History of nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission or combined fission and fusion reactions. Starting with scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada collaborated during World War II in what was called the Manhattan Project to counter the suspected Nazi German atomic bomb project. In August 1945, two fission bombs were dropped on Japan, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in combat. The Soviet Union started development shortly thereafter with their own atomic bomb project, and not long after that both countries developed even more powerful fusion weapons known as ``hydrogen bombs ''.
2008 Bangalore serial blasts
2008 Bangalore serial blasts occurred on 25 July 2008 in Bangalore, India. A series of nine bombs exploded in which one person was killed and 20 injured. According to the Bangalore City Police, the blasts were caused by low-intensity crude bombs triggered by timers.
Korea under Japanese rule
Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the impending overrun of the Korean peninsula by Russian forces, Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on 15 August 1945, ending 35 years of Japanese occupation.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Among Ike's objectives in not directly confronting McCarthy was to prevent McCarthy from dragging the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into McCarthy's witch hunt for communists, which would interfere with, and perhaps delay, the AEC's important work on H-bombs. The administration had discovered through its own investigations that one of the leading scientists on the AEC, J. Robert Oppenheimer, had urged that the H-bomb work be delayed. Eisenhower removed him from the agency and revoked his security clearance, though he knew this would create fertile ground for McCarthy.
Enola Gay
The Enola Gay (/ ɪˈnoʊlə /) is a Boeing B - 29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb, code - named ``Little Boy '', was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the near - complete destruction of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead.
Space Race
In simple terms, the Cold War could be viewed as an expression of the ideological struggle between communism and capitalism. The United States faced a new uncertainty beginning in September 1949, when it lost its monopoly on the atomic bomb. American intelligence agencies discovered that the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb, with the consequence that the United States potentially could face a future nuclear war that, for the first time, might devastate its cities. Given this new danger, the United States participated in an arms race with the Soviet Union that included development of the hydrogen bomb, as well as intercontinental strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of delivering nuclear weapons. A new fear of communism and its sympathizers swept the United States during the 1950s, which devolved into paranoid McCarthyism. With communism spreading in China, Korea, and Eastern Europe, Americans came to feel so threatened that popular and political culture condoned extensive "witch-hunts" to expose communist spies. Part of the American reaction to the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb tests included maintaining a large Air Force, under the control of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). SAC employed intercontinental strategic bombers, as well as medium-bombers based close to Soviet airspace (in western Europe and in Turkey) that were capable of delivering nuclear payloads.
Little Boy
``Little Boy ''was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II by the Boeing B - 29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces. It was the first atomic bomb to be used in warfare. The Hiroshima bombing was the second artificial nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test, and the first uranium - based detonation. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ). The bomb caused significant destruction to the city of Hiroshima and its occupants.
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Part of the Pacific War of World War II Atomic bomb mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) Date August 6 and August 9, 1945 Location Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Empire of Japan Result Allied victory Belligerents United States Manhattan Project: United Kingdom Canada Japan Commanders and leaders William S. Parsons Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. Charles Sweeney Frederick Ashworth Shunroku Hata Units involved Manhattan District: 50 U.S., 2 British 509th Composite Group: 1,770 U.S. Second General Army: Hiroshima: 40,000 (5 Anti-aircraft batteries) Nagasaki: 9,000 (4 Anti-aircraft batteries) Casualties and losses 20 British, Dutch, and American prisoners of war killed Hiroshima: 20,000 soldiers killed 70,000 -- 126,000 civilians killed Nagasaki: 39,000 -- 80,000 killed Total: 129,000 -- 226,000 + killed
Uranium
Two major types of atomic bombs were developed by the United States during World War II: a uranium-based device (codenamed "Little Boy") whose fissile material was highly enriched uranium, and a plutonium-based device (see Trinity test and "Fat Man") whose plutonium was derived from uranium-238. The uranium-based Little Boy device became the first nuclear weapon used in war when it was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Exploding with a yield equivalent to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, the blast and thermal wave of the bomb destroyed nearly 50,000 buildings and killed approximately 75,000 people (see Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Initially it was believed that uranium was relatively rare, and that nuclear proliferation could be avoided by simply buying up all known uranium stocks, but within a decade large deposits of it were discovered in many places around the world.
John R. Dunning
John Ray Dunning (September 24, 1907 – August 25, 1975) was an American physicist who played key roles in the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bombs. He specialized in neutron physics, and did pioneering work in gaseous diffusion for isotope separation. He was Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University from 1950 to 1969.
Dayton Project
At Los Alamos, physicist Robert Serber proposed that instead of relying on spontaneous fission, the chain reaction inside the atomic bomb should be triggered by a neutron initiator. The best - known neutron sources were radium - beryllium and polonium - beryllium. The latter was chosen, as polonium has a 138 - day half - life, which made it intense enough to be useful but not long - lived enough to be stockpiled. Thomas took charge of the development of techniques to industrially refine polonium for use with beryllium in the ``urchin ''internal neutron initiators. This effort became the Dayton Project.
Richard Feynman
Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, "There wasn't anything to do there." Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers. Feynman played many jokes on colleagues. In one case he found the combination to a locked filing cabinet by trying the numbers he thought a physicist would use (it proved to be 27–18–28 after the base of natural logarithms, e = 2.71828...), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept a set of atomic bomb research notes all had the same combination. He left a series of notes in the cabinets as a prank, which initially spooked his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a spy or saboteur had gained access to atomic bomb secrets. On several occasions, Feynman drove to Albuquerque to see his ailing wife in a car borrowed from Klaus Fuchs, who was later discovered to be a real spy for the Soviets, transporting nuclear secrets in his car to Santa Fe.
Atom Bomb Blues
Atom Bomb Blues is a BBC Books original novel written by Andrew Cartmel and based on the long-running British science fiction television series "Doctor Who". Published in late 2005, it features the Seventh Doctor and Ace. It is the last published Past Doctor Adventure to be issued by BBC Books, the company having decided in 2005 to focus on a new series of books tying into the television series and featuring the "current" Doctors.
Abdul Subhan Qureshi
Abdul Subhan Qureshi (also Abdus Subhan) (born 1972) is a suspected bomb-maker and one of the most wanted terrorists in India and has been called India's Osama Bin Laden. He is suspected to be associated with the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and is thought to have been responsible for participating in the Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi bombings. He is also a suspect in the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi
Tsutomu Yamaguchi (山口彊, Yamaguchi Tsutomu) (March 16, 1916 -- January 4, 2010) was a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 69 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.
Paul Tibbets
Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. (23 February 1915 -- 1 November 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. He is best known as the pilot who flew the Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Harvey Fletcher
Harvey Fletcher (September 11, 1884 – July 23, 1981) was an American physicist. Known as the "father of stereophonic sound," he is credited with the invention of the 2-A audiometer and an early electronic hearing aid. He was an investigator into the nature of speech and hearing, and made contributions in acoustics, electrical engineering, speech, medicine, music, atomic physics, sound pictures, and education.
John von Neumann
Along with four other scientists and various military personnel, von Neumann was included in the target selection committee responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation and thus maximum effect. The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the bombing inflicted upon militarily significant cities, was von Neumann's first choice, a selection seconded by Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves. However, this target was dismissed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.
Robert Serber
Robert Serber (March 14, 1909 – June 1, 1997) was an American physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project. Serber's lectures explaining the basic principles and goals of the project were printed and supplied to all incoming scientific staff, and became known as "The Los Alamos Primer". The "New York Times" called him “the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb.”
USS Indianapolis (CA-35)
In 1945, the sinking of Indianapolis led to the greatest single loss of life at sea, from a single ship, in the history of the US Navy. The ship had just finished a high - speed trip to United States Army Air Force Base at Tinian, to deliver parts of the first atomic bomb ever used in combat (the United States' Little Boy atomic bomb), and was on training duty. At 0015 on 30 July 1945 the ship was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I - 58. The ship, on her way to the Philippines, sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,196 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remaining 900 faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks while floating with few lifeboats and almost no food or water. The Navy learned of the sinking when survivors were spotted four days later by the crew of a PV - 1 Ventura on routine patrol. Only 317 survived.
What was the inventor of the atomic bomb trigger a participant in?
who invented the trigger for the atomic bomb
Robert Serber
#1 >> participant in
Manhattan Project