Well, Teller, I think he has to be much commended for that. Later on we found out that it is very difficult to ignite deuterium by an atomic bomb, and liquid deuterium, which is much easier to ignite than the gas, but at the time in '42 we thought it might be very easy to ignite liquid deuterium. And I said so, and I think Teller was very quickly convinced and so was Oppenheimer when he'd returned from seeing Compton. Well, I sat down and looked at the problem, about whether two nitrogen nuclei could penetrate each other and make that nuclear reaction, and I found that it was just incredibly unlikely. Oppenheimer got quite excited and said, "That's a terrible possibility," and he went to his superior, who was Arthur Compton, the director of the Chicago Laboratory, and told him that. Couldn't that happen?" And that caused great excitement.īethe: '42. So Teller said, "Well, how about the air? There's nitrogen in the air, and you can have a nuclear reaction in which two nitrogen nuclei collide and become oxygen plus carbon, and in this process you set free a lot of energy. So one day at Berkeley - we were a very small group, maybe eight physicists or so - one day Teller came to the office and said, "Well, what would happen to the air if an atomic bomb were exploded in the air?" The original idea about the hydrogen bomb was that one would explode an atomic bomb and then simply the heat from the atomic bomb would ignite a large vessel of deuterium… and make it react. Horgan: I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about the story of Teller's suggestion that the atomic bomb might ignite the atmosphere around the Earth.īethe: It is such absolute nonsense, and the public has been interested in it… And possibly it would be good to kill it once more. Here is an exact transcript of my interview with him, which took place at his home in Ithaca, New York. After considering Teller’s concerns, Bethe and others concluded… Well, I’ll let Bethe tell the story in his own words. (Ironically, Teller later helped create thermonuclear bombs, in which fission catalyzes a vastly more powerful fusion explosion.) Teller brought his concerns to other physicists, including Bethe, an authority on fusion (and pretty much everything else in nuclear physics). Teller reportedly did calculations suggesting that a fission explosion might generate heat so intense that it would trigger runaway fusion in the atmosphere. I heard about the incident in 1991 while preparing for an interview with Hans Bethe, who headed the Manhattan Project’s theoretical division. While winds were calm in the morning, they were expected to increase through the day and neighborhoods downwind could experience very unhealthy air quality.Īssociated Press reporter John Antczak contributed from Los Angeles.The 70 th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has reminded me of an extraordinary incident that occurred during the Manhattan Project, when Edward Teller and other physicists feared the fission bomb they were building might incinerate the planet. The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued a special advisory for the immediate area, urging people who smelled smoke or could see ash to limit exposure by remaining indoors with windows and doors closed. One round of winds hit Thursday and another was predicted to develop by the weekend. It took several hours to control the flames.įortunately, the fire erupted in a calm period between bouts of Santa Ana winds that have been sweeping through Southern California. Some nearby residents left their homes, but firefighters pouring streams of water prevented the flames from spreading to residences. The fire was reported around 4:45 a.m., and more than 100 firefighters and 26 fire engines from multiple departments responded to the industrial district surrounded by neighborhoods about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles. He said he tried to douse the blaze with a hose. “They’re barbecuing, making fires to stay warm,” Christian Hernandez told KNBC-TV.Įlias Hernandez said the fire burned a homeless man’s belongings before spreading to a utility pole, and “from there, it just started spreading everywhere.”” Nearby residents blamed a homeless encampment in the alley.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |