In May of 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer became the director of what would become the Los Alamos group, that part of the Manhattan project that would design the first atomic bomb. He called for an initial conference at Berkeley, where he was a physics professor. By this time, physicists could draw upon considerable theoretical and experimental work, and so it was that Edward Teller was able not only to speculate upon but to actually calculate the heat which would be generated by uncontrolled nuclear fission, i.e., an atomic bomb. His results suggested that the heat would be great enough to overcome what is called the Coulomb barrier, the intense electrical forces which protect an atom’s nucleus.
We need not get overly technical here; the key elements are somewhat straightforward. As temperature rises particles move faster and faster, slamming into one another more and more violently until it is possible for them to break through the resistance they ordinarily present to one another. Now instead of bouncing off of one another, they penetrate into one another which brings about a basic transformation.
If the atoms are sufficiently large, when they absorb a particle they become unstable. The nucleus rips itself into pieces and there is a violent outpouring of energy. But with the very smallest atoms, such as hydrogen, absorbing an incoming particle can yield a new nucleus which is so stable that it, too, releases vast amounts of energy. This process is the source of the energies of the stars, and incredibly enough it was just such thermonuclear fusion which Teller saw taking place in the wake of an atomic bomb. The explosion of the bomb, his calculations showed, would yield so great a quantity of heat that the hydrogen atoms of the atmosphere would undergo fusion. The atmosphere itself would explode. A virtually instantaneous ripple would shudder across the earth as the atmosphere became one giant hydrogen bomb.
This was not idle speculation. It was not the expansive imagination of science fiction. It was the well-formed result of modern physics. It was what we knew, not what we imagined, and its impact upon that Berkeley conference was sudden and complete. Oppenheimer stood, closed the meeting, gathered his papers and left California for Chicago. Not trusting the security of telephone lines, he went by train to meet with Arthur Compton, the head of the entire Manhattan project. Finding that Compton was on holiday, Oppenheimer proceeded to a remote part of northern Michigan. There the two of them, in the isolation of the northern woods, sought to take measure of the immeasurable potential of the atom –and to deal rationally with the conflagration of the earth itself.
This was not a moment for gestures, for rules of thumb, or intuition. There would be no second ‘go’. The actual end to life on earth had been given a likely form. It was a well-formed possibility: as such it rested on the table, an item for deliberation. Raised, it would be considered. There would then be a move to end discussion, and a vote taken. A decision would be made.
Is this not an extra-ordinary moment? We know that atomic bombs need not ignite the atmosphere. They have been used and their effect, devastating as it is, has fallen short thus far of the end. Yet in the summer of 1942 there was no such cap to the atom’s potential. The new energies of the atom held the promise of a new Garden of Eden. They also held promise of the end. Is not that conversation in the woods of northern Michigan somehow a clearer measure of the atom’s potential than the reality of Hiroshima? Does it not mark more fully what the atom may mean to us in fact?
