emily’s Reviews > Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age: 1895-1965 > Status Update

‘—“the most beautiful in the world”—nucleus of a lithium atom : three protons and four neutrons. Add one proton—and you have four of each or, which is what Rutherford—saw, two of each, twice—two alpha particles, the nuclei of helium atoms. The protons—hit the lithium nuclei—split them clean in two. Lithium—hydrogen and helium, made in the Big Bang. After 13.7 billion years—the first to be cleft by human ingenuity.’

‘—the Curies found—element—radioactivity is so powerful—in pure form it glows in the dark—warm to the touch: radium. Today—best known as a treatment for cancer, but when undirected they can cause great damage and suffering—her hands were wrapped to protect the blistering— aplastic anaemia, a condition produced by overexposure—Her experimental notebooks and even her cookery books were still radioactive 50 years later’