A “Near-Zero” Sum Game (#70)

Reflections on the Oppenheimer movie, and the true terror that comes from “molecules”.

My friend and former colleague, Alli, likes to refer to people, usually other scientists, as molecules.

“That person is a very interesting molecule, Bryn,” she liked to often confide in me, a small yet warm smile on her face, as we met about various projects. She applied the term with affection and respect, and quietly recognized that we are all individual particles that react with each other.

Of course, these reactions and subsequent new bonds do not always allow us to thrive. Sometimes, the reaction can reduce us to components we no longer recognize.

And after watching one-half of the summer blockbuster phenomenon known as Barbieheimer last weekend, I can’t help but recall Alli’s favourite metaphor yet again.

One of the entries into the European Nuclear Education Network’s Nuclear Art Competition, this piece was created by Anna Mariia for the senior category, and depicts the double-edged sword of learning more about nuclear reactions and their potential applications.

As a piece of #SciArt, Oppenheimer truly was a beautiful work. Aside from the excellent performances, the artistic choices to alternate between monochrome and colour palettes, shifting focus and depth of field between subjects, and the staccato scene cuts, all brilliantly contribute to a feeling at times so frenetic you cannot help but feel like a particle bouncing around in an impending chain reaction. You don’t need to know about quantum physics going into the movie, but you need to know the feeling of quantum physics, and the young genius who used it to change the world.

It’s through these feelings that the movie invokes fear. And it would seem that, on its’ face, this would be an inevitable conclusion; the film centres around the construction and testing of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos - later to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hearing and seeing the details of the theoretical, then real, destruction, is horrific. The idea that one can be incinerated, or given an illness that lingers and torments over years, with a mere flash and bang, is formidable.

Nolan later added, “It is an intense experience, because it’s an intense story. I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it’s kind of a horror movie. I don’t disagree.” (Variety, June 2023)

I would further contend, though, that the horror does not rest simply on the back of the quantum physics and uranium fission that propels us into the nuclear age.

Rather, the terror comes from the molecules we can see.

For is there anything more fear-inducing in science than the promise of peril, due to human hubris, a lack of foresight and a platoon’s worth of nationalism? (Save for, perhaps, a fungus that infiltrates your brain and turns you into a zombie that solely behaves to further its’ propagation and livelihood; there’s a reason I haven’t watched The Last of Us, despite a host of excellent actors.)

Over the course of the movie’s three hours, the viewer watches the train wreck of reactions between the human molecules: the single-sighted military minds, bent on defeating a mostly-faceless enemy before they are beaten; the various communists and sympathizers peppered throughout the movie with suspicions of government (and the government of them); the scientists who muse over the theoretical capacity for their ideas and the importance of advancing science, but who never sit too long with, or truly fathom, the ghastly end that awaits other human beings through the misuse of the knowledge they generate.

The product of these interactions of ego and hubris is the atrocity of hindsight - the characters’ emerging awareness of what they have unleashed, and their reluctance to do nothing about it (or their inability to take action, instead being silenced for trying to stuff the atomic pony back into the stall).

We now stand in the dim light, peering into darkness. What lies beyond, in this era, are two paths - one to a benevolent future, the other to a ghastly end. We must choose the path to the benevolent future, we must have light in order to see the way, we must have the light of Knowledge.
Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie Groves, Dagwood Splits the Atom¹

Groves helped Oppenheimer usher in the new age of atomic energy in the United States, but his post-bomb words are cautious, without the bombast one may anticipate from the military figure on screen. They are the words of someone who has not only seen the creation of an otherworldly destructive force, but who saw human molecules to destroy through word and deed. These are words of regret, and the idea that such wisdom only comes through hindsight, is stunning.

We can avoid going down into the dark basement alone at night, or walking alone to our car in the parking garage with the one flickering fluorescent light. But can we truly avoid humans - the giant molecules all around us - colliding and causing destruction? I’m not so sure, and I don’t think it’s excessively fatalistic or pessimistic to be uncertain here.

It only takes a few molecules to start a chain reaction, either for good or for evil.

All we can do is try to remember both are possible, and hope we can turn on enough lights.

Oppenheimer sketch by yours truly. Black Sharpie pen and marker on acrylic paper. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

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1. Read more about this strange piece of SciArt in my earlier post:

#37: If I Had a Rocket Launcher