Forty Thousand Feet Skyward

If we are to perish eventually by atom blast, we shouldto sun-mirrors has yielded revolutionary results.
realize that we also live by it. Nothing in our ordinaryOn the scientific level, projects have been initiated that,
lives is commoner than atomic fission. Only a personon completion, are going to change human life and living
congenitally and totally blind can honestly say that hein many ways, and the potentialities of all these studies
has never seen an atomic explosion. For this is whatand developments are measurable only in terms of the
happens on the sun, on a scale so vast that it eludessun's importance in our scheme of things. There was
our ability to visualize, much less comprehend. Werewholesome respect for the sun from the very
you impressed by the world-shaking column of heatbeginning. Ra in Egypt and Phoebus Apollo in Greece
and light that reared itself forty thousand feet skywardare only two of a hierarchy of sun gods as numerous
over Hiroshima and Bikini? Consider, then, that solaras the tribes of humanity. Physically, the sun appeared
"prominences," flaring half a million miles into space, areto the ancients as a brilliant disk about the size of the
commonplace on the mother-star. The calculable--ifmoon. Galileo's telescope, and Newton's pioneering
unimaginable--volume of radiant energy billowingspectroanalysis of sunlight, set helioscience on the
outward into our universe is source and support alikebroad highroad to modern times, along which it has
of our planetary existence. Can we capture thisbeen enlarged and illumined by the work of scientists
power and put it to work? We can and we do.like Fraunhofer, Einstein and Bethe.
It has been stored in coal, oil and waterpower. WeToday's sun is neither god nor moon-sized disk, but a
release it rapidly or slowly, in large or small quantities.typical star of moderate proportions (as such things
We carry it anywhere and everywhere, for any or allgo), weighing in the region of
of thousands of purposes. Can we capture it directly?2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons-two
Yes! Man, who has tried to harness sun-power sinceoctillion. The sun's brightness is the brightness of atomic
the days of Phaethon, is now on the verge of seeingtransmutation. According to H. A. Bethe's widely
one of his most cherished dreams fulfilled.accepted "carbon cycle" theory, hydrogen atoms are
Helio-science has become new as tomorrow, withbeing turned into atoms of helium, in the course of
seven-league strides in several important directions. Onwhich a part of the sun's mass is "destroyed." The
the common level are new solar houses and practicalrate of destruction-4,200,000 metric tons per
sunshine traps for domestic use. Correspondingsecond-seems staggering to us, but the sun can lose
industrial applications are beginning to appear,weight at that rate and still last five and a quarter trillion
particularly in the Soviet Union, where a new approachyears!