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Podcast: Economist Podcasts
Episode: The bomb (part 1): were nuclear weapons inevitable?
Description: 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 scien...