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Edward Teller: Father of the Hydrogen Bomb
pigrabbitbear writes "Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, had a thing for nuclear bombs. He wanted them bigger, smaller, faster, used in ways that no one had thought of before or since, and always more of them. He suffered no fools, and though he would be more vilified than any other American scientist in the 20th century, he always dismissed his critics as lacking in common sense or patriotism. Amid Cold War paranoia and fears of the Soviet nuclear program, the stakes were simply too high: for the free world, building the most powerful weapon in history was a matter of life and horrible death."
Now that Iran wants to have nuke, what would the opinion of Mr. Teller be?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The fact is that without the atomic bomb, WWIII most certainly would have happened between the West and the USSR. The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki raised the stakes of another general war between the remaining Great Powers so enormously that a war like WWII would no longer be possible.
As horrible as these weapons are, they stopped the most terrible war the world would have ever known.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Teller destroyed the career of Robert Oppenheimer for no damn good reason, after which his own graduate students shunned him.
I have no interest in anything to do about him.
And his work has brought the state of research into nucleur physics forwards by huge leaps and bounds.
OTOH some of his critics were right. We didn't and don't *need* the hydrogen bomb.
But that said, for a given yield a fusion bomb will give you considerably less radioactive nastiness so it does have advantages over fission, and I can empathise with a man who thought huge explosions were pretty cool.
I wonder what the memories of the staff that saw those explosions "live" are. It must have been a magnificent show. The best of the human intellect to unleash the most destructive rage of destruction.
...Paul Teller taught at UC Davis in the 80's and 90's(maybe still does). When I took his philosophy of science course(PHI 108), on the first meeting with the TA, he said "Don't ask him about his father".
Not necessarily. Suppose Iran used a nuke against North Korea? Would the world approve or disapprove? China would disapprove, but America might not. The UK probably would approve. Who would retaliate against Iran? Who would be allowed to bomb or even nuke Teheran? Overall, the question is difficult to answer, and that means there's a shade of gray.
Now let's say Iran used a nuke on some slightly less evil place, but still evil. Would that turn the *whole* world against Iran, or would the support be divided, with slightly more countries against than if it was North Korea?
At what point would the *whole* world unanimously support wiping Iran off the map? If Iran attacked America? If Iran attacked one of the former Soviet states? What if Iran attacked Zimbabwe?
As to the larger point you try to make, the Japanese leadership's actions even after the first H bomb were hardly singular in wanting to surrender.
A bomb != H bomb. The U.S. dropped two fission bombs on Japan. Thank heavens we haven't dropped any Tellar-Ulam, a.k.a. fission-fusion, a.k.a. hydrogen bombs on anyone.
it is right for us to prevent new powers of such scale from arising
The big question is : How you are to achieve that goal?
In what way you can disarm Iran, with peaceful mean?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Disclaimer:
My grandfather was killed by the Japanese
He suffered severe torture before he was beheaded
The Japanese killed my grandfather 2 weeks after they have signed the "surrender letter" on board an American warship
And - this is important --- my grandfather was not the only one who was murdered by the Japanese occupation force after they supposed to have surrendered
Your assertion that "Actually the Japanese were trying desperately to negotiate a surrender even before the FIRST use of WMD against them" is nothing but hogwash to those who suffered under the Japanese
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thank goodness, now that the Cold War is over we have the War on Terror, so we can still dismiss critics of more spending for unnecessary weapon systems as "lacking in common sense or patriotism".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
He mustn't have brooked himself then.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I met him in his later years, after the bomb-pumped X-ray laser missile defense idea he was touting had fizzled. At the time, he was pitching precision-guided crowbars dropped from orbit.
Andrei Sakharov (of Soviet Union) is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov#Development_of_thermonuclear_devices
Not understanding why someone did something is a a reason to be interested, since it can bring greater understanding on your part. Being curious is the first step of the scientific method.
You've also ignored pretty well everything that somebody paying a tiny bit of attention to recent history would have noticed, such as the long running horrific war of attrition between Iran and Iraq which has left Iran with the majority of it's population under 25.
What happens in Iraq is pretty well a race between the younger generation taking control and the old men (as in too old to have fought in that war 20 years ago) getting nukes before they die. How the US and Israel would deal with Iran using a nuke is also not clear. Genocidal fascists in Israel are not going to be in control forever because their very existance is an uncomfortable reminder of exactly what Israel is not meant to be - so it's not even a given that Israel would hit Iran with all it's nukes if Iran started making nuclear threats (eg. nice island you've got there Bahrain - pity if something happened to it). Iran nuking Israel will never be to the benefit of Iran due to never being able to claim any territory over there and due to it creating another threat (response of Israeli allies) instead of removal of a threat.
Even if that were the case have you learnt nothing from the last decade in the middle east? It's not actually over until everybody stops shooting.
Dumb hawks that made sure they never went anywhere on the same continent as a shooting war have shaped too many opinions with "cold war warrior" bullshit.
The last time the US had military engagements with Iran they lost a lot of people due to political stuffups, choosing the wrong ally who killed a lot of sailors and having a horse judge for a captain that shot down a lot of civilians resulting in Iran financing terrorist payback on a Pan Am 747. War isn't simple and going into it condemns some of your own to death so it needs a very good reason.
Is there any other reason to lionize Teller at this moment in time? The text of the link includes the phrase "a matter of life and horrible death". In other words, an existential threat to Western Civilization. The implied parallel is that Islam and international Communism are similar threats to the West. If Teller is a hero for his position, the all the Republican presidential hopefuls are also heroes for calling for an attack against Iran. And Obama, along with anyone else who advocates caution, is a spineless traitor who want to destroy democracy.
Pure right wing propaganda.
Instead of looking back more then 60 years to the late 1940's, let's consider a much more recent and infinitely more relevant event: G. W. Bush's invasion of Iraq. This was a war of choice, and has emerged as the single worst policy mistake in the history of the USA. It cost the US and it's allies hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of US casualties, and over one hundred thousand civilian causalities in Iraq.
It made Iran much more powerful, and alienated the entire world from the US. All the European leaders who supported the war fell out of favor. Radical Islamic movements, who really do want to destroy the West, have much more influence in Islamic politics. Even with the nominal end of combat, no one knows when it will really end or how much it will cost, in both life and treasure. We still don't know how badly screwed up we are over this.
And now Republicans, who lied their teeth out over Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, are screaming that WE MUST ATTACK IRAN RIGHT NOW!!! So someone decides it's time to raise H-Bomb Teller from his crypt, wrap him up in the stars and stripes, and declare that he saved civilization from the Godless Hoards. Meanwhile, G. W. Bush, who is very much alive and well, is completely missing. He is so off the charts it's like he never existed.
As far as the Republicans and the mainstream media is concerned, Clinton left office, the world hibernated for 8 years, and then Obama took over. Now there is talk of more war in the Middle East, and no one even speaks the name of Bush. It's not like someone asked his opinion and he responded "no comment". No one is even asking. He has been edited out of history, like in 1984.
This topic is a de facto intelligence test. If you looked at it and wondered why anyone would be saying these kinds of things about Teller then you pass. If you saw nothing unusual, you failed. Given the kind of comments I've seen so far, everyone reading Slashdot is politically brain dead. If there was some way I could turn off life support for all the flat-lined Slashdot readers, I'd do it in an instant.
Why is Snark Required?
A bellicose feller named Teller
That prominent atom bomb seller
Promotes with aplomb
The hydrogen bomb
And tells the uncertain they're yeller!
-- lifted from the back column of a science mag of my childhood
Because of this:
What separates them is intent. Teller knew full well he was designing the weapons to end industrial civilization. Teller was deliberately designing stuff to kill people.
Thomas Midgley Jr. didn't know when he was developing the things he was developing that they were anything other than helpful to society.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It does not matter to the Iran Government what happens to its people in the process, including perhaps allies deciding to wipe out Iran if Iran decides to use the bomb.
Right, because it's the Iranian government's fault that the United States and it's pals chose to place unwarranted embargoes on Iran, crippling its economy. If the U.S. attacks Iran, it will be because it was "forced" to (at gunpoint, apparently), not because it purposely decided to against all reasoning.
And depending on the area attacked by allies oil prices will be much much higher, if they could still use the oil.
Yes, high oil prices is totally the first thing I think of when I imagine the negative effects of blowing people's father's and sons limbs off, bombing homes and cities into rubble, and laying waste and death to a peaceful society.
The other problem with anyone who decides to attack Iran using the bomb is the fallout to surrounding countries
Right, because the fallout IN Iran isn't a problem at it.
Iran seems hell bent on building the bomb, and the embargo's do not seem to matter to them.
Right, refusing to capitulate to a bully's demands is the same as "not caring" if someone bullies you.
Attacking there nuclear hideouts, or facilities seems to be the only way to end it now or disrupt there plans..
False dichotomy because who the hell says we need to "end it now" or "disrupt there (sic) plans"?
WE DON'T. WE NEED TO START MINDING OUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.
Stupidly ironic because we're standing right now on the precipice of the Third World War.
Yes, we think Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs are that stupid. Plainly.
Next question.
Rules of MAD don't apply to Islamic regimes the same way that they did to Communists. Sure, the Communists (Soviets & Chinese) were evil, but they were at least rational about it - while they undoubtedly wanted to wipe out their enemies, they themselves wanted to survive. Which is why deterence worked during the Cold War. During that time, there were a lot of espionage & terrorist acts pulled off by the NKVD/KGB, but how many suicide bombings does anybody remember that the Soviets did?
This does not apply to Islamic states. If they get hold of nukes and have the confidence that they can destroy their enemies, they'd be only too happy to do it, even if it means a nuclear retaliation. The entire phenomenon of suicide bombers makes it clear that they'd be happy to pay the price if they can have some guarantee that they'll wipe out their enemies - like Israel or India. The only reason Pakistan hasn't done it as yet is that they don't have enough nukes to wipe out India, and their long range missiles don't cover even most of India. The reason Iran hasn't done it to Israel is that they've not completed it as yet.
It's bad enough that Pakistan has nukes, and the only reason they're not a threat to the US is that they don't have the ICBMs that can get anywhere even close. Iran getting them would be just as ugly. Also, just like Muslims hate Infidels, within the ummah, there are the various sectarian divisions, like the Shia vs the Sunni. Saudi Arabia can't stand the idea of a Shia Iran having the bomb, because that's the sort of power it needs to convert entire Sunni populations to Shia (like in the case of Lebanon). So Iran's getting nukes will start an arms race where oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, et al will pay Pakistan to give them a part of their arsenal. Even in Iran vs Israel, the Saudis won't want the Shia to look like heros of the Islamic world for wiping out the Jews.
Including the USA in the "free world" is a bit of a joke - it's got the highest incarceration rate on the planet, by a very long way!
A is for Atom
Something so small
No one has seen one
No one at all
B is for Bomb
Something much bigger
And brother,
You'd better be careful with that trigger
Teller read those words for a PBS documentary (Nova?) years ago.
Dead is Dead
The Nazis could have kept Teller and a huge bunch of other excellent Jewish scientists, if only their grotesque racism didn't blind them, and push the Jewish scientists to the West (the USA mostly).
I think we can be all very thankful for the Nazis' idiocy, because their anti-Jewish propaganda might just have saved the world.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Surely you're not serious?!
See the nuclear football:
The United States has a two-man rule in place, and while only the President can order the release of nuclear weapons, the order must be confirmed by the Secretary of Defense (there is a hierarchy of succession in the event that the President has been killed in an attack). Once all the codes have been verified, the military would issue attack orders to the proper units. These orders are given and then re-verified for authenticity.
Edward Teller was just projecting the attitude of his time - an attitude based on economic theories stating that human society functions in a way where it's 'every man for himself'.
The RAND Corporation militarized this idea, and the nuclear arms race began as a solution to what was seen as a 'game of chicken', when in fact , it was Prisoner's dilemma.
Fortunately, we live in a time when this doctrine has been shown to be false and altruism has received better appreciation.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Funny, Midgley's history (as recounted by wikipedia) certainly doesn't seem innocent to me. In fact, it appears he perpetrated or participated in several significant lies designed to cover up the health risks of his work for the sake of profit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.
Did is take, not one, but two bombs and the Emperor intervening because they were trying so hard for peace? Wasn't there also an attempted coup because high-ranking officers couldn't stomach surrender?
Maybe they would have surrendered after another million Japanese died. Even if what you say is true, the atomic bomb saved both Japanese and American lives.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Bomb but were afraid to ask. It really helps if you have a little bit of knowledge of Physics, but there is stuff here that I thought had never been declassified. Like detailed information on Initiators and hydrodynamics. Be prepared to spend a few hours reading it. Bet Ahmawannajihad has it bookmarked. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq0.html
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
Not to be picky, but Abraham Maslow, the psychologist and father of the concept of 'self-actualization', was the first to use that expression.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Oh, and a couple of points on Teller. He was freaking out for three years tring to get his Classical Super to pass muster in calculations but no matter what varioations and changes were made to the model, it was always a fizzle. Huge waste of time and brainpower went in to that failure. It wasn't until Stan Ulam had the breakthrough regarding using one bomb to set off another that anything started to happen. And what Teller did was to come up with the fairly obvious additions of using the radiation from the primary as the implosion force and adding the Plutonium "Spark Plug" in the center of the Secondary, And Teller agressively shut out Ulam from any recognition for that initial, pivotal contribution. Teller was such a pain in the ass to work with at Los Alamos that Oppie would not give him a Group Leader role, hence the backstabbing that happened later, and during the engineering development phase of the "Super" they kicked him out of Los Alamos. He wasn't even allowed to attend the Ivy Mike test, and spent the time staring at a siesmograph in Berkley waiting to see if it twitched. After that, OK, he played the Evangelist, but for the poster waayy up there, there was no huge boon to Nuclear Physics generated by the development of either bomb. All of the theoretical and experimental work was basically done by the time they broke ground at Los Alamos. Teller was no Einstein, or Bethe, or Bohr. Feynman had more impact on Physics than Teller.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
No. IAANP and that is hollywood fiction.
I'm just curious - what brought Edward Teller to the interest of Slashdot all of a sudden? It's not an anniversary of anything that I'm aware of - so why are we now talking about this particular physicist?
As far as I can make out, he wasn't much of a nice guy. From the Wikipedia article on him: 'Nobel Prize winning physicist Isidor I. Rabi once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller."'
Also - is anybody on Slashdot going to make the connection with good ol' Bob Lazar? You know, the guy who supposedly worked at Area51 in the late 80s and supposedly worked in a facility where they were working on back-engineering alien flying saucers, stored underground? It's a great story, even if it is largely (but not totally) uncorroborated. Well, Lazar claims that Teller got him the job, after a chance meeting at Los Alamos Research Labs. Teller was interviewed about this years afterwards, and didn't seem too happy. Look on Youtube for "UFOs The Lazar Tape ... And Excerpts From The Government Bible" - it's a 40 min doc, but the Teller reference pops up at about 35m50. Worth a look, perhaps.
Has slashdot morphed into the history channel ?
Isn't this a bit too much Freudian ?
AccountKiller
Actually, a large part of the radioactive fallout does not come from the bomb itself. The bomb makes a huge excess of neutrons and these neutrons irradiate the debris from the bomb and create isotopes which are radioactive.
You need some better understanding of the Japanese culture at the time. They wouldn't have surrendered to the USA to avoid the Soviets. They were not the Germans. The goal was to fight to the last and they didn't care which barbarian flag was going to fly after they all gloriously sacrificed themselves to the Emperor. Yes, they sent out peace feelers, but that is more than a little red herring as you present it. If you research the subject and discover what the Japanese had in mind as acceptable terms for a cessation of hostilities: there would be no occupation by foreign troops, the Japanese would keep some of their conquered territories, Japan would disarm itself. Even Gar Alperovitz admitted to this in his book that popularized the idea that we were primarily trying to intimidate the Soviets (this was merely an incidental bonus). The Japanese were NEVER going to agree to a surrender with an occupation and war crimes prosecutions as long as they figured they could bleed the Americans to their terms in a bloody protracted conflict. Plenty of the leadership did not want to surrender even after two bombs; there was a coup attempt in order avoid the unconditional surrender. The Allies would NEVER accept the Japanese idea of a conditional surrender. They (including the Soviets) committed to unconditional surrender because they knew 1. There must never be any doubt that the Japanese and Germans were TRULY beaten 2. It was necessary to completely reform the culture. Failure to accomplish these goals after WWI directly resulted in the mindset behind the Nazi rise to power in WWII. The Nazi party line was very much: "We were never really beaten in The Great War, but rather betrayed by Communists and Jewish traitors in our government. Germany should be resurgent and reclaim its honor." It is very easy to see a resurgent Japan had they been allowed conditional surrender.
Muslims, like Christians, American patriots, Communists, and people with lots of other belief systems, have a notable and vocal subgroup that holds that it is better to die than to live in circumstances where there values are not realized.
OTOH, that obviously doesn't make them particularly special -- every group to which MAD has applied has had the same kind of groups (and the USSR, China, and USA also had regimes that were, publicly at least, convinced that they had survivability measures in place to allow the regime to survive a large-scale nuclear exchange, so as well as the "live in our preferred manner or die" element, there was also the "nuclear war is winnable" element to contend with.
No, it doesn't, because suicide bombers, you'll note, aren't generally from the privileged classes that lead the countries -- their usually from social groups oppressed by even the local government, and affiliated with organizations opposed to their local governments. Suicide bombers are from groups that have nothing to lose, but those aren't the people making decisions about national strategy.
The people making decisions about national strategy have lots to lose, and generally have expended considerable effort to acquire and secure those things that they would stand to lose.
Pakistan doesn't want to destroy India, it wants to control territory over which it has had conflict with India since the two countries became independent countries. Both the Pakistani and the Indian nuclear forces exist in large part to deter the other from extreme action in regard to that ongoing conflict (though India's also exists as a counterbalance to China).
Iran hasn't launched on offensive war anywhere since the Islamic Revolution (they have been the victim of a war launched by Iraq with the support of the US -- and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; interestingly, since then, the states that initiated and backed that war against Iran have since fought two additional wars among themselves, starting right after the end of the war with Iran.)
Most of the Sunni-ruled states that can't stand Iran having the bomb can't stand Israel having it either, so Iran having it doesn't really change things.
The Middle East/North Africa nuclear arms race has been going on a long time -- including various states in the region purchasing nuclear weapons technology from Pakistan -- and the main catalyst for it is Israel's nuclear arsenal, not the maybe-someday Iranian one. So Iran can't start a nuclear arms race in the region, because Israel did that decades ago and its still going on -- Iran getting nuclear weapons would be a product of that arms race, not its initiator.
There are two problems here: 1. Deterrence through MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) requires two rational actors interested in self preservation and a credible deterrent force for each. The USSR vs the USA met these definitions. The worry is that the the Iranian theocracy is not rational or revolution could result in even less rational leaders. Thus, the idea that Iranian nukes are unusable because the USA and Israel can deter Iran is a theory on shaky ground. 2. The inevitable nuclear arms race in an incredibly unstable region the crux of the problem. Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. The Arabs are predominantly Sunni. Arabs and Persians have quite the rivalry. Sunnis and Shias hate each other. Iran and the Arab nations do not like each other. A nuclear Iran becomes a regional superpower and can intimidate and enforce its will in the region. Do the Arab states really believe the USA will nuke Tehran if the Iranians demand Yemen grant the Iranians whatever they happen to demand? The bottom line is that Arab states will need to get nukes or be subject to Iranian hegemey. Iran leads to a dozen more nuclear states, then the worry of problem #1 above magnify plus the possibility of a nuke being lost or going to terrorists increases exponentially. A regional arms race was not a problem with North Korea. It is with Iran. A nuclear Iran drastically increases the chances of a mushroom cloud over some city in the following ten or twenty years.
Why on Earth would Iran want to do that? Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan have a fairly well documented collaboration on nuclear weapons technology.
Yes, if Iran launched something that might be a nuke in China's direction (look at a map), China would probably reduce Iran to ashes before the missile hit anywhere.
And if Iran launched something that might be a nuke anywhere near the direction of Japan and South Korea, the US probably would do the same.
Given the geography, Russia probably would have similar concerns, and Pakistan might as well.
And North Korea's delivery technology is on par with Iran's and their actual weapons technology is ahead, so presumably we can expect that by the time Iran has both usable warheads and the reach to hit North Korea, the reverse is also true, so North Korea would probably get in on the retaliation game as well.
All of the nuclear powers would support it as soon as Iran did something that had a credible appearance of being a nuclear attack directed at any of them or their close allies, because the firm principle that such attacks cannot be tolerated is the basis on which their own deterrence efforts work. No one is going to even going to get upset about the retaliating countries not waiting until the attack lands to retaliate, because no one wants to establish that standard as a norm.
All you need is an excuse that makes one nuclear power actively support wiping Iran off the map, and makes the rest of the nuclear powers unwilling to intervene in defense of Iran. Iran nuking anybody, anywhere, would be enough to do that.
One thing you can say about Teller is that he was not afraid of his own tools.
I met the guy once - in the late 1970's - and tried to persuade him of the potential of SPS (solar powered satellites). He'd have none of it. But I came away impressed. He was a great man.
Sum of All Fears was a book before a movie
Insane might be better. Observance to logic isn't a big thing for crazy religious nutjobs.
One can only hope that their love for power, money, position, and breathing are more important than whatever crazy nutball religious idea is currently passing behind their eyeballs.
Though I have heard that it is all just a big political act to keep the religious hardliners in the public and positions of power happy and contented, and that action isn't really all that likely.
Question is how much faith are you willing to put into all of that considering the consequences.
If there was ever someone who deserved the Nobel Prize, it was Teller. He succeeded to building a weapon too horrible to use. To date, this has been true. In addition, if it were not for the stark realization that we could actually destroy ourselves, I do not think we would have ever taken environmental threats to our survival seriously.
His autobiography is a fascinating read, http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Twentieth-Century-Journey-Science-Politics/dp/0738207780
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I met the guy. I wasn't impressed. He gave sort of a general talk on his historic work (atom bombs etc). When a physics undergraduate asked him if he had the choice would he have chosen to become famous for something other than helping to create such terrible weapons, Teller took the (well meant) question very personally, and more or less shouted him down. Right or wrong, I didn't like his apparent absolute certainty that the work on the atomic bomb he did was for all the best. Later in the evening he gave a lecture on his ideas in superconductivity, but after a few questions from folk, it appeared that he did not have the maths/theoretical physics to actually put his fuzzy idea into anything that might be usefull. My impression was that this was a mediocre physicist who only got an audience due to his controversial fame.
So by that definition you are admitting you are dumber than G. W. Bush?
If you think you are smart and capable enough to become President of the United States, then by all means, the world is waiting for you kid.
Just because Bush makes verbal gaffes and believes some things others believe to be wrong, doesn't mean he's stupid.
Fiction referred to books before it referred to movies