Science Is the New Nuclear Deterrent

1 Nuclear weapons research aids basic physics and astronomy research—and vice versa

No matter what you’re investigating—the inside of a nuclear weapon, the interior of a giant planet, the core of a star, or the flow from a supernova—physics is physics, atoms are atoms, and high-pressure situations are high-pressure situations.

That’s all self-evidently true, but it was illuminating for me to realize, over and over again while researching this book, how much of the basic science astronomers and physicists use to understand the world is also relevant to nuclear weapons-related research. For example, some of the biggest experimental instruments that the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration oversee contribute to both. Take a device called the Z