Sun in a Bottle Read Online Free Page B

fairly clear: the Russians had their own atom bomb. America’s nuclear monopoly had ended much more quickly than anyone expected. On August 29, 1949, in the middle of the Kazakh steppe, a nuclear cloud had mushroomed to life. The Soviets called it “First Lightning”; the stunned Americans nicknamed the first Russian atom bomb test “Joe-1.”
    The timing could hardly have been worse. On September 21, Mao Tse-tung announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China. A quarter of the world’s population suddenly had a red flag flying above their heads. Two days later, President Truman had to announce the news of Joe-1. “We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.,” he said, and attempted to reassure a frightened nation. “Ever since atomic energy was first released by man, the eventual development of this new force by other nations was to be expected.” Even so, the Russians had caught up with the Americans much more quickly than anticipated. 8 The hope of unilateral disarmament was gone forever. When Teller heard the news, he called Oppenheimer on the telephone, perhaps hoping to spur him to pursue fusion weapons. “Keep your shirt on!” was Oppenheimer’s curt rejoinder.
    It wasn’t the response that Teller hoped for. He thought his Super provided an easy answer to the crisis. By developing a superbomb more powerful than even atomic weapons, the United States could keep its lead over the Soviet Union. But some scientists viewed pursuing fusion weapons as an inherently immoral act, one that might lead to the destruction of humanity. Physicists began to divide into two groups: pro- and anti-fusion.
    Oppenheimer was in the latter camp. A month after Truman’s announcement, Oppenheimer convened a meeting of a handful of scientists, politicians, and engineers—the General Advisory Committee (GAC)—who advised the new Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The AEC had been formed in 1945 to oversee nuclear research, so the GAC, chaired by Oppenheimer, was extremely influential in setting the direction of America’s nuclear weapons program. Oppenheimer’s GAC was firmly anti-fusion. While the committee stated that it would be wise to increase the United States’ capacity to build and research nuclear weapons, the GAC raised technical questions about the feasibility of the Super—and also made a firm statement about the morality of pursuing Teller’s dream of weapons of unlimited power. “We are all agreed that it would be wrong at the present moment to commit ourselves to an all-out effort toward its development.” Some scientists on the committee went further. Oppenheimer and five others railed against the morality of a fusion weapons program. “A super bomb might become a weapon of genocide,” they wrote. “We believe a super bomb should never be produced.” To Enrico Fermi and fellow physicist Isidor Rabi, also on the committee, Oppenheimer’s statement didn’t go far enough. “The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole,” they argued. “It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.” The GAC recommended shelving the Super project.
    To Teller, who had returned to Los Alamos full-time, Joe-1 was the realization of his worst fears. A militant Communist state had just destroyed his home country; in August, Hungary officially declared itself Communist and became a satellite of the Soviet Union. And now the belligerent USSR was menacing his adopted home, the United States. Oppenheimer, with his Communist sympathies, was setting the United States on a course of self-destruction. Teller was certain that forsaking the Super, as Oppenheimer wanted, would ensure Soviet world domination within a few years. He had to thwart Oppenheimer’s destructive influence. Teller started to make his case directly to Congress, and the