Abstract

Surveying the Field: The Limitless Potential

The great hurdle that the atom must leap in order to win public confidence as a force for peace is the evil it has done. Ten years ago atomic energy clutched the world with the gigantic hand of destruction. Millions everywhere watched, fascinated, as the first atomic bomb became "conventional," then ordinary, then outmoded by the overwhelming might of the hydrogen bomb. Splitting the atom spelled the final unanswerable threat to civilization. America's development of the atomic weapon broke every rule of scientific procedure. Thousands of men and women were commandeered into a research that many of them feared and mistrusted. In the course of a systematic search for basic facts concerning little-known substances, a research worker at the Argonne National Laboratory found that one artificial form of thulium, the radioactive isotope 170, gave off X-rays instead of the usual alphas, betas, and gammas familiar to uranium hunters.