Part 9
We thus burn food for our internal energy as we burn cellulose for our external energy. The interesting thing here is that, in both types of burning, fission as well as fusion processes take place. The fission is the splitting of the cellulose, sugar, fats, starches, and proteins into carbon and hydrogen atoms. The fusion part is the union of the carbon and the hydrogen with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and water. The fusion part is just as necessary to release the stored-up solar energy in the wood or coal as is the fission part, for, as everyone knows, unless there is oxygen for the carbon to fuse with, no combustion (burning) can take place and hence no release of energy. The plant vaults would remain closed absolutely tight.
At this point two things become clear. We see, in the first place, that whenever we get any kind of energy in any form we do not in any way create any of it. All we do is merely draw on something that is already stored up; in the case of coal and wood by the sun, in the case of uranium and hydrogen by the same power that created the sun and all energy. We draw water from the spring, but we do not make the water. On the other hand, we cannot draw the water unless we first find the spring, and even then we cannot draw it unless we have a pitcher.
And we also see, in the second place, that fission and fusion are common everyday phenomena that occur any time you burn anything. Both are essential whenever energy is released, whether it is the chemical energy from coal or the atomic energy from the nuclei of uranium, deuterium, or tritium. When you light a cigarette you employ both fission and fusion or you don’t smoke. The first fission and fusion take place in the lighting of the match, the cellulose in the match (whether it is wood or paper) being fissioned (that is, split into its component atoms of carbon and hydrogen). These atoms are then fusioned with the oxygen in the air. The same thing happens when the tobacco catches fire. In each case the fusion with the oxygen makes possible the fission of the cellulose. When we burn U-235, or plutonium, we again get both fission and fusion, except that, instead of oxygen, the nuclei of these elements first fuse with a neutron before they are split apart. Thus we see that the process of burning U-235, or plutonium, requires not only fission but fusion as well, without which they could not burn. This is true also in hydrogen fusion. When you burn deuterium by fusing two deuterons (nuclei of deuterium) to form helium of atomic weight three, plus a neutron, one of the two deuterons is split in half in the process. Similarly, when you burn tritium by fusion two tritons (nuclei of tritium), one of the tritons splits into two neutrons and a proton, the one proton joining the other triton to form helium of atomic weight four.
Thus we see that fission and fusion are the cosmic firebrands that are always present whenever a fire is lighted, chemical or atomic, whether the fuel is wood, coal, or oil, or uranium, plutonium, deuterium, or tritium. Both, with some variations, are essential for opening the cosmic safe where the energy of the universe is kept in storage. The only reason you get much more energy in the fission and fusion of atomic nuclei is that so much more had been stored in them than in the cellulose vaults on this planet.
The same reason that limits our ability to obtain stored chemical energy to a few fuels also limits our ability to obtain atomic energy. Coal, oil, and wood are the only dividend-paying chemical-energy stocks. Similarly only five elements, uranium 233 and 235, plutonium, deuterium, and tritium are the only dividend-paying atomic-energy stocks, and of these only two (U-235 and deuterium) exist in nature. The other three are re-created from other elements by modern alchemical legerdemain. What is more, we know for a certainty that it will never be possible to obtain atomic energy from any other element, by either fission or fusion.
This should put to rest once and for all the notion of many, including some self-styled scientists, that the explosion of a hydrogen bomb would set the hydrogen in the waters, and the oxygen and the nitrogen in the air, on fire and thus blow up the earth. The energy in common hydrogen is locked up in one of those cosmic vaults which only the sun and the stars that shine can open and which no number of H-bombs could blow apart. Oxygen and nitrogen are locked even for the sun. As for the deuterium in the water, it cannot catch fire unless it is highly concentrated, condensed to its liquid form, and heated to a temperature of several hundred million degrees. Hence all this talk about blowing up the earth is pure moonshine.
But while we know that we have reached the limit of what can be achieved either by fission or by fusion, that by no means justifies the conclusion that we have reached the ultimate in discovery and that fission and fusion are the only possible methods for tapping the energy locked up in matter. We must remember that fifty years ago we did not even suspect that nuclear energy existed and that until 1939 no one, including Dr. Einstein, believed that it would ever become possible to use it on a practical scale. We simply stumbled upon the phenomenon of fission, which in its turn opened the way to fusion.
If science tells us anything at all, it tells us that nature is infinite and that the human mind, driven by insatiable curiosity and probing ever deeper into nature’s mysteries, will inevitably find ever greater treasures, treasures that are at present beyond the utmost stretches of the imagination—as far beyond fission and fusion as these are beyond man’s first discovery of how to make a fire by striking a spark with a laboriously made flint. The day may yet come, and past history makes it practically certain that it will come, when man will look upon the discovery of fission and fusion as we look today upon the crudest tools made by primitive man.
A great measure of man’s progress has been the result of serendipity, the faculty of making discoveries, by chance or sagacity, of things not sought for. Many an adventure has led man to stumble upon something much better than he originally set out to find. Like Columbus, many an explorer into the realms of the unknown has set his sights on a shorter route to the spices of India only to stumble upon a new continent. Unlike Columbus, however, the explorers in the field of science, instead of being confined to this tiny little earth of ours, have the whole infinite universe as the domain of their adventures, and many a virgin continent, richer by far than any yet discovered, still awaits its Columbus.
Roentgen and Becquerel were exploring what they thought was an untrodden path in the forest and came upon a new road that led their successors to the very citadel of the material universe. Young Enrico Fermi was curious to find out what would happen if he fired a neutron into the nucleus of uranium, hoping only to create a heavier isotope of uranium, or at best a new element. His rather modest goal led five years later to the fission of uranium, and in another six years to the atomic bomb.
Yet, as we have seen, in both fission and fusion only a very small fraction of the mass of the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of the elements used is liberated in the form of energy, while 99.3 to 99.9 per cent of their substance remains in the form of matter. We know of no process in nature which converts 100 per cent of the matter in protons and neutrons into energy, but scientists are already talking about finding means for bringing about such a conversion. They are seeking clues for such a process in the mysterious cosmic rays that bombard the earth from outer space with energies billions of times greater than those released by fission or fusion, great enough to smash atoms of oxygen or nitrogen, or whatever other atoms they happen to hit in the upper atmosphere, into their component protons and neutrons. Luckily, their number is small and most of their energy is spent long before they reach sea level.
But we have already learned how to create secondary cosmic-ray particles of relatively low energies (350,000,000 electron-volts) with our giant cyclotrons. The creation of these particles, known as mesons, which are believed to be the cosmic cement responsible for the nuclear forces, represents the actual conversion of energy into matter. This is the exact reverse of the process taking place in fission and fusion, in which, as we have seen, matter is converted into energy. And we are now about to complete multibillion-volt atom-smashers that will hurl atomic bullets of energies of from three to ten billion volts at the nuclei of atoms. With these gigantic machines, known as the cosmotron (at the Brookhaven National Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission) and the bevatron (at the University of California), we shall be able to smash nuclei into their individual component protons and neutrons and thus get a much more intimate glimpse of the forces that hold the nuclei together. What is more, instead of creating only mesons, particles with only 300 electron masses, we shall be able for the first time to convert energy into protons and neutrons, duplicating, as far as is known, an act of creation that has not taken place since the beginning of the universe. Man at last will be creating the very building blocks out of which the universe is made, as well as the cosmic cement that holds them together.
What new continents will our first glimpse into the mechanism of the very act of creation of matter out of energy reveal? What new secrets will be uncovered before the dazzled eyes and mind of man when he takes the nucleus of the atom completely apart at last? Not even Einstein could tell us. But, as Omar Khayyám divined, “a single Alif” may provide “the clue” that, could we but find it, leads “to the Treasure-House, and peradventure to the Master too.” The fact is that we already have opened the door to the anteroom of the treasure-house, and we are about to unlock the door to one of its inner chambers. What shall we find there? No one as yet knows. But we do know that every door man has opened so far has led to riches beyond his wildest dreams, each new door bringing greater rewards than the one before. On the other hand, we also know that the treasure-house has many mansions, and that no matter how many chambers he may enter, he will always find new doors to unlock. For we have learned that the solution of any one secret always opens up a thousand new mysteries.
We also have learned, to our sorrow, that any new insight gained into nature’s laws and forces can be used for great good and for equally great evil. The greater the insight, the greater the potentialities for good or evil. The new knowledge he is about to gain by his deeper insight into the heart of matter, and by his ability to create it out of energy, may offer man the means to make himself complete master of the world he lives in. It is equally true, alas, that he could use it to destroy that world even more thoroughly than with the hydrogen bomb.
As already stated, scientists are even now discussing the possibility of finding means for the complete annihilation of matter by the conversion of the entire mass of protons and neutrons into energy, instead of only 0.1 to 0.7 per cent. And while the total annihilation of protons and neutrons still seems highly speculative, we already know that such a process actually does take place in the realm of the electron. This is the phenomenon already achieved numerous times on a small scale in the laboratory, in which a positive electron (positron) and an electron with a negative charge completely destroy each other, their entire mass being converted into energy. Luckily, this is at present only a laboratory experiment, in which each positron must be individually produced, since there are hardly any positive electrons in our part of the universe. But suppose the new knowledge we are about to pry loose from the inner citadel of matter reveals to us a new process, at present not even suspected, that would release positrons in large numbers, just as the fission and fusion processes made possible for the first time the liberation of large quantities of neutrons. Such an eventuality, by no means beyond the realm of the possible, would open potentialities of horror alongside which those of the H-bomb, even the rigged one, would be puny. For any process that would release large numbers of positrons in the atmosphere, in a chain reaction similar to the one now liberating neutrons, may envelop the earth in one deadly flash of radioactive lightning that would instantly kill all sensate things. And although this is admittedly purely speculative, no one dare say that such a discovery will not be made, not when one remembers how remote and unlikely a process such as fission seemed to be just before it was made.
Though many of the great discoveries came about as the result of chance, they came because, as Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.” Actually they came largely through the intellectual synthesis of what had originally appeared as unrelated phenomena or concepts. When Faraday discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, he established for the first time that electricity and magnetism, looked upon since prehistoric times as two separate and distinct phenomena, were actually only two aspects of one basic natural force, which we know today as electromagnetism. This great intellectual synthesis led directly to the age of electricity and all its wonders. About thirty years later the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that electromagnetic action traveled through space in the form of transverse waves similar to those of light and having the same velocity. This revealed the existence in nature of electromagnetic waves, better known to us today as radio waves. About a quarter century later the great German-Jewish physicist Heinrich Hertz not only produced these electromagnetic waves but showed that they are propagated just as waves of light are, possessing all other properties of light, such as reflection, refraction, and polarization. This led directly to wireless telegraphy and telephony, radio and television, radiophotography and radar.
When Einstein, in his special theory of relativity of 1905, united matter and energy in one basic cosmic entity, the road was opened to the atomic age. Yet Einstein was never satisfied and has devoted more than forty-five years of his life to the search for a greater, all-embracing unity underlying the great diversity of natural phenomena. In his general theory of relativity of 1915 he formulated a concept that encompasses the universal law of gravitation in his earlier synthesis of space and time, of which matter and energy were an integral part. This synthesis, wrote Bertrand Russell in 1924, “is probably the greatest synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time. It sums up the mathematical and physical labors of more than two thousand years. Pure geometry from Pythagoras to Riemann, the dynamics and astronomy of Galileo and Newton, the theory of electromagnetism as it resulted from the researches of Faraday, Maxwell, and their successors, all are absorbed, with the necessary modifications, in the theories of Einstein, Weyl, and Eddington.
“So comprehensive a synthesis,” he continued, “might have represented a dead end, leading to no further progress for a long time. Fortunately, at this moment quantum theory [the theory applying to the forces within the atom] has appeared, with a new set of facts outside the scope of relativity physics [which applies to the forces governing the cosmos at large]. This has saved us, in the nick of time, from the danger of supposing that we know everything.”
Yet Einstein, working away in majestic solitude, has been trying all these years to construct a vast intellectual edifice that would embrace all the laws of the cosmos known so far, including the quantum, in one fundamental concept, which he designates as a “unified field theory.” Early in 1950 he published the results of his arduous labors since 1915. This he regards as the crowning achievement of his life’s work, a unified theory that bridges the vast gulf that had existed between relativity and quantum, between the infinite universe of the stars and galaxies and the equally infinite universe within the nucleus of the atom. If he is right, and he has always been right before, his latest contribution will prove to be a greater synthetic achievement of the human intellect than ever before, embracing space and time, matter and energy, gravitation and electromagnetism, as well as the nuclear forces within the atom, in one all-encompassing concept. In due time this concept should lead to new revelations of nature’s mysteries, and to triumphs even greater than those which followed as a direct consequence of all earlier intellectual syntheses.
If the synthesis of matter and energy led to the atomic age, what may we expect of the latest, all-inclusive synthesis? When Einstein was asked about it he replied: “Come back in twenty years!” which happens to coincide with the end of the hundred-year period recorded by the brothers Goncourt: God swinging a bunch of keys, and saying to humanity: “Closing time, gentlemen!”
The search for new intellectual syntheses goes on, and no doubt new relationships between the diverse phenomena of nature will be found, regardless of whether Einstein’s latest theory stands or falls in the light of further discovery. Physicists, for example, are speculating about a fundamental relationship between time and the electronic charge, one of the most basic units of nature, and there are those who believe that this relationship will turn out to be much more fundamental than that between matter and energy. Should this be found to be true, then the discovery of the relationship between time and charge may lead to finding a way for starting a self-multiplying positron-electron chain reaction, just as the relationship between matter and energy led inevitably to the self-multiplying chain reaction with neutrons. If this comes about, then closing time will come much closer.
Yet the sound of the swinging keys need not necessarily mean closing time for man at the twilight of his day on this planet. It could also mean the opening of gates at a new dawn, to a new earth—and a new heaven.
APPENDIX
THE HYDROGEN BOMB AND INTERNATIONAL CONTROL
_In the fall of 1949 Senator McMahon directed the staff of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy to study the hydrogen bomb in relation to international control of atomic energy. The material in the following pages, with the exception of the comments in Appendix D, was prepared by the staff at the chairman’s request to assist the joint committee in considering the problem._
_It is my belief that this valuable material, until now unavailable in such excellent summary form, will also assist Americans in general in considering this vital problem. Readers of this volume should find it helpful in arriving at conclusions of their own, particularly in the light of the facts and discussion presented in Chapters III and IV. I further believe that a careful perusal of the following material will lend strong support to my view that the international control of atomic weapons, as envisaged in the majority plan of the United Nations,—the only plan that may give assurance against a surprise atomic attack—had become wholly impractical even before the entry of the H-bomb into the picture, and that the imminent development of the H-bomb has made it so unworkable that any further plan to revive it would be futile._
_This material makes it clear (a) that Russia never had any intention of reaching any agreement on international control and had set out to sabotage any plan from the very beginning; and (b) that no plan, no matter how foolproof, could hope to succeed in the absence of complete mutual trust and confidence. Events in Korea, I am convinced, have driven the last nail into the coffin of the UN control plan._
A SIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL CONTROL OF ATOMIC WEAPONS
May 1945: Secretary of War Stimson appoints interim Committee to study problem of atomic energy.
August 6, 1945: Hiroshima.
October 3, 1945: President’s message to Congress outlines necessity for international control of atomic energy and proposes conversations with Canada and United Kingdom.
November 15, 1945: Three-nation agreed declaration on atomic energy (Truman-Attlee-King declaration). Calls for United Nations Commission to make proposals for international control plan. Proposals should provide safeguards “by way of _inspection and other means_.” (Wherever used in the following pages, italics are supplied.)
December 27, 1945: U.S.-U.K.-U.S.S.R. Foreign Minister communiqué on results of Moscow Conference. Proposes that Canada, China, and France join with Big Three in sponsoring resolution calling for United Nations Atomic Energy Commission with terms of reference stipulated in Truman-Attlee-King declaration.
January 24, 1946: General Assembly resolution establishing United Nations Commission on Atomic Energy. Composed of members of Security Council plus Canada.
March 28, 1946: Acheson-Lilienthal report. Urges that mines and “dangerous” atomic-energy facilities be put under _international ownership_ and _management_ of Atomic Development Authority. Additional safeguards in the form of _inspection_. Nations to operate “safe” plants under ADA license. Plants to be distributed among nations in keeping with _strategic balance_. Control plan to be implemented by stages.
June 14, 1946: Baruch proposals to United Nations. Closely follow Acheson-Lilienthal recommendations. Ask “condign punishment,” for violations, and request agreement that UN Charter _veto_ clause not apply to sanctions for stipulated violations of atomic-energy treaty.
June 19, 1946: Soviet Union counterproposals. Demand prohibition of atomic weapons and destruction of existing stockpiles _before_ international control plan is negotiated. Soviet proposals provide no safeguards against evasion.
December 31, 1946: First Report of UNAEC. Incorporates essential features of Baruch proposals into statement of principles for plan for international control of atomic energy. Adopted 10 to 0, with U.S.S.R. and Poland abstaining.
June 11, 1947: U.S.S.R. control proposals. Soviets assent to _periodic inspection_, but this would apply only to _declared_ plants.
August 11, 1947: Soviets consent in principle to concept of _quotas_.
September 11, 1947: Second Report of UNAEC. Outlines powers, functions, and limitations thereon of any international agency in implementing effective control plan.
May 17, 1948: Third Report of UNAEC. Reports impasse because Soviets refuse to accept majority plan and persist in refusing to put forward effective proposals of their own. Concludes that further work in UNAEC is fruitless until Soviet cooperation in broader fields of policy is secured. Recommends that Commission’s work be suspended until sponsoring powers find that basis for agreement exists.
September 25, 1948: Soviets modify position by asking that conventions for prohibition of atomic weapons and for international control go into effect simultaneously.