Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer forever changed the course of history

J. Robert Oppenheimer, a 21-year-old physicist, was deeply unhappy with his lab work and was avoiding it. He was surrounded by brilliant physicists like Rutherford and Chadwick, but he was deeply unhappy. In 1925, Oppenheimer became fascinated by the new field of quantum mechanics and was surrounded by brilliant physicists. Despite his frustration, Oppenheimer tried to poison Blackett, but the details are lost to history. Oppenheimer's parents successfully lobbied Cambridge University authorities not to press criminal charges, and due to his family's wealth, he was not expelled from Cambridge.

In 1926, Oppenheimer traveled to the University of Göttingen, where he was mentored by Max Born, who had coined the term "Quantum Mechanics." Born was a thoughtful and gentle teacher who nurtured the work of Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Fermi, and Eugene Wigner. The class at Göttingen was extraordinary, with luminaries like Paul Dirac and John Von Neumann. Under Born's mentorship, Oppenheimer thrived, improving his mental health and finding a community of people who were as obsessed with physics as he was.

On November 14th, 1926, Oppenheimer wrote to his younger brother Frank, "You would like Göttingen. I find the work hard, thank God, and almost pleasant." He was thriving and his talent was being recognized.

When Oppenheimer was 23, he graduated with his PhD in physics, writing his thesis in German on the quantum theory of continuous spectra. He published over a dozen papers in the two years he was at Göttingen, many of which expanded upon Werner Heisenberg's work. The two eventually met in 1927, the same year Heisenberg published his groundbreaking paper on the Quantum uncertainty principle.

The pair got along well, but 15 years later, they would be deadly rivals attempting to study quantum mechanics.

In 1943, Oppenheimer estimated that six scientists and a few engineers and technicians would be needed to make an atomic bomb. However, he was wrong by two orders of magnitude. Instead, 764 scientists worked for the Manhattan Project, with 302 at the Los Alamos site. Over 600,000 people were involved in the making of the atomic bomb.

On December 2, 1942, physicists at the University of Chicago, led by Enrico Fermi, created the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, Pile-1. The reactor consisted of 45 tons of uranium and uranium oxide, and 330 tons of graphite blocks. It generated about half a watt of power. The only difference between the two is the number of neutrons hitting the next atom, causing it to split and release more neutrons. This is known as the multiplication factor, K.

The simplest way to make a nuclear bomb is to get enough fissile material close together that creates a runaway chain reaction. The critical mass of a nuclear bomb is the amount of fissile material close together. For the first few years, scientists worked on a gun-type bomb, with two slabs of uranium-235 below the critical mass. They rapidly fired one towards the other, resulting in an atomic explosion when the uranium bullet was about 25 centimeters away.

However, this design is not very efficient, as only a small percentage of the uranium undergoes fission, resulting in a smaller total yield. Additionally, unexpected problems like lubricating the barrel of the bomb were encountered, with the only oil they could find being the oil from sperm whales.

The atomic bomb was created in 1945 by scientists at Los Alamos, with the goal of testing it before the start of the Potsdam conference. The conference began on July 17th, 1945, and the earliest date for the bomb was just one day earlier. The atomic bomb was called Codenamed Trinity.

When a neutron absorbs a nucleus of uranium-238, it briefly becomes U236, rips itself in half, and releases on average 2.4 neutrons per fission. However, most of the uranium is U238, which doesn't undergo fission. To make a nuclear bomb, scientists used massive mass spectrometers to separate out and concentrate U235, resulting in uranium with a higher concentration of U235.

In 1941, a new element was discovered or synthesized, which turned into uranium-239 when a neutron is absorbed by a nucleus of uranium-238. This unstable element decays into Neptunium, which then becomes plutonium. The critical mass of plutonium-239 depends on its density, which is about 10 kilograms. If compressed, the atoms get closer together, increasing the chance of a stay neutron hitting the nucleus.

The first implosion bomb design used a device called the urchin, a tiny pellet weighing just seven grams, to set off a nuclear chain reaction. The shockwave from the explosion mixed the beryllium and polonium together, and the alpha particles from polonium caused the beryllium to release a flood of neutrons, setting off the nuclear chain reaction.

The atomic bomb's success was a testament to the potential of atomic bombs and the importance of early detection and testing.

In 1949, the Soviet Union tested their first atomic weapon, the hydrogen bomb, known as "The Super." Oppenheimer opposed the development of the Super due to ethical concerns and concerns about starting an arms race. However, Truman's administration allowed the first hydrogen bomb, Ivy Mike, to be tested in the Marshall Islands, yielding 10.4 megatons of TNT. A hydrogen bomb is composed of three bombs: a conventional bomb, a fission bomb, and a fusion bomb.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosion ever detonated, which was five times more powerful than Ivy Mike and around 2000 times more powerful than Trinity. Oppenheimer was essentially put on trial for his calls to avert a nuclear arms race. He was questioned about his ties to the Communist Party and his affair with Gene Tatlock, a Communist party member. He was essentially accused of treason and espionage.

In 1953, Oppenheimer's security clearance was suspended, and his security hearings were international news. In 1964, German playwright Heinar Kipphardt wrote a play about Oppenheimer's life, which he hated so much that he threatened to sue. Oppenheimer believed that the Hiroshima bombing was more costly in life and suffering inhumane than it needed to be an effective argument for ending the war.

In 1965, Oppenheimer was asked about the proposal of talks with the Soviet Union to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and he responded that it should have been done the day after Trinity. Later that same year, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and died in 1967 at the age of 62.

Advances in science and technology have given humans immense power to make the world better or worse, and human-caused climate change poses a serious threat to ecosystems and vulnerable people worldwide.