The 1930s saw enormous advances in atomic science and radiation research, overshadowed by the startling discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 by the outbreak of war just a year later. But physicists soon realized their new method had devastating potential
Discover.
Albert Einstein signed a letter to then-President Roosevelt warning, “It is conceivable that an extremely powerful new type of bomb … Countries have developed their own bombs before. The test was considered a resounding success, and just 21 days later, the United States dropped a similar atomic bomb called “Fat Man” on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
If it weren’t for the deadly pressure of war, nuclear science might have taken a very different and possibly slower path. The study of atoms, one of the smallest particles of matter, has hitherto been little more than a curiosity, at first the domain of philosophers, then gentleman scholars.
Minor improvements in experimental methods and equipment have led to tiny breakthroughs in the definitive revelation that the atom and its nucleus are not, in fact, the end of the Russian doll. This discovery leads directly to New Mexico and then to Japan.
As the light from the first nuclear explosion fades, there is a renewed desire to understand what our universe is actually made of and how it came to be. This journey into the making of everything will take scientists even deeper down the rabbit hole of matter, vast fields and particles, and even farther back centuries in search of answers to the immortal question: At the most fundamental level, what is What, and perhaps more importantly, is any of this true?
