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'Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds'
Prometheus stole the fire and gave it to mankind. Zeus bound him to the Caucasus Mountains. Each day, an eagle would come to peck out his liver. And each night, his liver would regenerate. In every era, we have longed for such a just and brave superhero, ending the suffering of humanity. We read Greek mythology, and we watch Marvel movies. But it's not until we open the pages of true history that we are moved by the triumphs of such figures. And we sigh at their tragedies. In the shining constellation of the 20th century, he led more than 3,000 people in a three-year struggle to successfully develop the world's first atomic bomb. He founded the largest institute for theoretical physics in the United States at Princeton, leading dozens of Nobel laureates, including Chen-Ning Yang.
He graced the cover of Time magazine, becoming the greatest physicist after Einstein. Oppenheimer, he was like the 20,000-foot-strong flash of the atomic bomb's explosion, dimming all other stars. And the Second World War came to a rapid end because of him --- the Prometheus who stole the victory fire, saving countless lives, he was the hero of the era under the spotlight. However, the aftermath of the explosion left Hiroshima and Nagasaki in ruins, plunged into a darkness deeper than night. Oppenheimer, the other side of his life was also filled with darkness --- death became a reality and he suffered the pain of blood on his hands. The peak that physics had reached over 300 years culminated in such a tragic form, bringing the world into a new era --- forever threatened by nuclear weapons. Prometheus relived the agony of the eagle's pecking day after day. Oppenheimer also relived the moment of pressing the button each day. Was that the right decision?
Did humanity pay too high a price? The rebelliousness and wandering of youth, the moral struggles behind a brilliant career, the trivialities of love and marriage...... What touches us is such a real and complex Oppenheimer. Beyond the highlight moment of pressing the atomic bomb button, there were the foreshadowing of his childhood destined for darkness and the entanglements after his glory. When the purest physics met the most complicated politics, he also unveiled for us a chapter of the sealed history of the Cold War and the chain reaction that still affects us to this day.
Nonetheless, history will forever remember that night in New Mexico, and the climax of modern physics will forever be captured in that 20,000-feet-high flash. Newton said that standing on the shoulders of giants helps us see further. Today, in this era of flourishing science and rapidly advancing technology, as we look forward from the shoulders of Oppenheimer, the giant who witnessed the first-ever chain reaction, we hope to see the immense nuclear fusion energy released by the collision of two hydrogen isotopes, as described by Einstein's elegant mass-energy equivalence equation, solving energy problems, bringing peace to thousands of households.
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