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...
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