Trinity test Concepts

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

by Richard Rhodes · 17 Sep 2012 · 1,437pp · 384,709 words

’s idea for an opening to Moscow: “He raised the question whether it might be desirable to invite two prominent Russian scientists to witness the [Trinity] test.” Groves must have winced; after the years of secrecy, after the thousands of numb man-hours of security work, that would be a renunciation worthy

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hold of a dental drill and, not wishing to ask others to do an untried job, spent most of one night, the week before the Trinity test, drilling holes in some faulty castings so as to reach the air cavities indicated on our x-ray inspection films. That done, I filled the

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day for combat experience and to accustom the enemy to small, unescorted flights of B-29’s at high altitude. Groves’ eyewitness narrative of the Trinity test had arrived that Saturday just before noon. Stimson sought out Truman and Byrnes and had the satisfaction of riveting them to their chairs by reading

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saying the bomb had been perfected and was ready to be dropped.”2510 The cable was the second Harrison had sent, the day after the Trinity test when Groves arrived back in Washington: Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother

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power of the new weapon, he might order the Soviet Army to plunge forward at once.2519 But in fact Stalin already knew about the Trinity test.2520 His agents in the United States had reported it to him. It appears he was not immediately impressed. There is gallows humor in Truman

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. “It is like some weird dream,” Spitzer mused, “conceived by one with too vivid an imagination.” Parsons prepared to show a motion picture of the Trinity test. The projector refused to start. Then it started abruptly and began chewing up leader. Parsons told the projectionist to shut the machine off and improvised

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. “I did . . . surprise”: quoted in ibid., p. 144. 2198. blockbluster meeting: on Dec. 19, 1944. Cf. Capt. Derry to LRG, Jan. 9, 1945. MED 4, Trinity test. 2199. Parsons memorandum: WSP to LRG, Dec. 26, 1944. MED 51, Memos from Parsons (misc). 2200. “Suddenly there . . . blossom”: Guillain (1981), p. 176. 2201. “urgent

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. 17. 2421. “I wouldn’t . . . lotion”: Teller (1979), p. 148. 2422. “It was . . . flash”: Lawrence (1946), p. 7. 2423. “personally nervous . . . fault”: MED 319.1, Trinity test reports (misc.). 2424. “only of . . . happened”: Groves (1962), p. 296. 2425. “groups of . . . point”: MED 319.1. 2426. “Lord, these . . . heart”: quoted in Lamont (1965

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(1954), p. 238. 2471. “You could . . . future”: quoted in Szasz (1984), p. 91. 2472. “Partially eviscerated . . . permanently”: SW to LRG, July 21, 1945. MED 4, Trinity test. 2473. Frank Oppenheimer experiment: Bainbridge (1945), p. 48. 2474. “He applied . . . reality”: quoted in Terkel (1984), p. 513. 2475. 0836 PWT: Ethridge (1982), p. 81

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

by Craig Nelson · 25 Mar 2014 · 684pp · 188,584 words

names of the types of explosives to be used in the bomb [information important to the design of high-explosive lenses]; the fact that the Trinity test explosion was to be made, with the approximate site indicated, soon, in July, 1945, and that this test was expected to establish that the atom

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this was a brightly lighted circular area, near the ground, slowly spreading out towards us. The color was yellow.” Hans Bethe: “Practically everybody at the Trinity test was a scientist except one person, a journalist with the New York Times by the name of William Laurence. We were quite far away, twenty

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would be greatly strengthened,” and none other than General George Marshall agreed. Marshall said that at least two Russian scientists should be invited to the Trinity test. Secretary of State to-be Jimmy Byrnes aligned with Ernest Lawrence, arguing that if the Soviets were brought aboard, they would insist on a full

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, Helen. “After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough.” New York Times, December 2, 2011. ———. “Unsafe at Any Dose.” New York Times, April 30, 2011. Calloway, Larry. “The Trinity Test: Eyewitnesses.” Albuquerque Journal, July 16, 1995. http://larrycalloway.com/category/new-mexico-southwest-history. Cantwell, Alan R. Jr., M.D. “The Human Radiation Experiments—How

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin · 18 Dec 2007 · 1,041pp · 317,136 words

one who was still thinking about it, at that moment.” But Feynman was wrong. Oppenheimer was thinking about it too. In the days after the Trinity test, his mood began to change. Everyone at Los Alamos eased off on the long hours spent in the lab. They knew that after Trinity, the

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period,” Wilson recalled, “partly because he knew what was about to happen, and partly because he knew what it meant.” One day soon after the Trinity test, Oppenheimer startled Wilson with a sad, even morose remark. “He was beginning to feel very down,” Wilson said. “I didn’t know of other people

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himself that they were going to be used in a manner that would not spark a postwar arms race with the Soviets. Shortly after the Trinity test, he had been relieved to hear from Vannevar Bush that the Interim Committee had unanimously accepted his recommendation that the Russians be clearly informed of

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slaughter of tens of millions or perhaps hundreds of millions of innocent people.” Oppenheimer admitted to Wallace that even the previous spring, well before the Trinity test, many of his scientists were “enormously concerned” about a possible war with Russia. He had thought that the Roosevelt Administration had worked out a plan

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the turtle’s life, telling everyone that it “brought back to him the horrible memories of what happened to all the little creatures after the [Trinity] test in New Mexico.” So Ivan carved his initials on the turtle’s shell and then released it. Inga was touched: “It made me feel even

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, NBC television aired a documentary, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, narrated by Chet Huntley, which featured Robert’s recollection of the July 16 Trinity test and his recitation from the Bhagavad-Gita: “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” On another occasion, when an interviewer asked him on

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a lecture, LANL; Hans Bethe portrait, NA; Frank Oppenheimer inspecting instrument, Berkeley; Groves with Stimson, NA. Page 15: JRO pouring coffee, AIP; JRO silhouetted, LANL; Trinity test explosion, LANL. Page 16: Panorama of Hiroshima, NA; Mother and child survivors in Nagasaki, Yamahata. Page 17: JRO et al. at machine, AIP-PTC; Physics

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Bethe, chief of the theoretical division. Robert brought his brother Frank (center, inspecting an alpha calutron) to Los Alamos in 1945 to work on the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb. General Leslie Groves (right, with Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson) selected Oppenheimer to direct the bomb project at Los

The Scientist as Rebel

by Freeman Dyson · 1 Jan 2006 · 332pp · 109,213 words

: this directive has been and will be rigorously adhered to.” So vanished the possibility that there might have been a pause for reflection between the Trinity test and Hiroshima. Captain Parsons, acting in the best tradition of old-fashioned military leadership, armed the Hiroshima bomb himself and flew with it to Japan

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann

by Ananyo Bhattacharya · 6 Oct 2021 · 476pp · 121,460 words

lightning and 30-mile-an-hour winds, an enraged General Groves turned on the forecaster, Jack Hubbard, who had accepted the offer to become the Trinity test’s chief meteorologist just three months earlier. Hubbard reminded the fuming Groves that he had recommended the test be run either later than 18 July

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make good use of it. Spies in the Manhattan Project had long ago told Stalin everything he needed to know. On the morning of the Trinity test, Little Boy had set sail for Tinian, a Japanese island, 1,500 miles from Tokyo, taken by American forces the previous summer. By 2 August

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Laurence had more reason than most to fear a nuclear attack on America. He was the only journalist to have been invited to witness the Trinity test and had seen the destructiveness of the atom bomb at first hand. Senior figures in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations pressed for nuclear strikes privately

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to lead Manhattan Project 80–1 appoints Oppenheimer 81 and decision to use bomb 92–3 implosion bomb design 84, 86 and Target Committee 94 Trinity test 89–90, 92 habilitation thesis 153–4 Hahn, Otto 77–8 Haigh, Thomas 109, 111, 121, 300n12, 301n22, 304n11, 307n39, 308n48 Halle University 21 Halperin

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small-scale test 88 Soviet spies in 92 tamper 87, 91 Target Committee 94 testing approach 84 Theoretical Physics Division 99 Thin Man 82, 85 Trinity test 92, 209 VN joins 82–4 VNs first contribution 83 VNs visits to Los Alamos 84–5, 85 VNs work 82–8 MANIAC I 137

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Silliman Memorial Lectures 274, 275 talents spotted 11 target votes 94 theory of automata 228–32 Theory of Self-reproducing Automata 226, 231, 236, 237 Trinity test 91–2 Turing’s influence 121–2, 301n22 unification of quantum mechanics 30, 36, 37–9, 43–9 unique gift 12–13 on universal Turing

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bomb 78 recruits VN 82–3 small-scale test 88 stripped of security clearance 81, 212 supports implosion bomb design 82 and Target Committee 94 Trinity test 92 ordinality 23–4, 24 orthogonal polynomials 12–13 Ortvay, Rudolf 6–7, 70–1, 78 Ostrom, Elinor 178, 181 Oxford, University of 245, 269

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xi, 9, 40, 66, 109, 140, 216, 279–80 AEC hearing evidence 211 Manhattan Project work 84 Super bomb design 99–101, 132–3, 137 Trinity test 91 terraforming 264 Thatcher, Margret 152 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (von Neumam and Morgenstern) 57, 151–2, 157–77, 188 accomplishment 162 analysis

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Tirole, Jean 178–9 Toffoli, Tommaso 243–5 Total Recall (film) 231 Toward New Horizons (Kármán) 185 trajectory calculations 72–3 transfinite numbers 20–, 22 Trinity test 92, 209 countdown 90–1 crater 92 detonation 91 expected explosive yield 91 explosive yield 91–2 fireball 91 the flash 91 observation point 91

Turing's Cathedral

by George Dyson · 6 Mar 2012

of about 2 packs of Luckies per day,” he reported to Klári on May 11. “Whadayasay?”37 The next six months brought intense activity: the Trinity test, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the surrender of Japan, and, behind the scenes, the completion of the ENIAC, the first H-bomb calculations, and the launching of the

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to capture Ulam’s intuitive, probabilistic approach. Ulam, who was not directly involved with the design or construction of the bomb, did not witness the Trinity test. “In the early morning the day the bomb went off we were at home and still in bed,” says Françoise. “Finally, a tired, pale, and

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not—been passed to the Soviet side. It would take Robert Richtmyer two years to model what had happened in the first microseconds of the Trinity test. Until there were better computers available, further progress was limited, even though, according to Carson Mark, who succeeded Richtmyer as director of T-Division, half

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. “The idea of nuclear propulsion of space vehicles was born as soon as nuclear energy became a reality,” he explains. While others who visited the Trinity test site marveled at how the shot tower had been vaporized by the explosion, Ulam observed that the steel reinforcement at the base of the tower

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

by Doug Stanton · 2 May 2003 · 364pp · 93,033 words

emanated. The searing blast turned the desert sand beneath it into glass. In high school textbooks, this moment would come to be known as the Trinity test; it was the first explosion of a nuclear device in the history of the world. The men aboard the Indianapolis knew nothing of this explosion

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to await the test results of this instrument of annihilation; if it had failed, she would have been ordered back to the pier. But the Trinity test had succeeded, and, by 8:30 A.M. on July 16, 1945, Captain Charles Butler McVay had cleared the San Francisco harbor and was sailing

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of as Spruance flagship and staggered engine pattern submarine detection ability of survivors, number of survivors hallucinate seeing survivors’ organization and training in Chile and Trinity test Truman announces sinking of Unit Citation issued to crew watches on water problems on see also crew; rescue; survivors; and specific individuals intelligence reports declassified

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of Tokyo Rose Tolosa, Leyte and nonarrival of Indy torpedo(es) attacks technology, on I-58 sub Torpex Toti, Captain Bill Tranquility, USS (hospital ship) Trinity test Indy pauses during Nimitz first learns of Truman, Harry S. announces loss of Indy and atom bomb and court martial Twible, Ensign Harlan adrift, and

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fatal. 4 It set a record that remains unbroken today. 5 The two officers were seeking a knowing face that could tell them if the Trinity test had been successful. When the Indy paused before leaving San Francisco, not even Nolan or Furman knew why; the reason was only disclosed later in

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Admiral Nimitz—Spruance’s superior officer—had had his first glimpse of the awesome power of the weapon when he watched a film of the Trinity test. He’d been shown the footage by Captain Parsons, the officer who had given McVay his secret, hurried orders to sail two weeks earlier in

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion ofSafety

by Eric Schlosser · 16 Sep 2013 · 956pp · 267,746 words

tested. Kistiakowsky considered these lenses to be “precision devices,” not crude explosives. Each weighed between seventy and one hundred pounds. As the date of the Trinity test approached, he spent long hours at the lab with a dentist’s drill, eliminating the air bubbles in lenses and filling the holes with molten

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new inventions were unpredictable. Cracked insulation frequently caused the detonators to short-circuit. When that happened, they didn’t work. And a week before the Trinity test, an X-unit fired prematurely during a lightning storm. It had been triggered by static electricity in the air. The misfire suggested that a nuclear

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, attached to it and thirty-two thick electrical cables leaving each box, winding around the sphere, and entering evenly spaced holes on its surface. The Trinity test was scheduled for four in the morning on July 16, but forecasters predicted bad weather. Going ahead with the test could prove disastrous. In addition

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city had played too central a role in Japanese art, history, and culture to be wiped out. Nagasaki took its place. The day after the Trinity test, Szilárd and more than sixty-eight other Manhattan Project scientists signed a petition, addressed to the president. It warned that using the atomic bomb against

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preferred them to the deaths of young American servicemen. Atomic bombs, he decided, would be dropped on Japan as soon as they were ready. The Trinity test had been preceded by weeks of careful preparation, and every effort had been made to control the outcome. The device had been slowly and patiently

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of the buildings were destroyed because 0.7 gram of uranium-235 was turned into pure energy. A dollar bill weighs more than that. The Trinity test had been kept secret, the bright flash in the desert dismissed by the War Department as an explosion at an ammunition dump. But the need

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counter gave an audible measure of how fast the fissions were multiplying. Slotin knew what he was doing. He’d assembled the core for the Trinity test and performed dozens of criticality experiments like this one. A coworker had asked to see how it was done and, on the spur of the

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Sandia had the world’s largest lightning simulator. Ever since Donald Hornig babysat the first nuclear device during a lightning storm, the night before the Trinity test, various forms of electromagnetic radiation had been considered a potential trigger of accidental detonations. The Navy tested many of its weapons by placing them, unarmed

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his calculations were wrong: See Brain, Voice of Genius, p. 75. “The hills were bathed in brilliant light”: See O. R. Frisch, “Eyewitness Account of ‘Trinity’ Test, July 1945,” in Philip L. Cantelon, Richard G. Hewlett, and Robert C. Williams, eds., The American Atom: A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the

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, xvii, 36, 38, 40, 41, 134 opponents of bomb, 44–45 plutonium, creation of, 39 regrets about bomb, 77–78 Soviet spies, 85, 465–66 Trinity test, 36, 40–44, 47–48, 52, 94, 205, 329 use of bomb, U.S. secrecy about, 77–78 MANIAC, xx, 129 MANIAC II, 152 Mark

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, 5, 23, 89, 160, 261, 338, 366–67 in weapons deactivation, 415–18 Travis, Robert F., Brigadier General, 169–70 Trident submarines, 441, 470–71 Trinity test, 36, 40–44, 47–48, 52, 94, 205, 329 Tritium, 127, 128 Tritium meters, 417 TROJAN, 85 Truman, Harry S. arms control issue, 75–82

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick · 1 Jan 1992 · 795pp · 215,529 words

J. Robert Oppenheimer at a Los Alamos meeting: “He is by all odds the most brilliant young physicist here, and everyone knows this.” Awaiting the Trinity test: “And we scientists are clever-too clever- care you not satisfied? Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just

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correspondence between Smyth, Oppenheimer, and Groves. Mary D. Lee had preserved a copy of Feynman’s 9 August 1945 letter to his mother, describing the Trinity test. Feynman had saved Arline’s personal papers, including their correspondence, her correspondence with her family, and other items. Much has been written about the Manhattan

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, 181 predetonation, 6, 168–69 radioactivity, 197–99 Russian, 278, 297–98 space travel and, 218–19 theorists’ role, 155, 163–65, 173–74, 181 Trinity test, 6, 65–66, 153–57, 203 atomic energy, 218, 339 Atomic Energy Commission, 209, 211, 277, 295–96 AT&T Bell Laboratories, see Bell Telephone

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, 260 Tolman, Richard, 144 Tomonaga, Shin’ichiro, 259–61, 267, 377–579 Townsend Harris High School (New York), 48 Treasure Island (Stevenson), 65 triboluminescence, 285 Trinity test, 6, 65–66, 155–57, 205 Truman, Harry S, 209 tuberculosis, 155–55, 149–50, 194–96 Tübingen, University of, 167 Tuck, Helen, 385 Tuckerman

The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite

by Ann Finkbeiner · 26 Mar 2007

the microwave early warning system and an airplane blind-landing system. Now, at Los Alamos, he worked on the bomb’s detonators. He saw the Trinity test from a B-29 at twenty-four thousand feet. Another physicist at the Radiation lab, Wolfgang Panofsky, called “Pief,” worked with Alvarez on devices to

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were prevented by bad weather. “All we were able to do,” Panofsky said, “was to make sketches of the mushroom cloud.” Three weeks after the Trinity test, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, and on August 9 a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. Herb York said

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national weapons laboratories—Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia—and who had actually helped design the modern stockpile. By July 16, the fiftieth anniversary of the Trinity test, the Jasons had written the summary-and-conclusions section of a report called “Nuclear Testing.” They based the report, they wrote, “on understanding gained from

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just been born”: Ibid., 672. “a good shot from the bottle”: Fitch in Wilson, All in Our Time, 46. Enrico Fermi…equivalent to ten kilotons: “Trinity Test, July 16, 1945, Eyewitness Accounts—Enrico Fermi,” U.S. National Archives, Record Group 227, OSRD-S1 Committee, Box 82, Folder 6, “Trinity.” Online at http

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://www.dannen.com/decision/fermi.html. Luis Alvarez…saw the Trinity test from a B-29 at twenty-four thousand feet: “Trinity Test, July 16, 1945, Eyewitness Accounts—by Luis Alvarez,” online at http://www.dannen.com/decision/alvarez.html. Another physicist at the

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see also sodium laser guide star Advanced Research Projects Agency, see Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency air force adaptive optics/laser guide star and Alamogordo, Trinity test at Alivisatos, Paul Alvarez, Luis Nobel Prize won by American Physical Society (APS) anthrax Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense program (Defender program; Strategic Defense Initiative

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and in Vietnam ocean acoustic tomography oceanography Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (ODDR&E) Oppenheimer, J. Robert moral issues and at Trinity test Panofsky, Wolfgang “Pief” particle beams Patrinos, Aristides patriotism Pentagon Papers, The Perry, William Peurifoy, Robert physicists arrogance of biology and coarse-graining and familial culture

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guide star and in formation of Jason on going public Nobel Prize won by Vietnam and Treiman, Sam Jason rejoined by resignation of Trieste letter Trinity test Truman, Harry Twiss, Richard Union of Concerned Scientists University of California at San Diego (UCSD) uranium bombs dropped on Hiroshima urban warfare Van Citters, Wayne