Freak Effect

Dr. David Bradley is a physician (not a physicist) who attended the Bikini atom-bomb tests in 1946 and wrote the atomic scare-book, No Place to Hide. Last week, more scared than ever, he told an audience at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn, that one of the recent atomic explosions in Nevada was 500 times more powerful than a conventional (or Model-T) Abomb. Therefore, reasoned Bradley, it must have been a hydrogen bomb. He based both premise and conclusion on the fact that the bomb broke windows in Las Vegas, nearly ten times farther from the explosion than the most distant windows broken at Hiroshima.

Specious reasoning, retorted Physicist Ralph E. Lapp, author of the un-scared book, Must We Hide?. Explosions often have freakish effects. Even comparatively feeble ones have freakishly broken windows many miles away, leaving nearer windows unbroken. One cause: an "inversion" (layer of warm air) in the atmosphere, that reflects shock waves downward --and may concentrate them.

Senator Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, made an official comment on the H-bomb theory. Said McMahon: "It just isn't so."

There has been atomic progress of another sort: toward handier, "tactical" nuclear explosives, perhaps the much-desired atomic artillery shells.

Major General Ward H. Maris, the Army's research chief, said on a broadcast at week's end: "Gratifying progress has been made in providing powerful and practical atomic weapons for tactical use by the ground forces."

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