The most fascinating journey made by humans took place in modest laboratories. But, curiously, it was done without the scientists responsible having to move. The chosen destination was the center of the atom and reaching it changed us forever. This is stated by Miguel Marqués, doctor in nuclear physics and author of The nuclear grail: Perdition or salvation of our species?, edited by the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Throughout its pages, Marqués details the main discoveries related to the atom and the implications for society without ever abandoning the informative tone and its link with history.
“A little over a century ago we managed to enter the atom and discovered an immense void around a tiny and extremely dense nucleus. To find out what that core contained we had to open it, inevitably releasing the colossal energy hidden within it,” explains the author. “Is this a Pandora's box that condemns us to disappear, or rather a treasure chest that will save us?” asks Marqués, who works at the prestigious French research center CNRS.
Marqués has constructed an extraordinary story that will captivate an audience interested in informative essays, but also everyone who is curious about science and even those most reluctant to nuclear energy. “Part of our fear and misunderstanding of nuclear comes from ignorance of the basic concepts and historical circumstances surrounding it, and I thought this book could help in both of those aspects. The title tries to reflect the inevitable ambivalence that such an immense amount of energy has,” the author argues.
The nuclear grail tells the story that led to the opening of the atomic nucleus, showing through simple diagrams what the applications of an energy that Marqués does not hesitate to describe as “colossal” have been and could be. “It has always been there, before life arrived on Earth and within each of the atoms that make up our own bodies, but we have had the privilege of being the first to see it,” he reflects. The book helps the public to get a global idea of the two faces of nuclear energy, showing us the threat of a nuclear conflict at the same time as the advances that fusion power plants will bring.
This ambivalence that great scientific advances carry with them articulates a book that completes the explanations of nuclear physics with revealing details and varied anecdotes. “I have emphasized the concept of the discoveries, not their technical details, and also the people who carried them out. Above all, it is a story of people who are discovering an unknown world, surrounded by a war context,” says Marqués.
One of the principles of scientific research is that one finding leads us to another, which is why all the stages analyzed in the book are part of a whole. “It was all a combination of circumstances, and simply with the failure of one link the chain would have broken. But that chain had some links that were more decisive than others,” says Marqués. Scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, Francis Aston, James Chadwick, Lise Meitner, Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer are some of those links brought together by Marqués.
The initial chronology proposed by the author not only shows dates, scientists and relevant findings on atomic energy, but also highlights issues that have been the subject of debate, such as its use during World War II. And, as the author explains, in less than three years, and dedicating unlimited resources to the so-called Manhattan Project, the United States managed to manufacture the atomic bomb, test it in the Trinity test and drop it on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. .
“The bombs were used in part because the politicians and military did not understand that it was something radically different. And today people do not understand why they were made because the atom is still not understood, and the very harsh historical context that surrounded the 1940s is also ignored,” says Marqués, who hopes to shed light on this closely linked issue, as as he analyzes, to the circumstances of the time.
The CNRS researcher decided to finish the revealing journey he proposes by taking it to the present day, in order to also show a more positive vision of his discipline. “When I finished the first version of the book, the story ended in 1945 and with a very bitter taste. Then I decided to write chapter 7, which brings it up to the present day through hydrogen bombs but also through the absence of wars linked to nuclear deterrence and the upcoming use of fusion as an inexhaustible and clean source of energy,” explains Marqués. .
Convinced of the key role that dissemination plays in having informed opinions, the author wants people who read his book “to achieve a more global vision of everything that surrounds the atom, to understand that certain discoveries and decisions were inevitable, and to measure "Better what are the risks and advantages of this energy." For him, this story also demonstrates that “most important discoveries are not planned, so it is very important to maintain basic research without demanding imminent or guaranteed applications.”
