Babbage from The Economist16 Heinä 2025

The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?

Where did the world’s most devastating weapon come from? In a four-part series, we go behind the scenes at America's nuclear laboratories to understand how a scientific-mystery story about the ingredients of matter led to a world-changing (and second-world-war-ending) bomb less than five decades later.

Nuclear weapons have been central to geopolitical power ever since. Now America is seeking to modernise its stockpile and, in doing so, its scientists are pushing the frontiers of extreme physics, materials science and computing.

In episode one, we look at the birth of nuclear physics—the science that emerged early in the 20th century to answer a mystery: what is an atom actually made of?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Frank Close, a physicist and author of “Destroyer of Worlds”, a history of the birth of nuclear physics; Cheryl Rofer, a chemist who used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); and Nicholas Lewis, a historian at LANL.

This episode features archive from the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Listen to episode two here.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

This is a free episode. To continue listening to “The Bomb”, you’ll need to subscribe.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(10)

AI and health part one: DrGPT will see you now

Artificial intelligence is already making its mark in health care—but new, bigger, models promise to improve how patients access services, help doctors spot diseases faster and transform how medical r...

22 Touko 202445min

Babbage: Teens and their screens

Ever since there have been smartphones and social media, there have been concerns about how they might be affecting children. Over the past decade, doctors have seen a decline in mental health in the ...

1 Touko 202442min

Babbage: The science that built the AI revolution—part one

What is intelligence? In the middle of the 20th century, the inner workings of the human brain inspired computer scientists to build the first “thinking machines”. But how does human intelligence actu...

6 Maalis 202442min

Babbage: The hunt for dark matter

Dark matter is thought to make up around a quarter of the universe, but so far it has eluded detection by all scientific instruments. Scientists know it must exist because of the ways galaxies move an...

21 Helmi 202443min

Babbage: Sam Altman and Satya Nadella on their vision for AI

OpenAI and Microsoft are leaders in generative artificial intelligence (AI). OpenAI has built GPT-4, one of the world’s most sophisticated large language models (LLMs) and Microsoft is injecting those...

24 Tammi 202445min

Babbage: Science book club

Books are the original medium for communicating science to the masses. In a holiday special, producer Kunal Patel asks Babbage’s family of correspondents about the books that have inspired them in the...

20 Joulu 202342min

Babbage: Fei-Fei Li on how to really think about the future of AI

A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the ex...

22 Marras 202338min