ScribbleLive

@bo This is what I am afraid of, that it would just end up being a crafted PR attempt rather than in depth facts.

Japanese sell more solar power back to utilities www.reuters.com

All of the scientist assumed that the Nazis were ahead, not just because of Heisenberg, but because Germany was the world leader for physics. Stalin knew all about the Manhattan Project before the Trinity test.

@lilly, there is a lot of dark humor in all of this. Kubrick picked up on this exquisitely. Well, off to bed campers. See you all tomorrow!

the bomb was not made for japan. it was planned for germany. when the german forces surrendered, truman needed somewhere else to test it and demonstrate the us power. after the defeat of the germans, it was clear that the russians would be the future counterpart in europe. the bomb was essential for the americans because they thought the germans had already constructed one. and they already had the rockets for the bomb. we have the biggest uranium mine here in europe (in Wismut), and after the war, the (then east german) uranium was the only source for the russian bomb development.

in reality, hitler never forced the atomic bomb construction. he was not able to forsee the implications. he was an old fashioned world-war-1 soldier and always stuck to the ground forces warfare, supported by air force. that was the only kind of war he could imagine. he even neglected the marine although the pacific battlefield was already dominated by airforce carriers. the sea was the mental barrier for his small brain.

@Peter maybe he was driven by fear, badly influenced by his military.

@Peter can I borrow one of those for my health insurance company? :-)

@Peter this sounds like heisenberg was unwilling to build the bomb:

"Zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurden er und andere Physiker (zum Beispiel Otto Hahn und Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) in das Heereswaffenamt berufen. Ihre Aufgabe im Rahmen des Uranprojektes sollte sein, Einsatzmöglichkeiten der Kernspaltung zu finden. Heisenberg stieß zwar erst relativ spät zu dem Projekt, arbeitete jedoch intensiv daran und übernahm bald eine führende Rolle. Er und seine Kollegen kamen schon früh zu dem Schluss, dass die aufwändige Anreicherung des Spaltstoffes Uran 235 mit den allgemein zur Verfügung stehenden Ressourcen während der voraussichtlichen Restdauer des Krieges nicht zu machen war, und informierten dahingehend am 4. Juni 1942 Albert Speer. Allerdings verschwiegen sie (oder sprachen davon nur in Andeutungen) die Möglichkeit, eine Plutoniumbombe zu bauen, bei der die Trennung viel einfacher chemisch ablaufen konnte und für die nur ein Natururan-Reaktor mit Schwerwasser als Moderator erforderlich war (ähnlich wie zum Beispiel der heutige kanadische Candu-Reaktortyp, mit dessen Hilfe Indien in den Besitz von Kernwaffen kam). Auf die entscheidende Frage Speers, wie lange sie für eine Bombe bräuchten, gab er drei bis fünf Jahre an – womit das Projekt seine Priorität verlor."

"At the beginning of the Second World War, he and other physicists were called (for example, Otto Hahn and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) in the Army Ordnance Department. Your task in the context of the uranium project should be to find possibilities of nuclear fission. Although Heisenberg came relatively late to the project, however intensively worked on it and soon took a leading role. He and his colleagues came to the conclusion early on that the elaborate enrichment of uranium-235 fission material resources with the generally available during the expected remaining duration of the war was not to make, and informed to the effect on 4 June 1942, Albert Speer. However, concealed them (or talked about only in hints) the possibility of building a plutonium bomb, in which the separation was much easier to run chemical and for only a natural uranium reactor using heavy water as moderator was required (like for example the current Canadian CANDU-type reactor, with the help of India came into the possession of nuclear weapons). On the crucial question Speers, how long they needed for a bomb, he had three to five years - by which the project lost its priority."

de.wikipedia.org

@Peter That was the impression I had from reading things that Heisenberg was foot dragging after he saw the outcome possibility.

@eyes @eyes They are federal land, don't know if the park portion would change anything. I know I wouldn't want anything on the land at those 3 sites!

@Peter interesting story :)