The Nuclear Age

We are living in a world of dynamism which has ushered in 'nuclear age'. Almost all the advanced nation of the world have got privilege of becoming nuclear. As their number is small they constitute just a club called as 'nuclear club' while the rest of the nations are underdeveloped and out of the precinct of this club. In a way it is a new division of the world-nuclear and non-nuclear which is a post-second war development. As we already know nuclear energy is not the monopoly of one power bloc. Western powers, as well as Soviet union and china equally possess this energy. Hence, they are competing in the varicties of nuclear armament to claim superiority over each other.

By and large, this nuclear energy, being in possession of the rival power blocs has put them to an armament race assuming a sort of 'mid-summer madness'. Vast resources of the respective advanced countries are diverted to the purpose. Whenever a new device is tested by one bloc the other enhances its endeavours in the same direction and tries to beat the other in a surprising manner.

Progress Does Not Lie In Mere Scientific

Much of the progress that man has made is tagged to science. Not only progress but also the mental outlook of man is affected by it. The greatest victory of man is control over nature. He tried to unveil the mysteries of nature to the fullest extent. He has been successful in annihilating distance and has at his disposal not only planes but Apollo crafts and Lunas which move faster than the velocity of sound. The telegraph, telephone, wireless and radio have made communication so easy that we feel that the world has shrunk in size.

Man has attained dreadful powers by a crash progress in industry. He has guns, tanks, missiles, boobs and so many other destructive weapons. Even a single man can kill hundreds of persons in a very short time. On the other hand the diminution of human sufferings owing to the advances in medicine is beyond allcalculations. The wonder drugs of the present age have revolutionized the system of medical treatment and are giving a new life of thousand.

Progress Scientific Advancement

Man is supposed to have made a lot of progress in the art of governing the community. Tight from monarchy, man has come down to full fledged Democracy. Ultimate political powers are evenly distributed among all adults except lunatic, and criminals. The whole of the society is not ruled by a single tyrannical king. Every body has a freedom of movement and speech. Man is considered to be independent, free and an important part of political organisation. judge from the materialistic point of view it is progress because man has been able to reduce the distance and has developed the methods to gather opinion of the people. Even the huge country, like India, which could never afford to have democracy, has the means to become democrats. From the moral point of view also it seems to be progress because man has recognized the claims of man upon society, and the evils of exploitation. 

The advocates of democracy always overstate their case, so that they expect democracy to bring millennium. But it is a superficial view and exists only in theory. If in the past man had suffered on the physical plane, now his agony is spiritual. Ever, under the democracy an ordinary man enjoys right only in theory but not in practice. They cannot make independent judgments because their brains are stuffed with preconceived nations, ready-made opinions.

Science and Modern Warfare

"War is noting less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included," said Robert Hall. The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Under its standard gather violence, rage, malignity, fraud, perfidy, rapacity and lust. If is only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey. 

In the words of Sydney Smith, "The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of space, all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over this world in state of war. God is forgotten in war; every principle of Christianity is trampled upon."

Science and War

The invention of the aeroplane in the First world war shattered the conception of the from line of the fighting and the borders of war. Military targets in the enemy territory were bombarded. Often homes and hospitals also were not spared. Thus old men, women, children and patients in hospitals died gruesome deaths; having nothing to do with war. Poisonous gases used in war boiled men to death, or deformed them beyond recognition, or made them mental wrecks, Bacteriological warfare killed thousands by causing epidemics. Thermite used in bombs caused a great scare and havoc to civilian population.

The destructive potentiality of scientific warfare witnessed during the second world war bears an ample testimony to its being inhuman beyond imagination. By the time of this war the modern ware became an extremely loathsome affair. The second world war has beaten all previous records of death and destruction. The magnetic mines in the sea brought disaster to thousands of men, women and children; and consigned them to a watery grave.

Technology on Modern Life Styles

Nuclear physics is still today one of the important growing points of science, though the main interest has shifted from transmutation of elements to the high energy production of particles, which depends today on multi-billion dollar nuclear accelerator, of which the culmination is the giant and triumphantly successful CERN 28 billion volt accelerator. High energy physics is concerned with an understanding of the basic forces of the universe-the forces that hold protons and neutrons together in the nucleus. These forces are closely connected with the so called fundamental particles. It is our lack of understanding of the relation between mesons, the "strange particles" and the nuclear forces that still makes nuclear physics one of the most fascinating field of science.

We do not know whether our increasing knowledge of the nuclear underworld will ever have any practical implications, and we would probably say that it is unlikely. But then, Rutherford had a similarly negative view about practical applications of the nuclear physics of the 1930 's' and it was not until fission was discovered that physicists saw the possibilities of nuclear power.

Impact of Science and Technology

The development of science and technology feeds back new methods and new instruments which make progress in pure science possible. Thus the design of the great accelerator of CERN (in the USA) would have been almost impossible without the help of electronic computers; they made it possible to calculate the orbits of the protons in their million traversal of the magnetic race track and to design equipment to ensure that the orbits would be stable.

The development of the technology for using liquid hydrogen and liquid helium made possible the invention of the bubble chamber, which greatly simplified the study of disintegrations produced by the giant machines. The development of milli-microsecond techniques of electronics, growing out of radar, have combined with new methods of detection such as the anti-particles produced in energetic nuclear collisions.

In a similar way the wartime development of radar led to the new huge radio telescopes. which are now supplementing optical astronomy in a major way; and the development of rocket technology is enabling observations to be carried on outside the earth's atmosphere and into interplanetary space.