Word: atom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recast the strategic balance in the region in Iran's favor, to gain stature and recognition of the Islamic Republic as a powerful geopolitical player. A history of invasions has left Iran wary of its neighbors, especially now that it is encircled by countries that possess atom bombs--Russia, Pakistan and India as well as Israel. Now that U.S. troops occupy two next-door states, Iran's leaders see the nuclear card as a way to buy security guarantees for the country and survival for the regime. It wants Washington to stop pushing "regime change" and accept the existence...
...nuclear bomb, but U.S. officials say the design of the sphere--an outer shell studded with small chemical-explosive charges meant to detonate inward, which would squeeze an inner core of material into a critical mass--is akin to that of classic devices like Fat Man, the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II. "Because of the size and weight and the power source going into it and height-of-burst requirements," says the diplomat, Western experts have concluded that the design "is only intended to contain a nuclear weapon. There's no other munition which would work...
...Pont chemist, was trying to find a new kind of refrigerant for manufacturers and filled a tank with a gas related to Freon. When he opened it later, he found he had accidentally created a slippery white powder. General Leslie Groves, heading the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb, heard about the substance from a Du Pont friend when his scientists were looking for a material for gaskets that could resist the bomb's corrosive gas, uranium hexafluoride. Groves had Du Pont make Teflon for the bomb, but it wasn't until 1960 that it coated pans and muffin...
...Hitler, it might still be, but his aggression drove scientists out of Europe, and the desperate need to defeat him galvanized the U.S. and Britain into pouring money into defense research, creating powerful new technologies--radar, sonar, the atom bomb. U.S. leaders learned that pure research like atomic and electromagnetic physics, combined with massive government funding, could lead to dramatic breakthroughs in military technology. Because the Soviet Union almost immediately became just as ominous a threat as Nazi Germany had been, Congress created the National Science Foundation in 1950 to fund basic and applied science, mostly at universities, "to promote...
...much calmer Why We Fight, the improbable hero is Dwight Eisenhower. As Supreme Allied Commander of World War II, he opposed dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima, according to his son John, who is interviewed in the film. In his 1961 farewell address as President, Eisenhower cautioned against the sprawling "military industrial complex." To Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger), Eisenhower was a Cassandra unheeded. In the years since Ike issued his warning, the military budget has grown exponentially, and the complex is ever more complex, embracing the Pentagon, the arms industry, Congress, think tanks and a large slice...