Albert Einstein once said: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
Articles with Nuclear
A self-sustaining fusion reaction taking place 93 million miles from Earth • Photo by Oscar Ävalos on Unsplash
The fireball of the world's first nuclear test • US Department of Defense (Public Domain)
Understanding billion-year-old light in a century
What was the most important science story of the century?
A 1946 nuclear test at Bikini Atoll • US Department of Defense (Public Domain)
Can we ever make amends?
A decade ago, landscape photographer Peter Goin was granted access to several of America’s most restricted nuclear weapons facilities. His visits resulted in a haunting book of color photographs called “Nuclear Landscapes.”
The Trinity test at the moment of detonation
In the New Mexico desert, the test was of physics itself
It was the most fateful physics experiment of all time. The experiment was called Trinity, and it took place in the New Mexico desert on the morning of July 16, 1945.
Trinity test, Alamogordo, 1945 • U.S. Department of Energy (Public Domain)
Nuclear sites: A lethal legacy across the land
At 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on the Alamogordo bombing range in the desert near White Sands, New Mexico.
Reactor 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant • Paweł Szubert (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nuclear realities
The world’s first nuclear power station, at Shippingport, Pa., came on line in the late 1950s. After the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Shippingport plant seemed to vindicate our hard-won knowledge of the atom’s secrets. Here at last was a peacetime use for atomic energy. Magazines were full of articles with titles like “The Atom: Our Obedient Servant.” For most of us, it was the dawning of an age bright with promise.