Wonders of modern science (1981)

From the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this age of advanced technology, we may often wonder at the marvels modem science can perform. One research organisation, in its guide for applicants tells us:

  Already, using novel and indeed sometimes revolutionary techniques, we have subjected materials to pressures greater than those at the centre of the earth, accelerated them to speeds greater than escape velocity and heated them to temperatures only exceeded at the centre of some stars.

  Observational techniques form an integral part of such experimental studies and provide a challenge in themselves. The extreme states with which we are concerned can only, for the most part, be maintained under laboratory conditions for intervals of a microsecond or less. We have therefore had to evolve diagnostic methods of extreme refinement working to tolerances that even a few years ago would have seemed impossible and are still in many cases almost unique and we have already been able, in only a few years, to extend our know ledge of those extreme states which lie on the frontiers of science.

  However, our activities are not restricted to these areas of physics: a wide variety of work is carried out and some of the other main fields of research are in lasers, effects of nuclear radiation on materials, plasma physics and solid state physics.

  Our programme of research is so wide and our resources so varied that our vacancies cover a wide field ranging from explosive studies to optics and from electrical phenomena to seismology. This booklet describes some of the physics in which we are interested. It serves to give an idea of the range of our work but it is necessarily only a selection.

The organisation is “looking for Science and Engineering Graduates who are willing to give all their skills and talents to this important, interesting and rewarding task”. What exactly is this task, you may ask? Why, building atomic bombs, of course! The Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, located at Aldermaston and Foulness (le nom juste), may well entice several scientifically trained wage slaves into working for them with impressive sentiments like these. In a socialist (sane) society, they could have the satisfaction of using their “skills and talents” for the benefit of all humanity. In the madhouse of capitalism they can use them to develop weapons that will wipe out large sections of humanity instead.

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