Word: thermonuclear
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Albert Einstein perhaps put it most bluntly when he warned in 1950: "The hydrogen bomb appears on the public horizon as a probably attainable goal. . . .If successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere, and hence annihilation of any life on earth, has been brought within the range of technical possibilities." Thermonuclear explosions in the Pacific have since shown that the goal has been attained, and that the possibilities of drastic damage to life on earth no longer remain purely technical, but now comprise one of the most frightening question-marks in world history: Can the human race survive the radiation effects...
...Kurchatov, speaking at Britain's Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment, brought the subject of controlled fusion into the open. As early as 1950, said Kurchatov, Soviet scientists made theoretical studies about it. They started actual laboratory work in 1952, the year the U.S. achieved its first full-scale thermonuclear explosion...
...this temperature, deuterium nuclei can react with one another at a rather slow rate. So when the Soviet scientists detected both free neutrons and high-energy X rays coming from the tube, they thought at first that they had started a true thermonuclear reaction. More careful investigation proved that this could not be the case, but free neutrons are the "fire" that cause most nuclear transformations, and any new process that frees them is apt to prove important...
Kurchatov's last paragraph must have tantalized his Harwell listeners: "On appraising the various approaches to the problem of obtaining intense thermonuclear reactions, we do not deem it possible to completely exclude further attempts to attain this goal by using pulsed discharges. However, other possibilities must also be carefully considered. Especially interesting are those in which the idea of stationary processes may be used...
Navako (North American) still has high priority. A long-range missile, it has wings, flies in the atmosphere much more slowly than a ballistic missile in dragless space, is therefore more vulnerable to enemy attack. But it has advantages. Carrying a thermonuclear warhead, it steers by the stars. An amazing little instrument picks out a succession of stars, even in daytime, and navigates by them like a ship at sea. Unlike the ICBM, the Navaho can be instructed to zigzag and feint. When the Navaho nears its target, it can feel for the warmth of a darkened city...