Hydrogen Whisper

An exciting bit of atomic gossip was loudly whispered about last week through Washington's resonant corridors. Tipsters were insisting that U.S. scientists are working on "the hydrogen bomb." The rumors started when Colorado's Senator Edwin Johnson, member of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, told a television audience that the U.S. was trying to make a bomb i ,000 times as powerful as the one used at Hiroshima.

The full, round figure alerted Washington's amateur physicists. According to fairly dependable estimates, the Hiroshima bomb developed not more than 10% of the fission energy present in its nuclear explosive. Perfect efficiency (probably impossible) would therefore give about ten times as much power, certainly not 1,000 times as much. So, figured the amateur physicists, the talkative Senator must have meant a bomb made out of hydrogen. It is well known that the conversion of hydrogen into helium is the nuclear reaction that gives the sun its energy.

Asked about a hydrogen bomb, the AECommissioners refused to comment. Said Chairman David E. Lilienthal: "All weapon information is classified."

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