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Edward Teller Passes Away At 95
Lord Prox writes "Edward Teller, one of the 20th Century's greats in physics, died Tuesday afternoon at his home in Stanford. He was 95." Newsforge.com also has one of the final interviews with Teller, who was "a principal architect of the hydrogen bomb, [and] passionate advocate of nuclear power and antimissile defense."
In the salad days of nuclear-weapons testing, the United States detonated 331atomic, hydrogen, and thermonuclear bombs. Many of those explosions appear in Trinity and Beyond, which utilizes a lot of declassified footage, most of it in color. Standouts include the United States' South Pacific detonation of an atom bomb 90 feet below the water to study the effects on a fleet of ships. Surprise, surprise, they sink! If that wasn't enough, the navy also loaded the decks with sheep to study the effects of the blast on life forms. Surprise, surprise, they die! Glowing leg of lamb anyone? This film will alternately amuse and horrify you at the rampant irresponsibility of the Soviets and Americans in their quest for nuclear domination. The Russians have the honor of having detonated the largest nuclear bomb ever at a whopping 58 megatons. The Hiroshima bomb was barely a kiloton. Of course, after the U.S.and Russia ceased their activities, the Chinese decided to get in on the act. But that's a different story for a different documentary.
how is Penn taking the news? He'll never be the same without Teller.
That's sad to hear. Though some might strongly disagree, as a military guy myself, anyone who advances the capability for the USA to protect and defend itself is held in high regard by me.
Thank you Mr Teller.
I have no objections to a healthy debate about nuclear weapons, but you have to think that their main task is wholesale destruction.
By Richard Rhoads.
It's a fantastic book about the creation of the Atomic Bomb -- from when scientists first realized the possibility, through the manhatten project. It's set against the backdrop of political events of the first half of the century and provides a fascinating account of the entire experience, including the actions of Edward Teller.
I'd highly recommend it.
"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world!?"
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Some will mourn the loss of a man who vocally advocated the a strong national defense and who made great contributions to the development of the hydrogen bomb. I'm sure as well that others will castigate the man for those very same achievements.
However, I remember myself as a geeky kid in Malaysia interested in science and technology, writing a letter to one of the 'great names'. I was quite amazed to receive a personal reply to my letter, typewritten but signed by hand. His reply was humble (he never put down any of what must have seemed to him to be naive and silly observations), encouraging (the words "I am pleased that there are children from all over the world like you who are interested in science." aren't much to an adult, but they sure meant a lot to me as a kid!) and inspiring.
That sums up the man in my mind, and I mourn the loss of that man.
Edward Teller: advocated the use of nuclear weapons for everything from digging holes to brushing teeth.
Charles Simonyi: primarily responsible for the creation of Microsoft Office and Hungarian notation. *shudder*
Coincidence or evil Hungarian conspiracy?
Here a link to an interesting interview with Teller along with some video clips: Teller Interview
Walter Sullivan, a science writer and editor for The New York Times, died in 1996.
Spooky.
Rest in peace, o ye father of the cold war. And may lessons be learned from your mistakes, your regrets, and your insights.
Kip Hawley is an idiot.
A few years ago, he and colleagues submitted a paper to Nature that suggested dispersing sulfur dioxide or other submicron particles in the stratosphere to block sunlight and thus halt global warming.
Easing the effects of one kind of pollutant by adding a whole bunch of other pollutants to the atmosphere. Goodbye, global warming; hello, acid rain! Between that, and the whole hydrogen bomb thing, I'm guessing he wasn't up for Greenpeace's Man of the Year award.
It should also be said that he unfairly denounced another scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, as a comunist. Because Oppenheimer didn't think we should go for the H-bomb.
Not exactly a nice guy, glowing obituaries asside.
Gentoo Sucks
Yes, like Leni Riefenstahl, also dead today. Both vigorously supported some of the most destructive and forces known to humanity. Together, they could probably take over hell.
Their main task is to never be used, to just sit there and look evil.
That we have them to use discourages their use.
The world needs missiles.
Nope.
Eventually every nation, even the ones in Africa, will have nukes.
Yep.
"Nukes" are nuclear explosives, sometimes called "warheads". They do not need missiles to deliver them. Kamikaze terrorists are sufficient. A good ICBM shield does nothing against nukes.
An African nation that fired an ICBM at the US would have 80 missiles targeted to melt it into a puddle before their single shot even reached the Atlantic. Any non-suicidal African dictator who wishes to nuke America will transport the bomb by SUV, not ICBM.
Edward Teller did more to bring this world to the brink of destruction than any other human that has ever lived.
His ego drove him to push the hydrogen bomb on the world, and his ego prevented him from both admitting his mistake and from doing his best (like many of the other scientists who aided him) to make amends.
For those of who you insist the hydrogen bomb is necessary for national security, you're both ignorant and foolish. The hydrogen bomb has basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
A non-hydrogen based atomic bomb has more than enough bang to destroy our enemies. The ONLY use for a hydrogen bomb is planetary destruction.
I, for one, will not miss Teller in the least. He represents the worst of humanity. He was willing to put his ego ahead of, quite literally, ALL else.
Leni Riefenstahl died the same (previous?) day aged 101! Maybe making Nazi propaganda movies is the secret to longevity?
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Probably just a coincidence, maybe...
Beyond a few well-worn platitudes, it's obvious that the interviewer is almost completely ignorant of the history surrounding Edward Teller's life - essentially, the key events of the 20th Century.
If it were not for Dr. Teller, there likely wouldn't be an Internet nor a Slashdot, because we'd all be too afraid of arrest by the KGB to do anything other than quote Marxist platitudes at one another at our jobs in Red October Tractor Factory #5 or whatever. And for this callow young woman to speculate that the world would've been better off without this man - the least technical of whose works she obviously has no concept of understanding, given her total ignorance of science and mathematics (it shows in the article) - and then to brand him as the incarnation of evil on this planet, ruminating on how the world would be a better place had he never lived, is boundlessly hypocritical.
Even if she had enough historical and/or scientific knowledge to be entitled to opinions on these matters, the fact remains that she demonstrates no appreciation of the fact that she met someone who was truly a great man. Not necessarily a good man (though I certainly believe him to be so), but one of those who has truly made a mark on the history of the human race.
Hell, Teller obtained his PhD under the tutelage of no less a personage than Heisenberg, himself. That alone ought to bring out a note of respect for the man.
It's truly sad that such a brainless nitwit wasted some of the ever-dwindling store of hours Dr. Teller had left to him.
I posted this a few years ago for a related story, but it seems worth repeating now:
;)
So, I met him in an pseudo-interview with about 6 other students. I asked him if it ever bothered him to be the "Father of the H-Bomb" since his "baby" could be used for such evil and/or immoral purposes.
I thought he was going to jump out of his chair at me.
He got very upset and angrily announced that a scientist's only responsibility is to science. The possible uses of a discovery should not even be considered by the researchers -- that is someone elses business. And because of this, he did not feel even the slightest bit of remorse for his work on the bomb.
And then he upbraided _me_ (since I was on my way to grad school to become a scientist at the time) for thinking that a scientist _should_ worry about the moral implications of his/her work.
Needless to say, I didn't ask any more questions.
I don't know if I am comfortable with the word "guessed" being used in that context.
The unofficial
Nope, they won't even need an SUV. They'll just build it in place. It makes the whole thing much easier and cheaper that way since you can make a big, heavy, crude sucker out of whatever you can turn to the task.
.gasp, use the internet.
You just rent that abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Every big town has many to choose from.
No need to be a kamikaze either since you don't need to worry about getting close enough to the target like you do with a conventional bomb.
Either set a timer a week or so down the road, set it off with a radio,, or maybe a phone call, or. .
KFG
Great pic of the sausage can be found here:
The Sausage
It doesn't look too impressive until you see the guy sitting in front of it, which puts it into perspective. This was the United State's first thermonuclear device. Yield: 10.4 megatons. Made a big boom. =)
Is this accurate or not?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
He was also a cretin who tried to destroy the carreers of more talented people who stood in his way (Oppenheimer cough) he used other physicist under fear of alienation, rather than by sheer briliance and respect.
His contributions to the field of physics are nil, unlike Oppenheimer et al.
He also brought the most destructive power in the universe and allowed humans to not only destruct themselves but the whole planet. That is just too rotten... thank you Mr. Teller!
Yes, but what people are forgetting is that this was really just his half life....
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
make a big, heavy, crude sucker out of whatever you can turn to the task.
The word "crude" has no place around atomic weapons. You've got to line up the atoms exactly, or almost nothing happens.
However, it would be quite reasonable to ship a bomb as little parts, each 40kg or less, which can be assembled near the target site. I'd personally recommend concealing them inside the air-gaps within wide-screen TVs being shipped from China, but there are lots of ways to hide these things.
gasp, use the internet.
I've got a screenplay to sell you. An attractive teenage hacker stumbles onto a terrorist plot to nuke Washington, but he wards it off with a quick DDoS worm. Now he's got to find the bomb and unplug it while dodging the FBI and HLS agents hot on his trail!
An old, but good poem, originally published in the New Yorker, that makes mention of Dr Teller. RIP.
--
Perils of Modern Living - Harold P. Furth
Well up above the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter
Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.
Remote from Fusion's origin,
He lived unguessed and unawares
With all his antikith and kin,
And kept macassars[1] on his chairs.
One morning, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore three letters: A. E. C.[2]
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.
Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as gentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.
--
[1]. Macassar oil was a popular hair dressing in the 19th century, named after the Indonesian port where the oil purportedly came from. An "antimacassar" is the decorative fabric used on chairs or sofas to protect the upholstery.
[2]. AEC=Atomic Energy Commission, now replaced by DOE=Department of Energy. The AEC (like the DOE today) funded most of the National Laboratories, including Teller's Livermore Laboratory.
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
No, Teller wasnt't the mad one, Curtis LeMay was the crazy one.
He scared the Congress and President so much as both the head of SAC and as a loon that they instituted the Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons so that he couldn't use them as much as he wanted to.
Sorry.. the "Star Wars" program died when the Soviet Union did. It was ostensibly meant to counter their massive ICBM threat. What is was really meant to do was (kind of a re-vamp of the 70s moon program) to force them to spend billions of rubles on developing their own counterpart (or a way to defeat it). They started this, and then finally, at long last, fell bankrupt under their own stagnation.
It was the best non-deployed weapons program ever conceived.
And it should stay that way.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Ever heard of Project Chariot? Dr. Teller and his pals wanted to try atomic excavation by detonating 4 devices at Cape Thompson near Point Hope on the Chukchi Sea in Northwest Alaska, creating an artifical harbor.
It was the Eskimo's against the AEC, and the Eskimo's won, Thank God.
Teller had the support of the Alaskan business community and the University of Alaska.
As it happens, Project Chariot ended up being subject to the very first environmental review of any federal project, and eventually they (AEC) gave up.
Teller didn't and shot off SEDAN, one of the dirtiest shots ever and the largest cratering experiment done at NTS.
Dan O'Neil's book The Firecracker Boys tells the whole story in fine fashion.
Many Japanese still believe that Kyoto was never bombed out of respect for that city's cultural importance. One version of the story has it that there was that there was a tacit agreement between the U.S. and Japanese militaries that bombers would ignore Kyoto as long as there was no antiaircraft artillery there. The reality is that Kyoto was the very first city on the list of atomic targets, and was only spared by bad weather, which caused the attack to be diverted to Nagasaki.
Pretty cold, I know. I think you before you get all self righteous either way ("day of infamy" versus "atomic genocide"), you have to remember that millions of people had already died on both sides. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as bad as they were, were distinctive only for the means by which they were destroyed. In terms of people killed and human suffering, they were minor affairs.
On the other hand, the whole "was it justified" debate is rather pointless. The bombs didn't end the war (that was done by a coup in Tokyo that was already underway), nor did they raise the level of atrocity more than a notch (previous firebomb raids had killed hundreds of thousands without any atomic stuff). I find it rather ironic that Teller himself went over to the "we should have demoed the bomb first" camp just before he died. That's a cop-out. If you invent nasty weapons, they will be used.
Unless you recognize the name, you'd have no way to tell [Hiroshima] apart from any other gleaming Japanese city.
Except for the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome sitting right squat in the middle of the city. That is still as it was 58 years ago, and is probably what the original poster was referring to. Seeing that symbol of destruction really makes you think (and if not, then with all due respect you've got problems).
Note that 100% of Japanese cities were bombed flat in WWII, so all buildings are less than 50 years old (even without the bombing, earthquakes would keep destroying them).
Wrong on all counts. Plenty of Japanese cities (though granted mostly smaller ones) escaped being bombed, and even the ones that were bombed were not "bombed flat"--even Tokyo has a fair number of buildings lasting from before the war. Besides, Japanese buildings are built to withstand earthquakes; one wooden temple building in Kyoto (Sanjusangendo) has been standing for over 700 years.
Brief history lesson, Germans almost develop ABomb, Americans using German know how do finish it. Americans only people to actually use a nuclear device in anger. Soviets steal secrets of ABomb from the Americans.
MAD isn't such a bad idea, unfortunately it relies on the premise that both sides are unwilling to risk it all in a conflict. It also relies on the fact that both sides have the same capabilities. If one side develops a technology that would mean they wont get wiped out in a world war then the balance has been thrown out of whack, and that is where things get dangerous.
Then you get the rogue states like Israel and North Korea, those who possess nuclear weapons yet refuse to sign onto the international treaties that form the basis of the MAD doctirine.
Teller didn't "balance the scales", if you want to get technical, the Soviets balanced the scales by stealing the Abomb.
No one would accept the army following the logic, "The enemy has guns, so we could buy bulletproof vests for our soldiers, but if we did that the enemy would just sneak up on them and use knives or bombs instead, so let's not bother with the bulletproof vests and let our soldiers get shot to pieces."
Who's to say that there won't be a suicidal/insane dictator in Africa? Or more likely, what happens if the US decides to invade N. Korea? (Perhaps on a mistaken belief that they don't really have long range missiles, or perhaps for other reasons) In that situation the leader of N. Korea might decide that he's fucked anyways, and decide to launch against the US.
If the US has no antimissile defense, it's going to be in a tough spot. The fact that we can turn N. Korea into a parking lot afterwards won't make those of us on the west coast feel much better about the situation. There's even a slight chance the US won't feel that launching a counterstrike is politically viable. Our friends in S. Korea wouldn't be too happy about all the radiation right next door, and although i would expect internation opinion to be on our side, the way the US has been treating it's allies lately, who knows?
If the US had an antimissile shield on the other hand, N. Korea's nukes get blown up in flight, and the ground invasion grinds on.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
> There is no obvious good utility for an atomic weapon of
> any kind.
Look up something called Project Orion.
That Orion never got off the ground (pun unintended) for stupid political reasons is truely a crime against science and the human spirit.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
A lot of left-wing scientists hated Teller for his ambiguous testimony about Oppenheimer, but Oppenheimer really was a security risk.
For good or bad, Teller wasn't the only father of the hydrogen bomb.s /giants/teller .html
From:
http://www.phy.bg.ac.yu/web_project
----
Teller and his colleagues at Los Alamos made little actual progress in designing a workable thermonuclear device until early in 1951, when the physicist Stanislaw M. Ulam proposed to use the mechanical shock of an atomic bomb to compress a second fissile core and make it explode; the resulting high density would make the burning of the second core's thermonuclear fuel much more efficient. Teller in response suggested that radiation, rather than mechanical shock, from the atomic bomb's explosion be used to compress and ignite the thermonuclear second core. Together these new ideas provided a firm basis for a fusion weapon, and a device using the Teller-Ulam configuration, as it is now known, was successfully tested at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952; it yielded an explosion equivalent to 10 million tons (10 megatons) of TNT.
----
Apparently nobody studies history anymore, but Mr. Teller should be recognized as a national hero of science.
.25 million Nipponese saved the lives of at least 15 million. If you can coherently argue otherwise, I agree to disagree, but would encourage an indepth study of Japan circa 1920-45 rather than trade meaningless barbs. The study of radiation effects is impossible to understand humanely, but asking a million Marines to kill millions is hardly an adequate answer.
Oppenheimer had been closely associated with communists from his earliest relationships, had latter vigorously attempted to stop H bomb development, and the secrets of the atomic bomb were stolen from under his management. To fault Teller for bearing true witness is lunacy, nearly as crazy as it was to fault Robert for his friendships and point of view, (which he had forthrightly admitted prior to becoming admin of Los Alamos).
Moreover, Teller had a legitimate reason to fear and despise Stalin, along with any group to which he was associated, having witnessed the terror of the Red army spilling familial blood in the streets of Hungary. He had first hand knowledge of the depths of its depravity, and was prescient in his understanding that only inexplicable horror would sate the whims of communist dictators.
That he should love this country enough to devote the greater part of his life and mental energies to protecting US dominance and expanding our sphere of influence to cover the globe demonstrates an uncanny foresight coupled with what must have been a deeply held love for the whole of humanity. Admittedly he hid it well with gruff mannerisms, but any other conclusions are based on illogical, often hysterical premises.
Consider the historical context: Both the Germans AND Japanese were developing nuclear weapons. Stalin killed 25 million Russians, Poles, Jews, etc. Germans killed untold millions after working them to death, and experimented on living 'subjects'. The Japanese were guilty of the Bataan death march, and countless atrocities not limited even to hacking off prisoners penises and sewing them to their lips while still alive, and easily raping and killing millions of innocent civilians. You have to be strictly ignorant of the 20th century not to realize that our obtaining first mastery of atomic structure is the only thing that stopped terrorism on a continental scale. If any of these parties had gained an unanswerable first strike nuclear capability, the untold misery of billions would have hung in the balance.
Teller, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Rabi, Bohr, Rutherford, Einstein, and the other scientists involved in atom & H bomb development are owed a HUGE debt of gratitude by the world, by civilization itself.
The world is a shade darker with the loss of Edward's brilliance.
Kommando Chris
PS: It's sad to realize the unknowing sacrifice of
Hirohito was powerless and mute without the shock and terror delivered to the populous, and if the destruction of Tokyo by bombardment had not produced the desired surrender (civilians were ordered to stay in their homes and try to put out the fires until dead), how many more millions should we have blown up to bring the war to an end?
Simply put, it was the most horrible and humane way to bring a merciful end to the insanity of that war.
PSS: Pacifists (Einstein, Szilard & Fermi(?)) hatched the idea of atomic bombs, the liberal Democrats (FDR) in government secretly commited to and funded these 'horrible' and 'inhumane' weapons, a 'communist' (Oppie) developed them, and another Democrat (Truman) dropped them. Please explain to me why I'm more intelligent, compassionate and humane as a pacifist Democratic voter again? Oh yeah, our party blew up 250,000 innocent civilians. And we freed the slaves, er... wait a minute... and we directly increased taxes to consumers by increasing taxes on the evil corporations, who only add that cost directly to their goods and services...ummmm, shit. Harakiri anyone?
Mad scientists and evil overlords everywhere mourn your passing!
The site of that test is now a mecca for diving enthusiasts, but the person who owns the dive rights only opens the waters for very limited usage. Hence divers dream about being able to dive in the waters which now has an immensely rich biodiversity. But they know they are unlikely to ever get there. FWIW's the test was an astonishing attempt to try and see what effect the bomb would have on a real fleet. There is at least one aircraft carrier down there.
There are a lot of threads here, some of them old and ugly.
1. With regard to the Middle Eastern Mess; it's, well, a mess. None of the Ugly anti-semitic, anti-jewish/anti-arab arguments, slurs, conspiracy theories--ancient and modern-- and what have you are anything like necesary.
Really, save yourself the energy; borrow a page from Witgenstein and, instead of making meaningless statements, why not just say that sickening generalizations aren't worth your time? Really, they aren't and can't be when playing with a yo-yo for the time it took to think up the biggot-stuff would at least have the fact that it built motor coordination to recommend it.
2. Concerning the star wars/anti star wars arguments, it's a nasty can of worms to have opened. Now that that it's in the world, the people who like it seem to hold it in a similar light to that which is usually reserve for questions of religious faith. Star wars just won't die and that's too bad, considering how short life is. I obviously fall on the 'anti' side when it comes to the issue and I think my reasons are good.
Long thoughtful books have been written on just what crap the whole notion of missle defense is. Missile screens are vastly expensive and, like the Maginot Line, limited by their specialization. Worse still, If nothing else, the September 11 attacks clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that the traditional 'nuclear deterrent' enjoyed by the great powers is itself ineffective and is rapidly becoming less so because every small nation that gets nuclear arms and aims them at anything important get to thumb its nose at the great powers that have them. Current affairs in North Korea, suggest that if Saddam Hussein had had them, he'd be smoking a cigar in Baghdad right now.
Real, effective, missile defense is decades and tens, if not hundreds of billions away and even if it had been up and running, running perfectly, from some spotless control center two years ago, it would have been meaningless against 20 guys in the right place armed with ten bucks worth of boxcutters.
In the world of fantasy and need, a simple, single solution like star wars is a magic bullet. Magic bullets aren't like the real world's compromises and partial successes; magic bullets solve all known old problems and create no new ones. When people imagine a magic bullet, hope blows away common sense, in this case, at an unimaginable cost.
Star wars is expensive. Boxcutters are cheap, but real, sustainable peace is cheaper still.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
I heard NPR cover this story yesterday and they had stated that he was very careful about what he said, and did not want to be taken out of context; so much so, that he would time his response to questions with a stopwatch!
[[ the only 15 letter word that is spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable: it may soon be, however. ]]
Rather than just reading about them, view actual footage of many nuclear tests as well as extensive interviews with Teller in Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie
It is a very moving documentary chronicling the development of atomic weaponry.
I work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the laboratory that Teller and E. O. Lawrence founded back in the 50s. Teller still came into the lab every few days or so up the point of his death. Periodically, he would give Q/A sessions with summer students and other interested parties.
On July 24 of this year, I attended one of these. I can write a lot about what he had to say, but what has come to the fore of my mind since the news of his death was one question in particular. Someone asked him what he most wanted to be remembered for. He responded that his discovery of the "Jahn-Teller effect" was the work that he was most proud of. It involes crystal symmetry arising from interactions between elecrons and nuclei, and turned out to be very important for material science.
This was work that he did to help unravel certain energy configurations of the benzene molecule. I'm not a chemist, so I only have the vaguest notion of what the Jahn-Teller effect entails. But it involves calculating the electron distribution of a molecule, coupled with its vibrational energy. If I am understanding it correctly, Jahn and Teller first demonstrated that the two energy states can be coupled, allowing for a lower, most stable energy state than if each were considered separately. It's still studied to this day.
Teller got very animated while he was talking about his work on this. I find it a shame that none of the writeups and obituaries I've read have mentioned this work. This is my small contribution.
I recommend two books that detail the wartime and postwar efforts to build the bomb. Teller's roles, both in the technology and the politics, are covered. So are the roles of many other players, including Germans and Russians.
The making of the atomic bomb and Dark Sun - The making of the hydrogen bomb, by Richard Rhodes.
Rhodes won a Pulitzer for the first volume and I daresay it is the better. Both are not without fault (in particular the second was not universally acclaimed in the physics community), but I found them intriguing.