Atomic Science, Bombs, and Power

Gili, BuenosAires(1952), l97-2l3(Bombas atomic as y explosiones de fision nuclear) I0)D.Dietz, "Atomic Science, Bombs and Power," Dodd, Mead Co, NY(1954) 11)... 

David Dietz, T4ore Than Doom for Japs in Atomic Explosion," El Paso Herald Posf August 7,1945,1. Dietz, Atomic Energy in tfie ComingEra (New York Dodd, Mead, 1945). It was also published in a pocketbook Armed Services edition. David Dietz, Atomic Science, Bombs, and Power (New York Dodd, Mead, 1954). 

Atomic Science, Bombs, and Power. New York Dodd, Mead, 1954. 

Mysteries such as this attract young people to science. Nuclear physics, however, tends to turn people off Nuclear power plant malfunctions and atomic bombs are frightening. Nevertheless, humankind has greatly benefited from scientific investigations of the nucleus. Science s hard-won knowledge of the atomic nucleus is used extensively in medicine, from imaging procedures such as positron emission tomography (PET) to radiation therapy, which has saved the lives of many cancer patients. 

The successful utilization of atomic energy is unquestionably one of the outstanding accomplishments in the history of the physical sciences. The use of the first atomic bomb marked the beginning of a new era, and no one could then foresee the impact of atomic power on the future progress of civilization. 

Pauling joined a discussion group of concerned professors and students in Pasadena and was among the first to understand that the new bomb also meant a changed role for scientists. The problem presented to the world by the destructive power of atomic energy overshadows, of course, any other problem, he wrote a fellow researcher less than two months after Hiroshima. I feel that, in addition to our professional activities in the nuclear field, we should make our voices known with respect to the political significance of science. ... 

The discoveiy of radiation has had many impacts on our society. It ultimately led to the Manhattan Project, the construction and detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945. For the first time, in a veiy tangible way, society could see the effects of the power that science had given to it (8.5, 8.6). Yet science itself did not drop the bomb on Japan, it was the people of the United States who did that, and the question remains-how do we use the power that technology can give Since then, our society has struggled with the ethical implications of certain scientific discoveries. For the past decade, nuclear weapons have been disarmed at the rate of 2000 bombs per year. Today, we live in an age when the threat of nuclear annihilation is less severe. 

The British author and historian H.G. Wells is best known for his science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds, in which human civilization must respond to hostile Martian invaders, but in 1914 (fells published another, lesser-known novel in which he prophesized terrible events. In his book The World Set Free, Wells foretold eruption of worldwide warfare. Moreover, aerial combat was employed in the war, and so was the use of atomic bombs. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing, Wells wrote. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing. There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape. Every sort of passive defence, armour, fortifications, and so forth, was being outmastered by this tremendous increase on the destructive side. ... 

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