In a four-part collection, our podcast “Babbage” pulls again the curtain on the huge scientific infrastructure that America has created to construct, preserve and improve its nuclear weapons. From the flip of the twentieth century, a scientific-mystery story in regards to the components of matter led to a world-changing (and second-world-war-ending) bomb. Nuclear weapons have been central to geopolitical energy ever since. Now America is looking for to modernise its stockpile and, in doing so, its scientists are pushing the frontiers of maximum physics, supplies science and computing.