J. Robert Oppenheimer

In his latest book, journalist and historian Clay Risen explores how the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy upended the nation.

David Bohm and Hugh Everett were once ostracized for challenging the dominant thinking in physics. Now, science accepts their ideas.

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.

Coming from the Congo, I knew where an essential ingredient for atomic bombs was mined, even if everyone else seemed to ignore it.

The Truman administration launched a PR campaign to inflate casualty numbers to justify the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On this date 78 years ago, the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Survivors involuntarily provided key medical data for years, without receiving any help.

The “Barbenheimer” double feature captures the dawn of our imperiled era.

Game theory, computers, the atom bomb—these are just a few of things von Neumann played a role in developing, changing the 20th century for better and worse.

The father of game theory helped develop the atom bomb—and thought he could calculate when to use it.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. came with censorship and obfuscation about the effects of the radiation on those who were exposed.

Access to information only goes so far to explain the curious link between secrets and those who tell them.

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.

Only a certain kind of person, both foolish and resolute, would choose to study a subject so extensive, yet so restrictive, as the secrets of nuclear weapons.

What explains the apparently sudden spike in intergalactic traffic after WWII? If Cold War anxieties are to blame, why have sightings persisted?

Physicist and writer Leo Szilard was vital to the creation of the atomic bomb. He also did everything he could to prevent its use.

How the St. Louis Baby Tooth Study reconciled the ritual of childhood tooth loss with the geopolitics of nuclear annihilation.

Why was a second bomb used against Japan, so soon after Hiroshima? A review of several theories.