The meson bomb was a proposed

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...

that would derive its destructive force from

meson In particle physics, a meson ( or ) is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticle ...

interactions with fissionable material like

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weakly ...

. The idea behind the bomb was rejected by most scientists, but during the Cold War, American intelligence managed to trick the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

into conducting research on this topic, which resulted in several years of wasted labor by one of the Soviet nuclear weapon research bureaus.

Origins

Mesons (

hadron In particle physics, a hadron (; grc, ἁδρός, hadrós; "stout, thick") is a composite subatomic particle made of two or more quarks held together by the strong interaction. They are analogous to molecules that are held together by the ele ...

ic subatomic particles composed of one

quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All common ...

and one

antiquark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All common ...

, bound together by the

strong interaction The strong interaction or strong force is a fundamental interaction that confines quarks into proton, neutron, and other hadron particles. The strong interaction also binds neutrons and protons to create atomic nuclei, where it is called th ...

) were proposed to form a nuclear weapon as early as the 1940s. Early speculation suggested that the resulting bomb would be the most powerful nuclear weapon yet to have been developed. American physicist

Ernest Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation fo ...

used the potential military applications of mesons to obtain funding for its

synchrocyclotron A synchrocyclotron is a special type of cyclotron, patented by Edwin McMillan in 1952, in which the frequency of the driving RF electric field is varied to compensate for relativistic effects as the particles' velocity begins to approach the s ...

built between 1940 and 1946 at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Soon, however, the scientific consensus was that construction of such a bomb would be impossible; and in 1968 physicist

M. Stanley Livingston Milton Stanley Livingston (May 25, 1905 – August 25, 1986) was an American accelerator physicist, co-inventor of the cyclotron with Ernest Lawrence, and co-discoverer with Ernest Courant and Hartland Snyder of the strong focusing principle, wh ...

wrote that "no responsible scientists would attempt to justify support in this field with predictions of an 'anti-matter engine,' or a super 'meson bomb,' or a 'hyper-drive' for spaceships."

Soviet research

In the 1960s, however, the Soviet Union became convinced that the United States had already developed the meson bomb, and devoted considerable resources to developing its own. In 1994, Russian physicist and chief constructor of nuclear weapons bureau

KB-11 The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) (russian: Всероссийский научно-исследовательский институт экспериментальной физики) is a research inst ...

(Design Bureau No. 11, set up in 1946) Arkadiy Brish stated that their work on the meson bomb was prompted by intelligence. Even though physicists Yuliy Borisovich Khariton and

Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich ( be, Я́каў Бары́савіч Зяльдо́віч, russian: Я́ков Бори́сович Зельдо́вич; 8 March 1914 – 2 December 1987), also known as YaB, was a leading Soviet physicist of Bel ...

agreed that the reports were nonsensical, the directors of the

Soviet atomic bomb project The Soviet atomic bomb project was the Classified information in Russia, classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. Although th ...

decided to pursue this line of research, which resulted in several years of fruitless labor. Brish attributed this to American

disinformation Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate. The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the ...

References

{{reflist, 30em Nuclear weapons program of the United States Mesons Proposed weapons Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union

Origins

Soviet research

See also

References