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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.
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
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.
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.
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?!
No. IAANP and that is hollywood fiction.
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.