J. Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

The profound moment when science met conscience. Step into the mind of the excellent physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who spoke these haunting words after witnessing the first successful test of the atomic bomb.

In a 1965 television broadcast discussing the aftermath of the Trinity Test, J. Robert Oppenheimer said, "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent." Recalling a verse from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita, where Vishnu assumes his multi-armed form to impress upon the price the gravity of his duty, stating, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

The quote derives from the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu text containing 700 verses, dating back to the first millennium BCE. The scripture revolves around a conversation between Prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna, an incarnation o the deity Vishnu. Arjuna grapples with reluctance to engage in a concept without an exact English equivalent. At one juncture in the scripture, Arjuna implores Krishna to reveal his divine form, often described as a "multi-armed form."

One translation of this moment in the text portrays what Arjuna witnesses as follows: "If hundreds of thousands of suns rose up at once into the sky, they might resemble the effulgence of the Supreme Person in that universal form."

This vision of the suns going up into the sky helps understand why it may create thoughts of witnessing a nuclear explosion.