Officials in 1945 at the test site in New Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?em&ex=1193976000&en=4f452d60def283aa&ei=5087%0A
Use that URL for a pic of Columbia's Pupin Physics Lab and a video that I could mostly hear.
Posted on 10/31/2007 1:24:01 AM PDT by neverdem
By nature, code names and cover stories are meant to give no indication of the secrets concealed. “Magic” was the name for intelligence gleaned from Japanese ciphers in World War II, and “Overlord” stood for the Allied plan to invade Europe.
Many people assume that the same holds true for the Manhattan Project, in which thousands of experts gathered in the mountains of New Mexico to make the world’s first atom bomb.
Robert S. Norris, a historian of the atomic age, wants to shatter that myth.
In “The Manhattan Project” (Black Dog & Leventhal), published last month, Dr. Norris writes about the Manhattan Project’s Manhattan locations. He says the borough had at least 10 sites, all but one still standing. They include warehouses that held uranium, laboratories that split the atom, and the project’s first headquarters — a skyscraper hidden in plain sight right across from City Hall.
“It was supersecret,” Dr. Norris said in an interview. “At least 5,000 people were coming and going to work, knowing only enough to get the job done.”
Manhattan was central, according to Dr. Norris, because it had everything: lots of military units, piers for the import of precious ores, top physicists who had fled Europe and ranks of workers eager to aid the war effort. It even had spies who managed to steal some of the project’s top secrets.
“The story is so rich,” Dr. Norris enthused. “There’s layer upon layer of good stuff, interesting characters.”
Still, more than six decades after the project’s start, the Manhattan side of the atom bomb story seems to be a well-preserved secret.
Dr. Norris recently visited Manhattan at the request of The New York Times for a daylong tour of the Manhattan Project’s roots. Only one site he visited displayed a public sign noting its...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Officials in 1945 at the test site in New Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?em&ex=1193976000&en=4f452d60def283aa&ei=5087%0A
Use that URL for a pic of Columbia's Pupin Physics Lab and a video that I could mostly hear.
I thought most of the research was done in Tennessee. Still, why would you name a super-secret project after the borough it was taking place in?
bttt
More young adults on cholesterol drugs
CUOMO VS. MEDICAID FRAUD Many other stories were mentioned.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
I think the enrichment took place in TN.
I thought the story addressed that question. You want to make it hidden in plain sight.
The first stable reactor stack was in Chicago. The Uranium came from Oak Ridge. The Plutonium came from Hanford. The development was at Los Alamos, and the testing at White Sands. Manhattan wasn’t involved. The code name was was misdirection.
I know New Yorkers like to believe that they are the only place that is or has ever been important, but why don’t y’all let it go. You can’t be the center of the universe every day.
Thanks neverdem.
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/shiva/shiva.html
“...now I am become Death [Shiva], the destroyer of worlds...”
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer, Supervising Scientist Manhattan Project on 16 July 1945 at 0529 HRS, in the Jornada del Muerto desert near the Trinity site in the White Sands Missile Range... quoting from the Bhagavad-Gita upon witnessing first atomic detonation by mankind.
The early work happened through the Manhattan office of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The scope of work soon grew beyond what could be done on a crowded island, however. After the move, the name stuck.
Like it or not, a lot of stuff does happen in New York.
New York City is certainly an interesting place.
Most of it, especially the process deemed best likely to succeed.
But there was a little known additional, call it a back-up system for "just in case...", enrichment site using a totally different enrichment process.
Let's just say I don't drink tap water derived from Mississippi River water and won't use Tylenol, the contaminated dirt from the site was moved in open trucks through neighborhood streets in a large metropolitan area to a dump site where workers at a major defense plant played sports until someone showed up with a gieger counter (the ball fields are now fenced off, but along side a major metropolitan interstate).
Scared yet? I discovered it by accident, saw the homemade plaque in a warehouse where the uranium had been improperly stacked and a small reaction had taken place, took a stroll down a in-plant alley between substations and seen the roped off contaminated areas, and had the whole history explained to me by several of the old timers at the facility. The rest was able to be pieced together from news articles in the Post Dispatch.
For Missouri FReepers, remember the Weldon Springs Ammo Plant Clean-up project from the 90's? If only conventional explosives were being made there during WWII, how come the wooden pipes were radioactively contaminated?
I’m surprised that the article does not seem to call it by its proper name, which is (purposely) less intriguing: “Manhattan Engineering District.”
To elaborate slightly, Enrico Fermi built preliminary sub-critical reactor stacks at Columbia. But Arthur Compton, a physicist with the University of Chicago on the board overseeing wartime atomic research, decided that Fermi should move his work there, including the final "pile" (Fermi's term) which went critical on 2 December, 1942, under the stands of Stagg Field. Their work there was given the cover name "Metallurgical Laboratory."
I don't recall whether they needed enriched Uranium (more than .7% U-235) for the original piles, but they did need Uranium and the Carbon used as a moderator purified to unprecedented levels to avoid reaction-killing impurities.
Meanwhile, Glenn Seaborg, on temporary assignment in Chicago away from his home base in Berkeley, isolated enough Plutonium--in microgram quantities at first--to determine its properties.
This led to the possibility of a Plutonium bomb, after much experimental difficulty. First, the difficult mechanical challenge of a spherically symmetrical implosion had to be met. Second, Plutonium-239 had to be produced in industrial quantities (kilograms) by breeding it in Uranium reactors; first, at Oak Ridge, and then, on a large scale, at Hanford.
Fortuitously, both Uranium (gun-type) and Plutonium (implosion-type) bombs became available at about the same time: July 1945. The builders were so confident of the Uranium Gun design that they made the first "gadget" directly into a deliverable bomb, "Little Boy," and this was the first weapon to be delivered, against Hiroshima on 6 August.
But that was not, of course the first detonation of an A-bomb. Deciding that the Plutonium implosion design really needed to be tested before risking its deployment, they set the first one off on 16 July near Alomogorodo--the legendary "Trinity" test. With that success, they had the second unit, already in the pipeline, made into a bomb and delivered it as "Fat Man" against Nagasaki on 9 August.
Irony clarification: There is evidence that there were previous atomic detonations, a long, long time ago, in India (thus the irony, that he'd quote an Indian text).
I was blessed to be in NM for the Oct. open house at Trinity Site two years ago. What an amazing place. I took my mother who had been a little girl, her daddy gone to war in the Pacific, when “everything changed” in 1945. The open house organizers do a nice job, with some plaques to read and some demonstration tents with docents but nothing more structured than that. They don’t need to - the site speaks for itself. It’s a very still place. The visitors were subdued, there was a sense of reverent respect. Except for one child who started whining, “This is boring. Let’s go home.” I suppose it’s reasonable for an elementary school aged kid not to understand, but I fear he’ll grow up into an adult who’ll never understand. If anyone is in NM the first Saturday in Oct. or April, Trinity Site is worth the drive.
ATOMIC MATERIALS
Beryllium Metals 9,681 lbs. -- $ 10,874.
Cadmium alloys 72,535 lbs. -- $70,029.
Cadmium metals 834,989 lbs. - $71,466.
Cobalt ore & concentrate 33,600 lbs. -- $49,782.
Cobalt metal & cobalt-bearing scrap 806,941 lbs. -- $1,190,774.
Uranium metal 2.2 lbs. - (enriched)
Aluminum Tubes 13,766,472 lbs. -- $13,041,152.
Graphite, natural, flake, lump or chip 7,384,282 lbs. -- $812,437.
Beryllium salts & compounds 228 lbs. -- $775.
Cadmium oxide 2,100 lbs. -- $3,080.
Cadmium salts & compounds, n.e.s. * 2 lbs. -- $19.
Cadmium sulfate 2,170 lbs. -- $1,374.
Cadmium sulfide 16,823 lbs. -- $17,380.
Cobalt nitrate 51 lbs. -- $48.
Cobalt oxide 17,800 lbs. -- $34,832.
Cobalt salts & compounds n.e.s. 11,475 lbs. -- $7,112.
Cobaltic & cobaltous sulfate 22 lbs. -- $25.
Deuterium oxide (heavy water) -- $1,100 grs.
Harry "The Hop" Hopkins, FDR's alter ego, was the Director of the Lend-Lease program at the time. And, known now from the VENONA Project, "The Hop" was Soviet "Agent No. 19."
Note - these material shipments pre-date the Trinity shot by nearly two years.
__________________________________________
I understood the 'super-secret' part to mean that almost nobody knew about it at all at the time. I doubt that even those lower level workers knew that they were working on "The Manhattan Project".
“I think the enrichment took place in TN.”
And Hartford, WA, iirc
Interesting story, but what does it have to do with Tylenol?
ATOMIC MATERIALS
Beryllium Metals 9,681 lbs. — $ 10,874.
Cadmium alloys 72,535 lbs. — $70,029.
Cadmium metals 834,989 lbs. - $71,466.
Cobalt ore & concentrate 33,600 lbs. — $49,782.
Cobalt metal & cobalt-bearing scrap 806,941 lbs. — $1,190,774.
Uranium metal 2.2 lbs. - (enriched)
Aluminum Tubes 13,766,472 lbs. — $13,041,152.
Graphite, natural, flake, lump or chip 7,384,282 lbs. — $812,437.
Beryllium salts & compounds 228 lbs. — $775.
Cadmium oxide 2,100 lbs. — $3,080.
Cadmium salts & compounds, n.e.s. * 2 lbs. — $19.
Cadmium sulfate 2,170 lbs. — $1,374.
Cadmium sulfide 16,823 lbs. — $17,380.
Cobalt nitrate 51 lbs. — $48.
Cobalt oxide 17,800 lbs. — $34,832.
Cobalt salts & compounds n.e.s. 11,475 lbs. — $7,112.
Cobaltic & cobaltous sulfate 22 lbs. — $25.
Deuterium oxide (heavy water) — $1,100 grs.
Getting the bomb plans for free — Priceless!
I’ve always felt Oppenheimers Bhagavad-Gita quoting to be a prime Drama Queen moment in history. I would have respected “For they have sown the wind...”
‘I know New Yorkers like to believe that they are the only place that is or has ever been important, but why don’t y’all let it go. You can’t be the center of the universe every day.’
You do realize many New Yorkers will now require even more psycotherapy after reading your post, right?
(chuckle)
According to Edward Teller (who was very much there and should know), the project got started with emigre physicists working at Columbia. It was originally handled by the Army Corps of Engineers office in Manhattan, and Leslie Groves chose the non-revealing code name, “Manhattan District Engineering Project”.
The real technical breakthough was the realization by Leó Szilárd, who had been a chemical engineer before he was a physicist, that carbon moderators had previously failed because of boron contamination. Teller’s first request to the War Department was $10,000 to buy enough pure carbon. And that’s what he got, $10k. The first nuclear reactor was constructed gratis using carbon borrowed from the government.
The Germans (Heisenberg und Kompanie) never made the connection between boron contamination and neutron absorbtion. The pursued heavy water, a much more costly approach, that did not prove practical.
Not according to Edward Teller, who should know.
The project originally got off the ground at Columbia. It was actually more important than that. Emigre physicists at Columbia pressed Albert Einstein to sign a letter (which they drafted) to President Roosevelt explaining the possibility of an atomic bomb. (Other than this Einstein’s involvement was nugatory.) Teller delivered the letter to the White House, but not to Roosevelt personally.
The project started as a “study contract” at Columbia handled out of the Manhattan office of the Corps of Engineers. BG Leslie Groves chose the name “Manhattan District Engineering Project” to be as non revealing and non attention getting as possible. Something called the “Manhattan District Engineering Project” handled out of Tennessee would draw attention.
Counter factual speculation (”what-if”) is fruitless, imho. In point of fact the Manhattan Project was born in Manhattan and Manhattanites contributed greatly to its success, as did people from all over the country and immigrants who actually wanted to help the country that accepted them and sheltered them.
Thank you for posting this. I’ll have to buy this book.
My father worked on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University and, on occasion, at Oak Ridge. Though not a major player (he was just out of grad school at the time), he was working on uranium enrichment techniques.
Of course, he couldn’t talk about what he was doing. A friend and neighbor who happened to be a science fiction buff figured it out. He had noticed that all mention of atomic weapons had abruptly disappeared from the pulp magazines. One day he announced to my father that his mysterious secret project was, in fact, the development of the atomic bomb.
This sounds very familiar. I grew up near the "Small Arms Plant" on Goodfellow and what is now Hwy 70 in north St. Louis. I remember the big field on the southwest corner of that intersection. I wonder how many sites there could be that we know nothing about.
Wonder if any of the men in that pictured developed cancer from standing in the middle of ground zero?
Hmmmmm. Cape Girardeau. Rush Limbaugh. Coincidence???
Yow.
Oppenheimer saw nukes for what they are, not simply “really big bombs”, but weapons that would change the face of warfare, and mankind, forever. His quote was not “Drama”, but a realization that a force had been harnessed that could kill millions in a single stroke.
Good point, one I'd overlooked. The émigrés were, in main, Teller and Leo Szilard. And you're right about Einstein -- his value to the project was that he knew enough to see that the Hungarians were right, and had enough celebrity status to get FDR's attention -- other than that, he had little to do with the project.
In point of fact the Manhattan Project was born in Manhattan and Manhattanites contributed greatly to its success, as did people from all over the country and immigrants who actually wanted to help the country that accepted them and sheltered them.
I know multiculturalism isn't popular around here but the Manhattan Project is truly a case where the US benefitted from drawing the brightest from everywhere else. Teller and Szilard from Hungary, Fermi from Italy, Klaus Fuchs (though he later turned out to be a communist spy) from Germany, and so on. There were a bunch of languages spoken at Los Alamos.
The Trinity site is actually closer to Sacorro than to Alamogordo. But the entry gate to White Sands was up near Alamogordo.
You’re dead right that the gun-type bomb was a fallback to the implosion-type, but the scientists eventually gained enough confidence in the implosion model that they didn’t feel the need to test a gun-type bomb. In fact, by the time the first implosion fission bomb, some scientists — most notably Teller — were looking ahead to a fusion (aka hydrogen) bomb.
LOL! Yes, Oppie could be a real drama queen. When he met President Truman after the Pacific War was over, he dramatically held out his arms and told Truman that he felt he had blood on his hands. Truman snapped back at him, "Then go wash them!" Truman wouldn't put up with Oppenheimer's dramatics, and lost all respect for him.
Another Oppenheimer quote I've always disliked was, "In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose." That sounds like the Expulsion From the Garden of Eden, or something.
Especially after the Norwegian resistance, in one of the most important and unsung resistance actions of the war, sunk the barges carrying the heavy water to the labs.
After the war, Heisenberg would claim that he intentionally followed a dead end, because he didn't really want the Nazis to have a bomb and he was just playing along. I have never found that claim particularly credible.
Lend-Lease of
Cobalt metal & cobalt-bearing scrap 806,941 lbs. — $1,190,774.
Uranium metal 2.2 lbs. - (enriched)
Aluminum Tubes 13,766,472 lbs. — $13,041,152.
Graphite, natural, flake, lump or chip 7,384,282 lbs. — $812,437.
Beryllium salts & compounds 228 lbs. — $775.
Cadmium oxide 2,100 lbs. — $3,080.
Cadmium salts & compounds, n.e.s. * 2 lbs. — $19.”
The others “could” be industrial material, but 7 million lbs of purified graphite and 13 million lbs of Al tubing explains how the Soviets got their enrichment plants going ......
Please illuminate the Tylenol comment.
Find a literal translation of BG11-32: Krishna is describing Vishnu's destructive power as time. Not a sudden explosive power but slow, unending, unbendable, unavoidable, all powerful entropy.
He should have picked something else for his Actors Equity audition.
I think you have now taken the gold medal in the FR snide cynics contest, despite very tough competition.
My, the webs we weave...
Ya. There was just no “right” side of the bed, this morning.
Ya. There was just no “right” side of the bed, this morning.
You should read the article in Physics Today from August 1995 on the Farm Hall tapes. After the War ended in Europe, German physicists, including Heisenberg, were kept under house arrest in an English estate called Farm Hall, where, unbeknownst to them, their conversations were recorded.
It's very clear that Heisenberg did not know how much uranium or plutonium were required to make a bomb and he obviously hadn't given it any serious thought. The idea that the German physicists didn't work to achieve an atomic bomb because of some sort of scruples was hatched right there, at Farm Hall. The German word is Lesart, but it translates to something like “version” or “story”. If Heisenberg had known how to make a bomb, he would clearly have tried.
From the article:
Writing of Farm Hall in a letter to the German publisher Paul Rosbaud on 4 April 1959, von Laue recalled the origins of the Lesart in the days following Hiroshima:The alternative excuse that the Germans couldn't have succeeded because their economy and industry was overstressed by the war also doesn't stand scrutiny. They spent more on the militarily worthless V-waffen than the U.S. did on the Manhattan Project.After that day, we talked much about the conditions for an atomic explosion. Heisenberg gave a lecture on the subject in one of the colloquia that we prisoners had arranged for ourselves. Later, during the table conversation, the version [Lesart] was developed that the German atomic physicist really had not wanted the atomic bomb, either because it was impossible to achieve it during the expected duration of the war or because they simply did not want to have it at all. The leader in these discussions was Weizsäcker. I did not hear the mention of any ethical point of view. Heisenberg was mostly silent.
Recently, the History Channel had a documentary on the recover of the heavy water from the wreck of the ferry that was sunk by the Norwegian resistance, at the cost of several Norwegian lives. The barrels were still intact and unopened. It turns out the heavy water was so little refined as to be worthless for weapons production. The British, who prevailed on the Norwegians to carry out what had to have been a very distasteful mission, killing fellow innocent Norwegians, had no way of knowing that the Germans did not have a "Szilard moment", that they knew something we didn't. Nor did they know that the heavy water was so dilute. (The barrels were marked on the outside with percentage of heavy water and physical analysis in England confirmed the validity of the markings.)
The real winner of WWII was the USSR ... thanks to FDR and his adminstration. The agreements from, for example, Teheran and Yalta are worth a quick scan. Operation KeelHaul is real page turned, especially as American troops were involved.
Without Lend-Lease, Hitler and Stalin would have bled each other to death ... No Iron Curtain, No Communist China, No Korean "police action" ... no USSR satellite countries.
So it goes ...
:’) Reportedly, he also took bets about the ignition of the atmosphere, i.e., that the atmospheric bomb ignition would literally destroy all the air and kill everyone and everything on the Earth.
Heh... IMHO, not, but of course there are some topics about that:
Ancient Atomic Warfare - Religious texts and geological evidence
New York Herald Tribune on February 16, 1947 | New York Herald Tribune on February 16, 1947 | Ivan T. Sanderson
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/720501/posts
Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times
Mammoth Trumpet | March 2001 | Firestone/Topping
Posted on 07/24/2006 3:03:03 AM EDT by ForGod’sSake
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671134/posts
Nice, maybe someday.
My handful has been on my desk for decades; it is not "hot" and does not glow in the dark.
I might be misremembering if Teller first thought about it but I know he was somewhat Chicken Little about it.
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