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70th Anniversary of Trinity Test: Reflecting On the Bomb
Lasrick writes: It's the 70th Anniversary of the Trinity atomic bomb test, and Dan Drollette pulls together a series of reflections, over time, by the scientists who were there. The Bulletin reports: "In the middle of May, on two separate nights in one week, the Air Force mistook the Trinity base for their illuminated [training] target. One bomb fell on the barracks building which housed the carpentry shop, another hit the stables, and a small fire started." Other reflections show how perceptions changed over the years. A fascinating history of the beginning of the nuclear age.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
Movie is utterly fascinating, awesome soundtrack.
If you're into nuke porn (sorry, I am, in a big way) it's beautiful, just incredible.
There's also a couple of very comprehensive docos on the Manhattan Project but I'll be damned if I can recall which was the good one I've seen, it was quite long and detailed.
That every man has the keys to heaven, and those same keys open hell. Paraphrasing, hope I didn't butcher it.
It applies very easily to science as well. The Nuclear age, and the science that sprung from it, is very controversial because of it's great destructive power. But on the flipside, an incredible potential for building and powering the human species. Same goes for all kinds of science, but I'm glad we keep pushing it forward.
I am 70 years old, the same age as the Trinity Site, and having majored in Physics in college, visiting the Trinity Site was on my bucket list. The site is only open twice a year, (as it is on the active military White Sands MIssile Range) the first Saturdays in October and April, and I went this last April 4th. The site is about 4 hours from anywhere, and deep within the missile range, and nested within several fences, so it is remarkable (and made the New York Times) that about 5,500 people were there that day. I knew there would be some fascinating reasons why anyone would make such a trek. Sure enough, a bus driver (marine) said his father had worked for the Manhattan project. A group of Japanese from Hiroshima were there, for some sense of closure, I heard. A man I chatted with told me he was from Los Alamos, and told me of his parents: his father had landed at Anzio beach in WWII, and after the war utilized the GI bill to attend college, and eventually earned a PhD in Physics. He then worked at Los Alamos for his career, where his father met his mother, also a PhD Physicist, and the first woman in the United States to get that degree, in the 50's. He was bringing his children to the Trinity Site to try to raise their consciousnesses about Los Alamos, and the legacy of his family. On a personal level, it was awesome to find some green Trinitite pebbles (which we were not to remove), and to have a docent put his Geiger counter near them and hear the clicks rattle off about the faint residual radiation, still from that original Trinity plutonium bomb explosion. And it was profoundly awesome to stand next to the 12 foot stone obelisk, exactly at ground zero. The explosion at the Trinity Site was the beginning of a new era, an era where no nuclear armed country has ever attacked another nuclear armed country, and the world has been at peace from major wars for approaching a century. The discovery of nuclear fission and fusion changed humanity forever. For the good, I hope.