Nikola Tesla Books
TESLA AFTERWORD become fascinated by the immense technical problems that faced them and were determined to make a bomb that would work. And so two bombs were dropped on the Japanese civilian population. It was only in the following days, when news of the bomb's effects began to reach them, that scientists began to realized what a terrible thing they had done. Richard Feynman, for example, felt a revulsion for several months at continuing with physics. On witnessing the first test of the bomb Oppenheimer said that now science knew original sin. It is almost as if a scientific mind can look dispassionately at nature and detach itself from the meaning of any consequences. A chemist I knew, who was also a laypreacher, told me without any apparent sense of contrdiction that he had worked on the development of napalm. As a young man, Werner von Braun was passionate about rockets and, in 1930, joined the German Society for Space travel with a view to building rockets that would travel into outer space. Following the rise of Hitler, von Braun realised that the best way to further research was to join the military. He went on to develop the V2 rocket that was used in the bombing of London. His position on the killing of civilians was that he only developed the technology. It was up to the politicians to decide how this was used. Towards the end of the war, knowing that the US scientist Robert Goddhard was carrying out advanced rocket experiments, von Braun and his group surrendered to the Americans. As his career progressed, von Braun was to be one of the leaders of the US race into space. Today our technology is moving at an accelerating rate. Nanotechnology and nanobiology allow for the creation of microscopic machines and other devices that should be self-repairing, self-replicating and self-assembling. The dream is that they will be used in medicine to diagnose and repair the body, to develop totally new types of materials, to create highly advanced computers with super memories and clean up environmental spills. Yet, when used by terrorists or hostile countries, similar devices could be released to multiply exponentially and spread over and destroy an entire ecosystem or land mass. While this may sound like science fiction, some world watchers believe that the destructive potential of nanotechnology far exceeds that of the few nuclear weapons a group of terrorists may possess. 148
