75 years ago at 5:29 a.m. on 7/16 1945 scientists gathered in the desert of NM to witness the first A-bomb test, code-named Trinity. The countdown began, followed by a burst of white light and a fireball that seemed to transform the sky. One of them thought, “Fermi was right.”
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Three years before, as the scientists calculated the physics behind the atomic bomb, they had come upon a troubling possibility: that the chain reaction set in motion would not stop—that it would ignite all the hydrogen in the air and oceans and set the whole world aflame.
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The calculations were uncertain, yet so serious was the risk that Robert Oppenheimer consulted the project director. They decided to continue the project while trying to prove that this catastrophe was impossible. That was never proved, but they decided the risk was negligible.
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The night before the test, Enrico Fermi offered to accept odds on whether atmospheric ignition would occur. When Gen. Groves heard this he was upset, afraid such talk would upset the enlisted men. Some thought Fermi was joking--others who had done the math were not so sure.
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The next day the explosion did not destroy the world or even New Mexico. Phew! And yet the effect was powerful enough to remind some of them of Fermi's "jest." As the fire rose in the sky, Oppenheimer thought of the Sanskrit text: “I am become death the destroyer of worlds.”
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The next stop for the bomb was the people of Hiroshima on 8/6. But already Edward Teller and others were dreaming of a bigger bomb—a hydrogen bomb—a 1000 times more powerful. He trusted that the odds of destroying the world were slim. See The Doomsday Machine.
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Shameful for history's sake. Just 6 years later, my father sat in a foxhole in Nevada, his Korean War tour of duty as a nuclear veteran. At that test-site, where unimaginable ionizing radiation pierced him and others, my Dad was gone in 1968 when the leukemia took deadly hold.
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Very sorry. Many nuclear casualties in our own country. Not to mention the toll it takes on our souls.
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Thank you for this extraordinary insight into a major chapter in the history of the arms race. If our species survives the massive damage we’ve inflicted on the planet, surely future generations will learn this history and know it was madness.
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I appreciate this memorial about my father by @ggrenwald above any I have read today--for his comprehensive review of his bio & history, for his attention to themes generally overlooked about his post-Vietnam life, but particularly for deep appreciation of his human qualities.🙏
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Here's my @RollingStone article on Daniel Ellsberg, the heroic Pentagon Papers leaker who died today at 92:
"We’re Told Never to Meet Our Childhood Heroes. Knowing Daniel Ellsberg Proved That Wrong"
rollingstone.com/politics/polit
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