The Hindu Business Line : `History is the short trudge from Adam to atom'

`The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.' — ALBERT EINSTEIN

A for apple. Maybe, in happier times. Not when nuke talks rise to suffocating levels, as now.

With the Iran issue snowballing, we may have to come to terms with `A' for atom when children of tomorrow begin their tryst with the alphabet.

Who knows, they may then be playing in `atomic parks', which the Government is thinking of setting up, to augment nuclear power generation capacity at a fast pace.

The park talk should already have sparked anxiety in the US, which is keenly watching atomic developments happening in India.

For instance, Uncle Sam, currently running a fine-tooth comb through the Indian nuclear plans, is unhappy about the Russian deal to supply uranium to the Tarapur atomic plant.

Only the naïve still complain that things aren't yet clear about where the truth lies in the nuclear issue.

Interestingly, Where the Truth Lies is Atom Egoyan's recent movie, based on an eponymous novel by Rupert Holmes, as www.mindjack.com informs.

`UK Supplied Israel With Atom Bomb Materials: BBC,' reports Islam Online, Qatar, in a story dated March 10. `Diplomatic way to tackle Iran atom threat — Bush,' says Jamaica Gleaner. `There is no such thing as `the peaceful atom',' states www.theithacajournal.com.

`NO PEACEFUL ATOM'

Dangerously, `atom' is just one entry away from `atom bomb' in Concise Oxford English Dictionary. The word means, "The smallest particle of a chemical element, consisting of a positively charged nucleus (containing protons and typically also neutrons) surrounded by negatively charged electrons."

The atom is smallest unit of matter that can take part in a chemical reaction, informs Eric Weisstein's World of Physics on http://scienceworld.wolfram.com. "There are 1,078 atoms in the observable universe." The site traces the concept of atom to Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus (450-420 BC). In Greek, the word means `indivisible'.

Atom is "a medieval unit of time," states `How Many?

A Dictionary of Units of Measurement' on www.unc.edu. "The Greek word atomos means something `uncuttable,' thus indivisible. In medieval times the Latin form atomus was also used to mean `a twinkling of the eye,' the smallest amount of time imaginable. This was sometimes defined in a precise way equivalent to exactly 1/376 minute or about 160 milliseconds."

MODERN THEORY

Modern atomic theory begins with the work of John Dalton, published in 1808, informs www.bartleby.com. "In 1911, Ernest Rutherford developed the first coherent explanation of the structure of an atom... Niels Bohr (1913), applied the quantum theory developed by Max Planck and Albert Einstein to the problem of atomic structure." Greek atomos is from a- `not' + tomos `a cutting,' from temnein `to cut', explains Online Etymology Dictionary. "Atomic is from 1678 as a philosophical term; scientific sense dates from 1811. Atomic energy first recorded 1906; atomic bomb first recorded 1914 in writings of H. G. Wells, who thought of it as a bomb `that would continue to explode indefinitely'," timelines the dictionary.

"Atomise `reduce a liquid to a fine mist' is from 1865; sense of `to destroy with atomic weapons' is from 1945."

SOUL OF ENERGY

`Atomic Bomb' is "a weapon deriving its great explosive force from the sudden release of nuclear energy through the fission, or splitting, of heavy atomic nuclei," as www.hydrocut.com alerts. The atom's soul is nothing but energy, George B. Leonard would say. Energy that can work for good or bad.

Survivors of the atom bombs dropped on Japan in the Second World War are still suffering the health consequences, rues www.inthenews.co.uk in a report dated March 1. ATOM stands for `Ancient Teachings Of the Masters', if only we listened to them. "One atom of the plane where He functions would shatter the world," is an ominous quote of Confucius, for instance. And, Muhammad Iqbal counsels, "In every atom slumbers the might of the self."

It was an unhappy Albert Einstein who said, "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." A desperate E. Y. Harburg prayed, "Leave the atom alone".

Sadly, to Harry S. Truman, though, the atom bomb was no `great decision'; he'd spoken of it "as merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness".

A SMASHING COCKTAIL

Encarta defines `atom smasher' as particle accelerator, "a device that speeds up subatomic particles". Atomic vibrations regulate atomic clock. "The National Company in Massachusetts produced the first commercial atomic clocks using cesium," says http://science.howstuffworks.com. Atomic cocktail is "a radioactive substance in liquid form, used to diagnose or treat cancer," states http://encarta.msn.com.

Paul Dirac once spoke about the "great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behaviour of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world."

As if to affirm, William Raphael Hix, theoretical astrophysicist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is of the view that atoms that make up our bodies and everything around "have stories to tell that span billions of years, linking us with the entire cosmos," as a quote cited by R&D Magazine (www.rdmag.com) notes.

But will the billion-year-old story of atom last forever? Precarious question, because, "History is the short trudge from Adam to atom," as Leonard L. Levinson alerts.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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