RESEARCH INTO ATOMS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27306, 24 March 1954, Page 11

RESEARCH INTO ATOMS

“War Impossible In

Twelve Months” (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, March 23. Atomic research will make war impossible within 12 months and by then it will be possible to reach any point on the globe within 45 minutes with atom-loaded rockets. This is the opinion of Professor- Herman Oberth, the German inventor of the V-II rocket, says the Dusseldorf correspondent of the Associated Press. ’ “This means that in case of war all the big cities of the enemy can be destroyed within two or three hours. Personally, I definitely believe that then no Minister will decide on war, because he would sign his own death sentence at the same time,” Professor Oberth told the German Society for Space Research. He also spoke of giant “space mirrors” focusing sunlight on the globe, theoretically turning night into day, freeing the Arctic seas of ice, and making possible an additional harvest each year. These mirrors could be attached to a giant rotating rocket device.

The rocket would be the centre of a mammoth net whose meshes would carry adjustable mirrors. This system of mirrors with a diameter of possibly 62 miles, could concentrate the rays of the sun on the earth. If all the mirrors were directed at one point, temperatures of up to 300 degrees centigrade could be generated, “burning whole cities or armies.” “Such a system could be more fatal than the atom bomb,” the professor said. “It would be easier to construct than one imagines.”