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Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere?
At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb,
codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing
in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun.
As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the
sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who had built the bomb
reacted in different ways. Some were jubilant, others more somber. J.
Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, famously
recalled a line from the Hindu scripture (ba-ga-vad gee-ta) Baghavad
Gita: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”; while Kenneth
Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test, was more blunt, stating: “Now
we’re all sons of bitches.” Elsewhere around the test site, money
frantically changed hands as scientists settled a series of private
bets. Some had wagered that the test would be a dud, or that it would
reach just a fraction of its predicted yield. But others, including
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, had wagered on a more disturbing
outcome: that the intense heat of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere,
setting off an unstoppable chain reaction that would wipe out all life
on earth. This apocalyptic bet has since become an infamous part of
nuclear lore, but does it have any basis in reality? Could the Trinity
test - or any nuclear weapon, for that matter - actually have set
earth’s atmosphere ablaze?
Well, let’s dive into it, shall we?
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
View all episodes
By Cloud10
4.9
13701,370 ratings
At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb,
codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing
in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun.
As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the
sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who had built the bomb
reacted in different ways. Some were jubilant, others more somber. J.
Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, famously
recalled a line from the Hindu scripture (ba-ga-vad gee-ta) Baghavad
Gita: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”; while Kenneth
Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test, was more blunt, stating: “Now
we’re all sons of bitches.” Elsewhere around the test site, money
frantically changed hands as scientists settled a series of private
bets. Some had wagered that the test would be a dud, or that it would
reach just a fraction of its predicted yield. But others, including
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, had wagered on a more disturbing
outcome: that the intense heat of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere,
setting off an unstoppable chain reaction that would wipe out all life
on earth. This apocalyptic bet has since become an infamous part of
nuclear lore, but does it have any basis in reality? Could the Trinity
test - or any nuclear weapon, for that matter - actually have set
earth’s atmosphere ablaze?
Well, let’s dive into it, shall we?
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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