[HN Gopher] Richard Rhodes wrote a classic book about Oppenheime...
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Richard Rhodes wrote a classic book about Oppenheimer and the
atomic bomb
Author : Hooke
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-07-20 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| autreschiffres wrote:
| Listen to RUSH's Manhattan Project song on repeat while reading
| the article
| cliver wrote:
| I love RUSH but this song isn't their best lol
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Does anybody know if this book (or the movie) covers Oppenheimers
| attempt to murder his teacher with a cyanide laced apple? I don't
| care to invest time in a biography that whitewashes the man.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| https://archive.is/yLTZq
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| The thing that struck me from this book (or maybe it was in "Dark
| Sun") was how much the soviets were spying. We were giving them
| detailed plans for chemical factories, tire factories, engines,
| alloys, anything you can think of. They did not trust us so they
| would spy on all this stuff anyway. They would fill up a C-47
| Skytrains(lend-lease) with stolen documents and fly them out to
| Moscow through Alaska.
|
| I have to give the soviets the win on this one. Their spying was
| very effective. All that spying let them get the bomb PDQ.
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Well, to be fair, spying on a free and open society is much
| easier than spying on the opposite.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This. It gets far worse the further you get - it wasn't just
| spying. Sean McMeekan's recent book details how pervasive it
| was - for example, Harry Dexter White was in the Department of
| treasury, helped write the Morgenthau plan, which extended the
| war, and assigned "the booty" of germany to the soviets and
| leaked it to the soviets and the press. That led to "a near-
| miraculous revitalization of the German army."
|
| The soviets under Stalin played the allies _hard_ during World
| War 2.
| gerikson wrote:
| I read this years and years ago, it's really readable despite
| being very very long.
| timmg wrote:
| Came to say, essentially, the same thing.
|
| I will add that I also enjoyed the move Fat Man and Little Boy
| which was about the Manhattan project. Not an Oscar-worthy
| movie. But told a good story, centered around Oppenheimer.
| natechols wrote:
| The first part of the book, describing the history of atomic
| theory and experimental physics, are still one of my favorite
| pieces of science writing ever.
| sklargh wrote:
| I recommend Rhodes' "Making of" and Dark Sun with American
| Prometheus and the Los Alamos Primer for people seeking a
| thorough initial introduction to the Manhattan Project and little
| bit of postscript.
|
| Indulging myself a bit here. Essentially all elements of modern
| society have at least a tangential relationship with Los Alamos.
|
| The symmetry between a nuclear detonation and what happened
| intellectually and culturally before and after the Manhattan
| Project is striking. An immense compression followed by a massive
| release of energy. In the bomb's case that was an explosives and
| physics package that led to a good yield. In the Manhattan
| Project more broadly it was a remarkable concentration of human
| capability that impacted almost every element of hard science and
| culture.
|
| Something worth learning about.
| kabdib wrote:
| Eric Schlosser's _Command and Control_ is a nice historical
| view of the nuclear defense establishment, and describes a
| particularly terrible missile site failure.
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(page generated 2023-07-20 23:00 UTC)