Burning the Sky

Book excerpt: The unbelievable true story of an American Cold War scheme to detonate nuclear bombs in space is revealed in this military history exposé. The summer of 1958 was a nerve-racking time. The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik drew America into a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Tensions escalated between the two superpowers over their respective nuclear weapons reserves, both sides desperate for a solution to the imminent threat of massive destruction. In America, an outlandish yet ingenious idea was raised by the eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos: launching atomic bombs into outer space to fry incoming Soviet ICBMs with an artificial radiation belt. Known as Project Argus, this secret plan was the riskiest scientific experiment in history. In Burning the Sky, Mark Wolverton draws on recently declassified sources to tell this incredible, unknown story. Burning the Sky chronicles Christofilos’s unconventional idea from its inception to execution—when the so-called mad scientist persuaded the military to use the entire Earth’s atmosphere as a laboratory. A meticulously researched tale that reads like a sci-fi thriller, Burning the Sky will intrigue any lover of scientific or military history.