, from the nuclei of the

three fissionable elements by a self-multiplication process in the chain

reaction. The process begins when a cosmic ray from outer space, or a

stray neutron, strikes one nucleus and splits it. The first atom thus

split releases an average of two neutrons, which split two more nuclei,

which in turn liberate four more neutrons, and so on. The reaction is so

fast that in a short time trillions of neutrons are thus liberated to

split trillions of nuclei. As each nucleus is split, it loses mass,

which is converted into great energy.

There are two types of chain reactions: controlled and uncontrolled.

The controlled reaction is analogous to the burning of gasoline in an

automobile engine. The atom-splitting bullets—the neutrons—are first

slowed down from speeds of more than ten thousand miles per second to

less than one mile per second by being made to pass through a

moderator before they reach the atoms at which they are aimed.

Neutron-“killers”—materials absorbing neutrons in great numbers—keep

the neutrons liberated at any given time under complete control in a

slow but steady nuclear fire.

The uncontrolled chain reaction is one in which there is no

moderator—and no neutron-absorbers. It is analogous to the dropping of a

match in a gasoline tank. In the uncontrolled chain reaction the fast

neutrons, with nothing to slow them down or to devour them, build up by

the trillion and quadrillion in a fraction of a millionth of a second.

This leads to the splitting of a corresponding number of atoms,

resulting in the release of unbelievable quantities of nuclear energy at

a tremendously explosive rate. One kilogram of atoms split releases

energy equivalent to that of 20,000,000 kilograms (20,000 metric tons)

of TNT.

It is the uncontrolled reaction that is employed in the explosion of the

atomic bomb. The controlled reaction is expected to be used in the

production of vast quantities of industrial power. It is now being

employed in the creation of radioactive isotopes, for use in medicine

and as the most powerful research tool since the invention of the

microscope for probing into the mysteries of nature, living and

non-living.

In the controlled reaction the material used is natural uranium, which

consists of a mixture of 99.3 per cent U-238 and 0.7 of the fissionable

U-235. The neutrons from the U-235 are made to enter the nuclei of U-238

and convert them to the fissionable element plutonium, for use in atomic

bombs. The large quantities of energy liberated by the split U-235

nuclei in the form of heat is at too low a temperature for efficient

utilization as power, and is at present wasted. To be used for power,

nuclear reactors capable of operating at high temperatures are now being

designed.

In the atomic bomb only pure U-235, or plutonium, is used.

In both the controlled and the uncontrolled reactions a minimum amount

of material, known as the “critical mass,” must be used, as otherwise

too many neutrons would escape and the nuclear fire would thus be

extinguished, as would an ordinary fire for lack of oxygen. In the

atomic bomb two masses, each less than a critical mass, which together

equal or exceed it, are brought in contact at a predetermined instant.

The uncontrolled reaction then comes automatically, since, in the

absence of any control, the neutrons, which cannot escape to the

outside, build up at an unbelievable rate.

Whereas the fission process for the release of nuclear energy entails

making little ones out of big ones, the fusion process involves making

big ones out of little ones. In both processes the products weigh less

than the original materials, the loss of mass coming out in the form of

energy. According to the generally accepted hypothesis, the fusion

process is the one operating in the sun and the stars of the same

family. The radiant energy given off by them, it is believed, is the

result of the fusion of four hydrogen atoms into one atom of helium, two

of the protons losing their positive charge, thus becoming neutrons.

Since a helium atom weighs nearly eight tenths of one per cent less than

the total weight of the four hydrogen atoms, the loss of mass is thus

nearly eight times that produced by fission, with a corresponding

eightfold increase in the amount of energy liberated. This process,

using light hydrogen, is not feasible on earth.

The nuclei of all atoms are thus vast storage depots of cosmic energy.

We must think of them as cosmic safe-deposit vaults, in which the

Creator of the universe, if you will, deposited at the time of creation

most of the energy in the universe for safekeeping. The sun and the

other giant stars that give light have, as it were, drawing accounts in

this “First National Bank and Trust Company of the Universe,” whereas we

on this little planet of ours in the cosmic hinterland are much too poor

to have such a bank account. So we have been forced all these years we

have been on earth to subsist on small handouts from our close neighbor

the sun, which squanders millions all over space, but can spare us only

nickels, dimes, and quarters (depending on the seasons of the year) for

a cup of coffee and a sandwich. We are thus in the true sense of the

word cosmic beggars, living off the bounty of a distant relative.

The discovery of fission in 1939 meant that after a million years of

exclusive dependence on the sun we had suddenly managed to open a modest

drawing account of our own in this bank of the cosmos. We were enabled

to do it by stumbling upon two special master keys to five of the cosmic

vaults. One of these keys we call fission; the other, which allows us

entry into a much richer chamber of the vault, we call fusion. We can

get a lot of the stored-up cosmic treasure by using the key to the

fission vaults alone, but, as with our terrestrial bank vaults, which

generally require two keys before they can be opened, it is not possible

to use the key to the fusion vault unless we first use the fission key.

Except for the payment of our heat and light bill, the sun gives us

nothing directly in cash. Instead it deposits a very small pittance in

the plants, which serve as its major terrestrial banks. The animals then

rob the plants and we rob them both. When we eat the food we live by we

thus actually eat sunshine.

The sun makes its deposits in the plant through an agent named

chlorophyll, the stuff that makes the grass green. Chlorophyll has the

uncanny ability to catch sunbeams and to hand them over to the plant. A

chemical supergenius inside the plant changes the sunlight energy into

chemical energy, just as a bank teller changes bills into silver. With

this chemical energy at their disposal, a great number of devilishly

clever chemists in the plants’ chemical factory go to work building up

many substances to serve as vaults in which to store up a large part of

the energy, using only part of it for their own subsistence.

The building materials used by these chemists inside the plants consist

mainly of carbon-dioxide gas from the atmosphere, and water from the

soil, plus small amounts of minerals either supplied by the good earth

or by fertilizers. Carbon dioxide, by the way, composed of one atom of

carbon and two atoms of oxygen, is the stuff you exhale. In solid form

it is what we know as dry ice, used in efforts to make rain. It is

present in the atmosphere in large amounts.

Out of the carbon dioxide and water the chemists in the plants build

cellulose, starch, sugar, fat, proteins, vitamins, and scores of other

substances, all of which serve as vaults for the sun’s rays caught by

the chlorophyll. The biggest vaults of all, storing most of the energy,

are the cellulose, sugars and starches, fats and proteins. There the

stored energy remains until it is released by processes we call burning

or digestion, both of which, as we shall see, are different terms for

the same chemical reaction. When we burn wood, or the petrified ancient

wood we know as coal, we burn largely the cellulose, the chief component

of the solid part of plants. When we eat the plants, or the animals in

whom the plant tissues are transformed into flesh by the solar energy

stored within them, it is the sugars, starches, fats, and proteins that

give us the energy we live by.

In the process of burning wood or coal the large cellulose vaults,

composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up, thus allowing

the original solar energy, stored up within them as chemical energy, to

escape in the form of heat and light. This is the same heat and light

deposited there by the sun many years before—in the case of coal, some

two hundred million years back. The process of burning thus transforms

the chemical energy in the plants back to its original form of light and

radiant heat energy. The complex carbon and hydrogen units in the

cellulose are broken up, each freed carbon atom uniting within two

oxygen atoms in the air to form carbon dioxide again, while two hydrogen

atoms unite with one of oxygen to form water. Thus we see that the

cellulose vaults are broken up once more into the original building

bricks out of which the chemists in the plants had fashioned them.

When we eat plant or animal food to get the energy to live by, exactly

the same process takes place except at a lower temperature. The sunlight

deposit vaults of sugar, starch, and fat, also composed, like cellulose,

of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up by the digestive system

into their component parts, thus allowing the original solar energy

stored within them to get free in the form of chemical energy, which our

body uses in its essential processes. Here, too, the end products are

carbon dioxide, which we exhale, and water. About half the energy we

thus obtain is used by us for the work we do. The other half is used by

the body for building up the tissues burned up as part of the regular

wear and tear of life.

We thus burn food for our internal energy as we burn cellulose for our

external energy. The interesting thing here is that, in both types of

burning, fission as well as fusion processes take place. The fission is

the splitting of the cellulose, sugar, fats, starches, and proteins into

carbon and hydrogen atoms. The fusion part is the union of the carbon

and the hydrogen with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and water. The

fusion part is just as necessary to release the stored-up solar energy

in the wood or coal as is the fission part, for, as everyone knows,

unless there is oxygen for the carbon to fuse with, no combustion

(burning) can take place and hence no release of energy. The plant

vaults would remain closed absolutely tight.

At this point two things become clear. We see, in the first place, that

whenever we get any kind of energy in any form we do not in any way

create any of it. All we do is merely draw on something that is already

stored up; in the case of coal and wood by the sun, in the case of

uranium and hydrogen by the same power that created the sun and all

energy. We draw water from the spring, but we do not make the water. On

the other hand, we cannot draw the water unless we first find the

spring, and even then we cannot draw it unless we have a pitcher.

And we also see, in the second place, that fission and fusion are common

everyday phenomena that occur any time you burn anything. Both are

essential whenever energy is released, whether it is the chemical energy

from coal or the atomic energy from the nuclei of uranium, deuterium, or

tritium. When you light a cigarette you employ both fission and fusion

or you don’t smoke. The first fission and fusion take place in the

lighting of the match, the cellulose in the match (whether it is wood or

paper) being fissioned (that is, split into its component atoms of

carbon and hydrogen). These atoms are then fusioned with the oxygen in

the air. The same thing happens when the tobacco catches fire. In each

case the fusion with the oxygen makes possible the fission of the

cellulose. When we burn U-235, or plutonium, we again get both fission

and fusion, except that, instead of oxygen, the nuclei of these elements

first fuse with a neutron before they are split apart. Thus we see that

the process of burning U-235, or plutonium, requires not only fission

but fusion as well, without which they could not burn. This is true also

in hydrogen fusion. When you burn deuterium by fusing two deuterons

(nuclei of deuterium) to form helium of atomic weight three, plus a

neutron, one of the two deuterons is split in half in the process.

Similarly, when you burn tritium by fusion two tritons (nuclei of

tritium), one of the tritons splits into two neutrons and a proton, the

one proton joining the other triton to form helium of atomic weight

four.

Thus we see that fission and fusion are the cosmic firebrands that are

always present whenever a fire is lighted, chemical or atomic, whether

the fuel is wood, coal, or oil, or uranium, plutonium, deuterium, or

tritium. Both, with some variations, are essential for opening the

cosmic safe where the energy of the universe is kept in storage. The

only reason you get much more energy in the fission and fusion of atomic

nuclei is that so much more had been stored in them than in the

cellulose vaults on this planet.

The same reason that limits our ability to obtain stored chemical energy

to a few fuels also limits our ability to obtain atomic energy. Coal,

oil, and wood are the only dividend-paying chemical-energy stocks.

Similarly only five elements, uranium 233 and 235, plutonium, deuterium,

and tritium are the only dividend-paying atomic-energy stocks, and of

these only two (U-235 and deuterium) exist in nature. The other three

are re-created from other elements by modern alchemical legerdemain.

What is more, we know for a certainty that it will never be possible to

obtain atomic energy from any other element, by either fission or

fusion.

This should put to rest once and for all the notion of many, including

some self-styled scientists, that the explosion of a hydrogen bomb would

set the hydrogen in the waters, and the oxygen and the nitrogen in the

air, on fire and thus blow up the earth. The energy in common hydrogen

is locked up in one of those cosmic vaults which only the sun and the

stars that shine can open and which no number of H-bombs could blow

apart. Oxygen and nitrogen are locked even for the sun. As for the

deuterium in the water, it cannot catch fire unless it is highly

concentrated, condensed to its liquid form, and heated to a temperature

of several hundred million degrees. Hence all this talk about blowing up

the earth is pure moonshine.

But while we know that we have reached the limit of what can be achieved

either by fission or by fusion, that by no means justifies the

conclusion that we have reached the ultimate in discovery and that

fission and fusion are the only possible methods for tapping the energy

locked up in matter. We must remember that fifty years ago we did not

even suspect that nuclear energy existed and that until 1939 no one,

including Dr. Einstein, believed that it would ever become possible to

use it on a practical scale. We simply stumbled upon the phenomenon of

fission, which in its turn opened the way to fusion.

If science tells us anything at all, it tells us that nature is infinite

and that the human mind, driven by insatiable curiosity and probing ever

deeper into nature’s mysteries, will inevitably find ever greater

treasures, treasures that are at present beyond the utmost stretches of

the imagination—as far beyond fission and fusion as these are beyond

man’s first discovery of how to make a fire by striking a spark with a

laboriously made flint. The day may yet come, and past history makes it

practically certain that it will come, when man will look upon the

discovery of fission and fusion as we look today upon the crudest tools

made by primitive man.

A great measure of man’s progress has been the result of serendipity,

the faculty of making discoveries, by chance or sagacity, of things not

sought for. Many an adventure has led man to stumble upon something much

better than he originally set out to find. Like Columbus, many an

explorer into the realms of the unknown has set his sights on a shorter

route to the spices of India only to stumble upon a new continent.

Unlike Columbus, however, the explorers in the field of science, instead

of being confined to this tiny little earth of ours, have the whole

infinite universe as the domain of their adventures, and many a virgin

continent, richer by far than any yet discovered, still awaits its

Columbus.

Roentgen and Becquerel were exploring what they thought was an untrodden

path in the forest and came upon a new road that led their successors to

the very citadel of the material universe. Young Enrico Fermi was

curious to find out what would happen if he fired a neutron into the

nucleus of uranium, hoping only to create a heavier isotope of uranium,

or at best a new element. His rather modest goal led five years later to

the fission of uranium, and in another six years to the atomic bomb.

Yet, as we have seen, in both fission and fusion only a very small

fraction of the mass of the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of the

elements used is liberated in the form of energy, while 99.3 to 99.9 per

cent of their substance remains in the form of matter. We know of no

process in nature which converts 100 per cent of the matter in protons

and neutrons into energy, but scientists are already talking about

finding means for bringing about such a conversion. They are seeking

clues for such a process in the mysterious cosmic rays that bombard the

earth from outer space with energies billions of times greater than

those released by fission or fusion, great enough to smash atoms of

oxygen or nitrogen, or whatever other atoms they happen to hit in the

upper atmosphere, into their component protons and neutrons. Luckily,

their number is small and most of their energy is spent long before they

reach sea level.

But we have already learned how to create secondary cosmic-ray particles

of relatively low energies (350,000,000 electron-volts) with our giant

cyclotrons. The creation of these particles, known as mesons, which are

believed to be the cosmic cement responsible for the nuclear forces,

represents the actual conversion of energy into matter. This is the

exact reverse of the process taking place in fission and fusion, in

which, as we have seen, matter is converted into energy. And we are now

about to complete multibillion-volt atom-smashers that will hurl atomic

bullets of energies of from three to ten billion volts at the nuclei of

atoms. With these gigantic machines, known as the cosmotron (at the

Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission) and the

bevatron (at the University of California), we shall be able to smash

nuclei into their individual component protons and neutrons and thus get

a much more intimate glimpse of the forces that hold the nuclei

together. What is more, instead of creating only mesons, particles with

only 300 electron masses, we shall be able for the first time to convert

energy into protons and neutrons, duplicating, as far as is known, an

act of creation that has not taken place since the beginning of the

universe. Man at last will be creating the very building blocks out of

which the universe is made, as well as the cosmic cement that holds them

together.

What new continents will our first glimpse into the mechanism of the

very act of creation of matter out of energy reveal? What new secrets

will be uncovered before the dazzled eyes and mind of man when he takes

the nucleus of the atom completely apart at last? Not even Einstein

could tell us. But, as Omar Khayyám divined, “a single Alif” may provide

“the clue” that, could we but find it, leads “to the Treasure-House, and

peradventure to the Master too.” The fact is that we already have opened

the door to the anteroom of the treasure-house, and we are about to

unlock the door to one of its inner chambers. What shall we find there?

No one as yet knows. But we do know that every door man has opened so

far has led to riches beyond his wildest dreams, each new door bringing

greater rewards than the one before. On the other hand, we also know

that the treasure-house has many mansions, and that no matter how many

chambers he may enter, he will always find new doors to unlock. For we

have learned that the solution of any one secret always opens up a

thousand new mysteries.

We also have learned, to our sorrow, that any new insight gained into

nature’s laws and forces can be used for great good and for equally

great evil. The greater the insight, the greater the potentialities for

good or evil. The new knowledge he is about to gain by his deeper

insight into the heart of matter, and by his ability to create it out of

energy, may offer man the means to make himself complete master of the

world he lives in. It is equally true, alas, that he could use it to

destroy that world even more thoroughly than with the hydrogen bomb.

As already stated, scientists are even now discussing the possibility of

finding means for the complete annihilation of matter by the conversion

of the entire mass of protons and neutrons into energy, instead of only

0.1 to 0.7 per cent. And while the total annihilation of protons and

neutrons still seems highly speculative, we already know that such a

process actually does take place in the realm of the electron. This is

the phenomenon already achieved numerous times on a small scale in the

laboratory, in which a positive electron (positron) and an electron with

a negative charge completely destroy each other, their entire mass being

converted into energy. Luckily, this is at present only a laboratory

experiment, in which each positron must be individually produced, since

there are hardly any positive electrons in our part of the universe. But

suppose the new knowledge we are about to pry loose from the inner

citadel of matter reveals to us a new process, at present not even

suspected, that would release positrons in large numbers, just as the

fission and fusion processes made possible for the first time the

liberation of large quantities of neutrons. Such an eventuality, by no

means beyond the realm of the possible, would open potentialities of

horror alongside which those of the H-bomb, even the rigged one, would

be puny. For any process that would release large numbers of positrons

in the atmosphere, in a chain reaction similar to the one now liberating

neutrons, may envelop the earth in one deadly flash of radioactive

lightning that would instantly kill all sensate things. And although

this is admittedly purely speculative, no one dare say that such a

discovery will not be made, not when one remembers how remote and

unlikely a process such as fission seemed to be just before it was made.

Though many of the great discoveries came about as the result of chance,

they came because, as Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.”

Actually they came largely through the intellectual synthesis of what

had originally appeared as unrelated phenomena or concepts. When Faraday

discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, he established

for the first time that electricity and magnetism, looked upon since

prehistoric times as two separate and distinct phenomena, were actually

only two aspects of one basic natural force, which we know today as

electromagnetism. This great intellectual synthesis led directly to the

age of electricity and all its wonders. About thirty years later the

great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that

electromagnetic action traveled through space in the form of transverse

waves similar to those of light and having the same velocity. This

revealed the existence in nature of electromagnetic waves, better known

to us today as radio waves. About a quarter century later the great

German-Jewish physicist Heinrich Hertz not only produced these

electromagnetic waves but showed that they are propagated just as waves

of light are, possessing all other properties of light, such as

reflection, refraction, and polarization. This led directly to wireless

telegraphy and telephony, radio and television, radiophotography and

radar.

When Einstein, in his special theory of relativity of 1905, united

matter and energy in one basic cosmic entity, the road was opened to the

atomic age. Yet Einstein was never satisfied and has devoted more than

forty-five years of his life to the search for a greater, all-embracing

unity underlying the great diversity of natural phenomena. In his

general theory of relativity of 1915 he formulated a concept that

encompasses the universal law of gravitation in his earlier synthesis of

space and time, of which matter and energy were an integral part. This

synthesis, wrote Bertrand Russell in 1924, “is probably the greatest

synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time. It

sums up the mathematical and physical labors of more than two thousand

years. Pure geometry from Pythagoras to Riemann, the dynamics and

astronomy of Galileo and Newton, the theory of electromagnetism as it

resulted from the researches of Faraday, Maxwell, and their successors,

all are absorbed, with the necessary modifications, in the theories of

Einstein, Weyl, and Eddington.

“So comprehensive a synthesis,” he continued, “might have represented a

dead end, leading to no further progress for a long time. Fortunately,

at this moment quantum theory [the theory applying to the forces within

the atom] has appeared, with a new set of facts outside the scope of

relativity physics [which applies to the forces governing the cosmos at

large]. This has saved us, in the nick of time, from the danger of

supposing that we know everything.”

Yet Einstein, working away in majestic solitude, has been trying all

these years to construct a vast intellectual edifice that would embrace

all the laws of the cosmos known so far, including the quantum, in one

fundamental concept, which he designates as a “unified field theory.”

Early in 1950 he published the results of his arduous labors since 1915.

This he regards as the crowning achievement of his life’s work, a

unified theory that bridges the vast gulf that had existed between

relativity and quantum, between the infinite universe of the stars and

galaxies and the equally infinite universe within the nucleus of the

atom. If he is right, and he has always been right before, his latest

contribution will prove to be a greater synthetic achievement of the

human intellect than ever before, embracing space and time, matter and

energy, gravitation and electromagnetism, as well as the nuclear forces

within the atom, in one all-encompassing concept. In due time this

concept should lead to new revelations of nature’s mysteries, and to

triumphs even greater than those which followed as a direct consequence

of all earlier intellectual syntheses.

If the synthesis of matter and energy led to the atomic age, what may we

expect of the latest, all-inclusive synthesis? When Einstein was asked

about it he replied: “Come back in twenty years!” which happens to

coincide with the end of the hundred-year period recorded by the

brothers Goncourt: God swinging a bunch of keys, and saying to humanity:

“Closing time, gentlemen!”

The search for new intellectual syntheses goes on, and no doubt new

relationships between the diverse phenomena of nature will be found,

regardless of whether Einstein’s latest theory stands or falls in the

light of further discovery. Physicists, for example, are speculating

about a fundamental relationship between time and the electronic charge,

one of the most basic units of nature, and there are those who believe

that this relationship will turn out to be much more fundamental than

that between matter and energy. Should this be found to be true, then

the discovery of the relationship between time and charge may lead to

finding a way for starting a self-multiplying positron-electron chain

reaction, just as the relationship between matter and energy led

inevitably to the self-multiplying chain reaction with neutrons. If this

comes about, then closing time will come much closer.

Yet the sound of the swinging keys need not necessarily mean closing

time for man at the twilight of his day on this planet. It could also

mean the opening of gates at a new dawn, to a new earth—and a new

heaven.