Throughout the 20th century, the world has seen a revolutionary breakthrough in many fields of science and technology.
Other than the discoveries and inventions in the fields of telecommunications and electronics, the advances of nuclear science had a direct impact on people’s lives and society.
Nuclear weapons are explosive devices that are designed to release nuclear energy on a large scale. They derive their energy from within the core, or nucleus of the atom and the atomic bomb gains its power by the splitting or fission of plutonium or uranium.
The birth of the atomic bomb took place during World War Two by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada in a development project called The Manhattan Project. It’s formally referred to as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED) which was during the period 1941-1946 directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
This project employed more than 200,000 workers and several thousands of scientists and engineers, many of European background. Thus, finally on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested in Alamogordo desert in New Mexico.
While witnessing the spectacular explosion Oppenheimer remembered a line from the Vedic religious text Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds”.
After the Alamogordo test, Germany surrendered and war was still raging in the Pacific. American President Harry S. Truman decided to use an atomic bomb on Japan to surrender as quickly as possible.
Therefore, on August 6th 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, instantly killing 70,000 inhabitants. Moreover, on August 9th, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, causing fewer deaths than the Hiroshima incident. By 1950, five years later, 340,000 people (54%) of the original population had died from both explosions, and others were severely injured and burned.
However, after the US built its atomic bomb, the Soviet Union followed four years later. Britain and France joined in the...