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Today is the 74th anniversary of the first atomic bomb detonation, "Trinity." Here's my New Yorker piece on the test from a few years back.https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-first-light-of-the-trinity-atomic-test …
I've been looking over some Trinity-related literature at the moment. A few things that popped out to me this time that I hadn't remembered reading.
New Mexico was actually #2 on Groves' list of preferred test sites. #1 was in California. Groves went with #2 after he learned that to get permission to test in #1, he'd need to go through Gen. Patton, and Groves loathed Patton, "the most disagreeable man I had ever met."
George Kistiakowsky, the top scientist for high explosives, chose to leave for the test site just after midnight on Friday the 13th, because he "believed in unorthodox luck."
Scientist Philip Morrison later said that the "scariest thing" about the test experience was "the fast driving young woman who drove us down there with the convoy, who was a high-speed, pedal to the floor the whole way."
Groves and Oppenheimer had to watch the test from different shelters, separated a bit, so that if one of them died, the other could keep managing the project.
Groves stationed 20 government agents in nearby towns not just to monitor for safety issues, but to counter any damage claims that people nearby might later attribute to the blast and ask for compensation from.
The Army deliberately did not pursue the question of fallout exposure from the test too diligently, because they feared lawsuits.pic.twitter.com/RBkcxhbmm7
All of the above come from the CDC's Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Report, vol. 5 (2007), appendix N. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/LAHDRA/
My favorite quote on Trinity remains test director Kenneth Bainbridge's: "Now we are all sons of bitches."http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/07/17/now-we-are-all-sons-of-bitches/ …
I know how we know the size of the pre-compressed core was but how do we know how big the post-compressed core was (prior to the explosion)?
science and stuff (it can be worked out from things like the efficiency of the reaction) http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/11/10/fat-mans-uranium/ …pic.twitter.com/HEujXSzgy4
Who would of thought that nuclear science could be so hard?
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