The origin of the invention of the atomic bomb

Why does the atomic bomb have such high energy?

I believe this question can be answered by many friends, it is because the atomic bomb uses heavy nuclear fission, but a uranium-235 nucleus fission called barium-141 and the krypton-92 nucleus will lose a little mass, and this lost mass will be completely converted into energy by mass to energy conversion, and the formula is as follows.

Because the mass is multiplied by the speed of light squared, so just a little mass loss, the energy generated is astronomical, such as the Hiroshima bomb, loaded with more than 60 kg of uranium, but only 1 kg of uranium fission, resulting in a mass loss of about 1 gram, the conversion of energy up to 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent.

Why did Einstein know the mass-energy formula before the atomic bomb exploded?

Science friends should know very well, Einstein is in the special relativity theory of deduction of the mass-energy equivalence formula, September 26, 1905, Einstein published "On the electrodynamics of moving objects", September 27 on the publication of "the inertia of the object with the energy it contains? He published two Nobel Prize-winning papers a day apart.

So many friends are dumbfounded, but this is Einstein's manuscript more than 3 months ago, the former is known as the special relativity paper, while the latter is the description of the mass-energy equivalence equation, which is familiar to us E = MC². What is more unexpected is that the paper "Is the inertia of an object related to the energy it contains? It is only a few pages long, but the answer is astonishing.

Is the inertia of an object related to the energy it contains? Paper

This is a corollary of special relativity, which describes the formula for calculating the change of energy contained in an object under the premise of the Lorentz transformation of the superposition of the mass-augmentation effect and the velocity, and the process of its derivation is not complicated, as follows.

Perhaps Einstein felt that the derivation of this formula is too simple so there is no clear account of the origin of the square of C², so there were many scientists raised objections, but they later deduced that the origin of C² is not a problem at all.

Now some scientists have derived the mass-energy equivalence equation based on the kinetic and potential energy formulas and the Swansea radius, which is more intuitive and easier to understand than the latter, so if you are interested, you can search for the derivation by Jim Maggot in his book "Quantum Space".

1905 was four years before Rutherford's alpha particle scattering experiment discovered the atomic nucleus, so Einstein had no idea what the concept of the so-called atomic bomb was, and even the atom was still being figured out. The timeline of the atomic bomb must span decades later, and the role will be greatly changed, because the invention of the atomic bomb has nothing halfway to do with Einstein.

The discovery of heavy nuclear fission and the atomic bomb

In 1909 Rutherford's alpha particle scattering experiment found the nucleus, in 1918 Rutherford in alpha particle bombardment of nitrogen nucleus found the proton, 1932 British scientist and Rutherford's student James Chadwick discovered neutrons, this paved the way, for that Fermi in 1934 bombarded the uranium atom with neutrons, produced barium, and also 40% less mass because the other is krypton, the gas.

It is a pity that the great god Fermi did not know that this was fission, so he missed a Nobel Prize. Soon after Fermi published his research results the experiment was repeated by Otto Hahn, Liz Merit, and others, while Hahn rigorously analyzed the experimental process, which led to the discovery of the nuclear fission process. On December 22, 1938, Hahn wrote the experimental process as a paper and submitted it to Nature Science, so the 1944 Nobel Prize was awarded to Hahn for his great discoveries in nuclear fission.

After the discovery of fission, scientists soon realized that the atomic nucleus would lose mass and produce huge energy after fission, and the relationship between these masses and energies could be applied to Einstein's mass-energy equation, so Einstein derived the formula waiting for everyone long before the discovery of nuclear fission.

But the fact is that this energy conversion is fundamentally different from the other energy conversion. Many friends have said that mass-energy equivalence, even though the energy in chemical reactions can be used equally, why is it different? The mass lost in uranium fission is only about 0.0945%, while Einstein's mass-energy equivalence is universal for all masses.

The real meaning of this equation is to explain the origin of matter in the universe, that is, the Big Bang reveals the transformation process from energy to mass, so the mass equivalence in atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs is "narrow", while the mass-energy equivalence equation is "general".

After the outbreak of World War II, scientists were worried that Nazi Germany would make the atomic bomb first, so a large group of scientists wrote to President Roosevelt suggesting the development of the atomic bomb, and what Einstein did was sign a big name on that letter, after all, no one is more famous than Einstein.

Einstein-Dillard Letter

Nazi Germany began to develop the atomic bomb, leading the nuclear program is the famous Heisenberg, but Germany in the nuclear program has never been smooth, either the heavy water factory blew up or the ship carrying heavy water sank, either Heisenberg miscalculated, the manufacture of nuclear bombs uranium charge to several tons, anyway, finally just did not build.

And at 5:29:45 on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb in human history exploded over the Alamogordo Desert, an implosion-type plutonium bomb with a charge of 5 kg of gamma-phase plutonium. 21 days later, over 400 meters above Hiroshima, the Little Boy uranium bomb exploded, and 24 days later, the Nagasaki plutonium bomb exploded, and mankind entered the era of real nuclear fission from then on.

In 1951, the first hydrogen bomb device was successfully experimented with and upgraded to the era of nuclear fusion, from the era of the hydrogen bomb, human beings officially became a species that can destroy themselves, because according to the model of hydrogen bomb detonation, it is possible to constitute an N phase hydrogen bomb through multiple subsets, thus upgrading the power of hydrogen bomb to "infinity", according to the existing theoretical model, it can reach at least 10 billion tons of TNT equivalent or more.