#atomic

Trinity’s witnesses responded just as those to Apollo 11 would, as J. Robert Oppenheimer remembered: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." Oppenheimer later said the he beheld his radiant blooming cloud and thought of Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Aloud, however, the physicist made the ultimate engineer comment: "It worked. ↗

— Craig Nelson

#engineers #death

For the scientist, at exactly the moment of discovery—that most unstable existential moment—the external world, nature itself, deeply confirms his innermost fantastic convictions. Anchored abruptly in the world, Leviathan gasping on his hook, he is saved from extreme mental disorder by the most profound affirmation of the real. ↗

— Richard Rhodes

#discovery #inspiration #science #inspirational

It has long been known that the chemical atomic weight of hydrogen was greater than one-quarter of that of helium, but so long as fractional weights were general there was no particular need to explain this fact, nor could any definite conclusions be drawn from it. ↗

— Francis William Aston

#atomic #been #chemical #conclusions #could

Direction coupling between the various radiations generated in a nuclear reaction both with one another and with the initiating radiation can also be detected and measured by coincidences; this provides valuable information about the structure of the atomic nuclei. ↗

— Walther Bothe

#also #another #atomic #between #both

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#atomic #atomic bombs #bombs #consequence #fact

Certain characteristic properties of elements can be foretold from their atomic weights. ↗

— Dmitri Mendeleev

#certain #characteristic #elements #foretold #properties

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country. ↗

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

#atomic bomb #beyond #bomb #country #different

After the atomic bombs were dropped, the war ended and we went into Tokyo Bay with the rest of the fleet, the Missouri and the rest of them, while they signed the terms of surrender that ended the war. ↗

— Barney Ross

#atomic #atomic bombs #bay #bombs #dropped

Morally, the world is both better and worse than it was. We are worse off than in the middle ages, or the 17th and 18th centuries, in that we have the atomic menace. ↗

— Pierre Schaeffer

#atomic #better #both #centuries #menace

A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. ↗

— Erwin Schrodinger

#atomic #between #careful #entities #experiment