Contemporary nuclear science historians suggest that this very special event of emergence of nuclear technology is analogous to the critical moment in Greek mythology when Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus (home of Zeus and the other gods) and bestowed it as a gift to humankind. Prometheus, who was one of the Titans, wanted to help human beings, but Father Zeus was extremely angry at the minor deity’s generous deed and severely punished him. Yet control of fire ultimately enabled the human race to evolve from a nomadic, survival-level, hunter-gatherer existence into the technically complex global civilization we enjoy today. Nuclear physicists may be perceived as the “new Prometheans”—people who have given modern society the gift of a new type of fire: the fire from within the atomic nucleus. The second world-changing nuclear technology event, the world’s first nuclear explosion, occurred at precisely 05:29:45 A.M. (mountain war time) on July 16, 1945. This event caused an incredible burst of human-made light that pierced the predawn darkness of the southern New Mexican desert and bathed the surrounding mountains in the glow of a nuclear fireball. The bulky, spherical plutonium-implosion device, called Trinity, exploded with a yield of 21 kilotons—completely vaporizing the tall steel support tower upon which it rested. The tremendous blast signaled the dawn of a new age in warfare—the age of nuclear weaponry. From this fateful moment on, human beings were capable of unleashing wholesale destruction on planet Earth. Nuclear war represents an instantaneous level of violence unavailable in all previous periods of human history.
Nuclear Fission and Emergence of a New Technology
