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The H-bomb is the ultimate in deathmanship, a missile which may be anywhere from twenty-five to a thousand times more destructive than the weapons dropped in 1945. The energy for the A-bomb comes from fission, the splitting of uranium atoms; the H-bomb’s power comes from fusion, the uniting of hydrogen atoms—the very process by which the sun gives light. Fusion can occur only at very high temperatures; therefore H-bombs are called thermonuclear weapons. Their theoretical possibilities had long been known, but after the horrors of Hiroshima conversations about them among atomic physicists were awed and guarded. The hypothetical new bomb was called the “Super.” From time to time cryptic references to it appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, but the editors never defined it. In their opinion, the less the world knew about the Super, the better. Teller disagreed. At Berkeley in the summer of 1942 he had been one of seven physicists who had mulled over the feasibility of man-made fusion, and he never forgot what he later called the thrilling “spirit of spontaneous expression, adventure and surprise.” To his disappointment, the consideration of thermonuclear possibilities was discontinued in 1943. Since the temperatures required were so high that only a fission bomb could produce them, the fission riddle had to be solved first, anyhow, and once that happened, it was thought, they ought to stop. At about this time Teller began speaking of the mythic Super as “my baby.” His colleagues were glad to leave it to him.
The Glory and the Dream
William Manchester
It is still a fairly astounding notion to consider that atoms are mostly empty space, and that the solidity we experience all around us is an illusion. When two objects come together in the real world—billiard balls are most often used for illustration—they don't actually strike each other. “Rather,” as Timothy Ferris explains, “the negatively charged fields of the two balls repel each other . . . were it not for their electrical charges they could, like galaxies, pass right through each other unscathed.” When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter),
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
Mergers and acquisitions can be very good or very bad but, on average, disappoint. The odds are best for combinations of related businesses done at reasonable prices. Philip Morris had more success with its acquisitions than Reynolds, which may be why it continued to diversify even as Reynolds was going back to basics. Spin-offs go against the normal empire-building tendency, and as a result are often fantastic opportunities for investors.
Big Money Thinks Small
Joel Tillinghast
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