Word: atomics
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Brilliant, brooding, fatally naive--J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the tragic figures of mid-20th century America. It was he who led the team at Los Alamos, N.M., that developed the first atom bomb. But after World War II he became an outspoken opponent of developing the even more powerful hydrogen bomb. That stance brought him the powerful enemies who would conspire to have him stripped of his security clearance and publicly humiliated. This biography is masterful, lucid and balanced, always mindful of Oppenheimer's role in his downfall--even at Los Alamos he was frequently surrounded by former...
...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...
...that its leaders see this as a moment when the game of brinkmanship is tilted in its favor. The country is in a nationalist mood; for the man in the street, more concerned with economic issues, the appeal is simple: If other countries can have nuclear power and atom bombs, why can't we? High oil prices and an overstretched U.S. military combine to lessen the West's capacity to react. So too, Iran's leaders think, does Iran's influence with the Shi'ite majority in Iraq and the newly elected Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories. Getting loud...
...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...