Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [138]
4
Teller was so ridiculously optimistic that fellow physicists measured enthusiasm in “Tellers” just as they would measure mass in kilograms or time in seconds.
5
The Los Alamos physicist Robert Serber later wrote, “On Edward Teller’s blackboard at Los Alamos I once saw a list of weapons—ideas for weapons—with their abilities and properties displayed. For the last one on the list, the largest, the method of delivery was listed as ‘Backyard.’ Since that particular design would probably kill everyone on Earth, there was no use carting it elsewhere.”
6
That didn’t end the speculation. As General Groves later recounted, “I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi the evening before [the first atomic bomb test], when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world.”
7
Teller limped because of an accident in his youth. At the age of twenty, he jumped off a tram and nearly lost his right foot.
8
This was, in part, because Russian military intelligence had penetrated the Manhattan Project. Klaus Fuchs, a physicist who was involved at the highest level of theoretical work on the atomic and hydrogen bombs, was a spy.
9
They were using a technique that became known as the Monte Carlo method; the dice were for generating random numbers that allowed them to get a ballpark solution to a problem much more quickly than an exact calculation would permit.
10
The world came very close indeed. After the Soviets and Chinese massed a fresh set of troops on the Korean border in March 1951, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered that atomic bombs be used if the Communist troops launched a major new offensive. The bombs were deployed. Truman even signed an order authorizing their use but, luckily, he never sent it.
11
Teller, as often was the case, remembered the situation differently from how his peers did: he says he came up with a solution himself. According to Carson Mark, a weapons designer, “Ulam felt that he invented the new approach to the hydrogen bomb. Teller didn’t wish to recognize that. He couldn’t bring himself to recognize it. He’s taken occasion, almost every occasion he could, not every one, to deny that Ulam contributed anything.”
12
It’s not entirely clear why Oppenheimer and others who had expressed such deep moral qualms about the hydrogen bomb in 1949 reversed their position so dramatically in 1951. Oppenheimer said that the idea was so “technically sweet” that the United States had to go ahead and try it and then, later, argue about what to do with it.
13
Oppenheimer’s history was troublesome, especially an incident in 1943, in which, ironically, he alerted authorities to a possible security risk. Oppenheimer told a military officer that a certain person was worth keeping an eye on (and he was), but he lied about the details of how he knew this (through a friend who was a member of the Communist Party). Oppenheimer, when confronted with the lie, admitted to it in front of the panel: “Isn’t it a fair statement today, Dr. Oppenheimer, that according to your testimony now you told not one lie to Colonel Pash, but a whole fabrication and tissue of lies?” asked the AEC attorney. “Right,” answered Oppenheimer.
14
In 1910, the famed physicist Ernst Mach wrote, “If belief in the reality of atoms is so crucial, then I renounce the physical way of thinking, I will not be a professional physicist, and I hand back my scientific reputation.”
15
In truth, the analogy is terribly flawed, and electrons don’t really “orbit” a nucleus. To explain the behavior of electrons in an atom, you need to get into quantum theory, but this level of subtlety isn’t necessary to understand fusion.
16
Technically, these pieces are helium-4 nuclei: two protons and two neutrons all bound together in a tight bundle.
17
Technically, a third particle known as an antineutrino is also created.
18
The fusion furnace accounts for the abundance of light