Nuclear physics is the frontier where the most abstract theory of the 20th century — relativity and quantum mechanics — met mass technology, and with it a set of new ethical responsibilities. In 1939 Einstein wrote to Roosevelt to urge the launch of the Manhattan Project, fearing that Nazi Germany would build the bomb first. In 1955, together with Bertrand Russell, he signed a manifesto of the opposite sign to that step:
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Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
It is a paradigmatic example of how physics — which in these pages we have built up as a sum of experiments, formulae and reasoning — is never an activity separate from the society that inhabits it. Understanding how matter works is not neutral: it lets us treat a tumour with an accelerator, date a medieval manuscript, weigh the Sun, and envisage both bombs and sources of clean energy. It is up to us, future scientists or aware citizens, to choose which paths to take.
Enjoy the rest of your journey.
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Topics: Nuclear physics
Related exercises: Worked exercise — radon decay in a cellar · From the phenomenological law to the exponential · The Sun’s hydrogen consumption