New weapons will eclipse atomic bombs. Their builders ask themselves this question.

On July 16, 1945, not long after dawn, a group of scientists and government officials gathered at a desolate stretch of sand in the New Mexico desert to witness humanity’s first test of a nuclear weapon. The explosion was described by an onlooker as “brilliant purple.” The thunder from the bomb’s detonation seemed to ricochet and linger in the desert.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had led the project that culminated in the test, contemplated that morning the possibility that this destructive power might somehow contribute to an enduring peace. He recalled the hope of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and philanthropist, that dynamite, which Nobel had invented, would end wars.

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