80 years since Trinity test, new oral history reveals the human drama: Scientists were told "lie face down, don't look!" Edward Teller's response? "Hold my calculator" *stares directly at nuclear explosion through welding goggles*

80 years since Trinity test, new oral history reveals the human drama: Scientists were told "lie face down, don't look!" Edward Teller's response? "Hold my calculator" *stares directly at nuclear explosion through welding goggles*
#Germany was the world leader in many fields of #science.
Until the #Nazis came and threw out the best scientists because of the heritage.
The #US took in some of these refugees, many of them participated in the #ManhattanProject, and became the world leader in science and technology.
The Soviets may have put a satellite up first and Gagarin, but Gagarin had to jump out of his capsule because the parachute on it didn't work.
But #America landed humans on the #Moon and returned them safely to the #Earth.
Now, #fascist and #demented #Trump has, in less than a year, made it nearly impossible for any international #scientific #conference to be held anywhere in the United States ever again based on its deportment policies, arbitrary demands for #bribes, and #abductions by #brownshirts on the street.
Hanson, Kara. “We Moved a Conference Halfway Around the Globe to Avoid Visa Discrimination.” Nature, vol. 639, no. 8053, Mar. 2025, p. 9. https://doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00614-1.
Nel giorno degli 80 anni dalla prima detonazione di un'arma nucleare della storia, ricordiamo, grazie a Gabriella Greison, #LeonaWoods - 'La donna della bomba atomica' - Invidious https://iv.duti.dev/watch?v=EC8I1Oe0Sb8 #ManhattanProject
The Little-Known History Of #BohemianGrove, The Summer Camp For The ‘Masters Of The Universe’
By Katie Serena | Edited By Jaclyn Anglis
Published November 28, 2021
Updated February 6, 2022
A private campground in Monte Rio, California, Bohemian Grove hosts an all-male social club of rich and powerful members who want to "misbehave."
The High-Ranking Bohemian Grove Members
"Today, the Bohemian Grove serves as a getaway for members to reconnect with each other and to let loose. The club’s motto is “weaving spiders, come not here,” a line from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It means that members aren’t supposed to work while at Bohemian Grove.
"However, there have been notable exceptions, including planning for the #ManhattanProject in 1942, which led to the creation of the atomic bomb. But considering how many well-known policymakers have been members of the Bohemian Grove club, this isn’t entirely surprising.
"Past members and guests have included #RonaldReagan, #RichardNixon, Karl Rove, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Cronkite, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Colin Powell, and Nelson #Rockefeller."
#Caesium-137, a product of #uranium-235 fission, is one of the world's most widely used #radionuclides and is the inspiration for my nick.
Did you know that Margaret Melhase Fuchs, a #chemistry undergraduate at UC #Berkeley, discovered Cs-137 in 1941, but was prevented from pursuing a PhD?
More information about this interesting woman who has been repressed from history: https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/40/4/18N
The story of the search for Miss Atomic Bomb.
Link : https://apnews.com/article/miss-atomic-bomb-las-vegas-real-name-741ce5a943912cd893b7f83bf367d7ad
Genuine trinitite at : https://galactic-stone.com/trinitite/
Trinitite, atom bomb glass from the historic Manhattan Project.
Peter Lax, Pre-eminent Cold War Mathematician, Dies at 99 - As the computer age dawned, he saw how the new technology could be harnessed to mathemati... - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/science/peter-lax-dead.html #computersandtheinternet #deaths(obituaries) #manhattanproject #nuclearweapons #supercomputers #mathematics #coldwarera #laxpeterd
"Achieving AGI is the explicit goal of companies like OpenAI and much of the AI research community. It is treated as a milestone in the same way as building and delivering a nuclear weapon was the key goal of the Manhattan Project.
This goal made sense as a milestone in the Manhattan Project for two reasons. The first is observability. In developing nuclear weapons, there can be no doubt about whether you’re reached the goal or not — an explosion epitomizes observability. The second is immediate impact. The use of nuclear weapons contributed to a quick end to World War 2. It also ushered in a new world order — a long-term transformation of geopolitics.
Many people have the intuition that AGI will have these properties. It will be so powerful and humanlike that it will be obvious when we’ve built it. And it will immediately bring massive benefits and risks — automation of a big swath of the economy, a great acceleration of innovation, including AI research itself, and potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity from uncontrollable superintelligence.
In this essay, we argue that AGI will be exactly the opposite — it is unobservable because there is no clear capability threshold that has particular significance; it will have no immediate impact on the world; and even a long-term transformation of the economy is uncertain."
@petergleick No problem, eh. Canadians were key to developing the first nuclear weapons at Los Alamos and other secret sites of the #ManhattanProject , one of which was *in* #Canada (Chalk River, Ontario). https://torontosun.com/news/national/the-life-and-tragic-death-of-the-canadian-who-built-the-bomb
Btw, a Canadian is the *current* Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
@carstenfranke in #stlouis we are too well dusted ourselves- especially north of interstate 70. #coldwatercreek #manhattanproject #WestlakeLandfill
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a four-engined, long-range bomber of the United States Air Force. #History #Aircraft #AtomicBomb #Bomber #Hiroshima #ManhattanProject #Nagasaki #SecondWorldWar #WWII #HistoryFact https://whe.to/ci/1-24117-en/
#Pioneering female #Chinese #American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, who worked with Robert #Oppenheimer on the #ManhattanProject, was also the first to confirm #QuantumEntanglement – just 14 years after Albert #Einstein questioned the phenomenon. The largely forgotten achievement was included in a profile of Wu, one of the most influential experimental physicists of the 20th century, published in the December 2024 issue of Physics Today.
Wu is also believed to have been the only Chinese scientist involved in the Manhattan Project, the World War II initiative to develop an #AtomicBomb led by Oppenheimer, who affectionately referred to her as Jiejie, which means elder sister, the article said.
Wu’s experiment – detailed in a paper published in 1950 – was conducted before the #scientific community had fully grasped the significance of quantum entanglement, the article noted.
A road trip through New Mexico’s atomic past
#travel #NewMexico #tourism #roadtrip #ManhattanProject
A road trip through New Mexico...
Today’s #TMYK (3/365) is also a #PSA: The guidelines for visiting the Trinity test site (location of the first nuclear weapon detonation) have been revised.
Visitors are now permitted only one day per year (used to be two) and the Alamogordo Caravan has been indefinitely canceled.
There is good news, though. Signups are no longer required and it doesn’t seem there’s a cap on attendance.
I know where I plan to be on October 18!
Deets: https://home.army.mil/wsmr/contact/public-affairs-office/trinity-site-open-house
The Moment in Time: A Documentary on Wartime Los Alamos - https://youtu.be/nm3jR1DAYn0
Trinity Test Site photo journal featuring trinitite.
Link : https://www.dnews.com/stories/nuclear-ground-zero-17956527
It Will Take 25 Trucks Per Week Until 2025 To Dispose Of Nuclear Waste From The #ManhattanProject
A special waste disposal site in Michigan will handle the 80 year old #radioactive waste
https://jalopnik.com/it-will-take-25-trucks-per-week-until-2025-to-dispose-o-1851626243
My trinitite pendants got mentioned in a Hack-A-Day article.
Link : https://hackaday.com/2024/09/04/boss-byproducts-the-terrible-beauty-of-trinitite/