Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb documentary[REAL TRUTH]

There is a good explanation at the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon

Basically a fission device is used to trigger the fusion section of the bomb. The mathematics must be precise or you get a malfunction.

My dad was a nuclear engineer and I worked as an EQ Coordinator at a nuclear facility. The diagram at wikipedia is a good, simple example for those of us who can more easily grasp the concept through drawings.

I hope this helps.

Sure. I used to explain nuclear physics to physicists and engineers for a living. And undergrads are pretty smart once you approach them as five year olds.

So, Lithium is Lithium because it has three protons. The protons are attracted to each other by the strong nuclear force, but they also repel each other through the electromagnetic force. The best way to keep three protons together in a nucleus is by adding neutrons. The reason for this is that the neutrons attract each other through the strong force -- and the protons as well -- but since they're electrically neutral, they don't repel each other.

There is a competing effect: the more neutrons you add, the higher the energy states the neutrons must occupy. If you remember basic chemistry, electrons fill up their orbitals in shells. They like to be in the lowest energy shells they can be in, but because of the Pauli exclusion principle, no more than two neutrons can be in the same energy state. This means that while adding neutrons help to stabilize a nucleus from electromagnetic repulsion, you eventually reach a point where too many neutrons starts destabilizing a nucleus.

Lithium has two stable isotopes: ⁶Li, and ⁷Li. Both of those isotopes have 3 protons [they have to, or it wouldn't be Lithium.] The first has three neutrons and the second has four neutrons. Both are stable, and ⁷Li is more abundant in nature. The other isotopes of Lithium are unstable. ³Li has just protons. It does not exist for any known length of time. ⁴Li and ⁵Li [1 neutron, and two neutrons respectively] exist ≈10^-24 seconds. ⁸Li and ⁹Li exist for a few hundred milliseconds [quite long-lived compared to a nuclear detonation.] ^10,11,>11Li and greater live for ≈10^-21 sec.

So in Lithium, you can see there is a sweet spot of almost equal numbers of neutrons and protons that nicely shows the counteracting effects I'm talking about.

Now here is the remarkable thing about Lithium. Even the stable isotopes of Lithium have very poor binding energy compared to nearby elements. So in nuclear chemistry, bombarding Lithium with particles can make it decay into Helium, isotopes of Hydrogen -- usually Tritium -- or Beryllium.

Now, just as happens in ordinary chemistry, there are different reaction products produced in nuclear chemistry, depending on the temperature of the reaction.

The physicists doing the calculations for ⁶Li expected that bombarding the ⁶Li would produce Tritium + an α particle, which it did. The Tritium went into the fusion reaction producing energy. That calculation was OK.

But about 60% of the dry fusion fuel was composed of ⁷Li. They believed that the free neutrons bombarding the dry fuel would produce ⁸Li. [Just the same as ⁷Li with an extra neutron.] Now ⁸Li isn't stable. It decays in a few hundred milliseconds. That is a very long time in a nuclear reaction, so they calculated that 1 neutron + ⁷Li would be harmless. The next step ordinarily, is that the ⁸Li decays into Beryllium. [⁸Be.] ⁸Be is unstable, and splits apart into two alpha particles.

Unfortunately, this did not happen.

What happened instead was that the ⁸Li never formed. The neutrons were so energetic, that they simply destroyed the ⁷Li, producing 1 neutron, 1 α particle, and 1 particle of Tritium. This meant that the neutron was never absorbed and worse still, there was now extra Tritium to go into the fusion reaction.

Net effect: a reaction they expected to produce two α particles long after the nuclear reaction had occurred, actually produced more fusion fuel and an extra neutron that was never absorbed pretty much immediately. The effect was that the predicted yield of 6Mt±2Mt was actually about 15.5 Mt.

post 18 for book name and author

It may have been reported, but Japan was nowhere close to making a bomb. Germany was somewhat closer, but abandoned the program in 1942, when Hitler decided to throw all his resources at the USSR. However, our intelligence still thought a German bomb (but never a Japanese bomb) was a likelihood and had assassination teams out as late as 1944 to kill Werner Heisenberg.

According to the documentary, the Japanese moved all their research and development activities to Korea after a B29 raid destroyed their lab in Tokyo.

They also say there was a witness to a Japanese bomb test, if that was true, they had a working prototype.

Germany sent Japan 1000lbs of Uranium by submarine. However, as the sub was on it's way, Germany surrendered and Admiral Doenitz ordered all forces to surrender to the nearest allied forces. The sub surrendered and never made it to Japan. However, Japan found a source of Uranium in Korea.

This adds fuel to the cause that the US not only was justified in dropping the two atomic bombs, if they hadn't the eventual outcome would have been catastrophic.

Remember that Bohr himself was living in Nazi occupied territory [which was why Heisenberg was able to travel to, and meet with him.] Bohr and Heisenberg were close. I think Bohr would have interpreted, and possibly remembered, any remarks Heisenberg made sympathetically ex post facto. But I don't know that there are any records of what was said before Heisenberg was taken into custody by the British.

This specific topic is itself a perfect illustration of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Certainly is virtually impossible because the evidence is fuzzy, not distinct.

I think it's one of those things about which we can speculate and surmise, but never really know.

Anyways, it's an interesting part of history. In the book "The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technical Revolution" The author refers to this era as "The Wizard War."

I have yet to see a better characterization.

Thank God for the bomb.

I haven't seen the documentary, but this is the first I've heard of it. None of the major war end histories ("Downfall," for example) even mention this. I think it's extremely unlikely. We're talking about an industrial/technological base that could only build ONE aircraft carrier since 1942---while the US according to "Scientists Against Time" compressed a 30 year R&D effort on the bomb into four years. Does it even remotely seem plausible that Japan could have done this? No.

Sorry, I'd have to see a lot of evidence to swallow that.

Thank you. I actually understood that to a degree.

I was unaware of the Pauli exclusion principle.

If you have more info on this, I would appreciate it.

Thanks for the link. I will study it.

The Pauli exclusion principle is actually a consequence of a deeper quantum mechanical phenomenon called "indistinguishability." When you have two quantum particles interacting in the same system, they are identical in every respect. One consequence of this is that when you have two electrons, or two neutrons, or two photons in the same system, you cannot really speak of "electron 1 and electron 2" because there is in fact no way to tell which one is which. You just have a system of two particles.

The probability of a particle being at a particular point in space "x" is proportional to the square of its wave function: ψ(x). This also true of a two particle system. When you construct the wave function of a two particle system with two particles, a and b, the resultant wave function would look something like ψ_a * ψ_b. However, this can't be quite right. Because of indistiguishability, you can't know which particle is in state "a" and which particle is in state "b". So the combined wave function has to like something like this: ψ_a * ψ_b ± ψ_b * ψ_a.

Photons and other particles with integer spin have wave functions that look like ψ_a ψ_b + ψ_b * ψ_a. Electrons and other particles [like neutrons] with spin 1/2 have combined wavefunctions that look like ψ_a * ψ_b - ψ_b * ψ_a.

Notice there is a fundamental difference between the two combined wavefunctions. Two photons in a quantum system could be in the same state at the same time [ψ_a = ψ_b] Two electrons can't be, because if ψ_a = ψ_b then the combined wave function, having a minus sign, would be: ψ_a * ψ_a - ψ_a * ψ_a = 0, meaning that the electrons wave functions cancel each other out.

For this reason, no two electrons in an atom can have the same quantum numbers [same states, same wavefunctions, however you want to say it.] If they did, their wave functions would cancel each other out.

Now, this makes chemistry interesting, because all electrons can't be in the lowest energy state. They have to keep on filling higher and higher energy states, and that is essentially what gives rise to "chemistry" because the electrons in the highest energy states are the ones that are farthest from the atomic nucleus, and want to combine with other atoms.

It also gives rise the the structure of all kinds of other things: why metals behave the way they do, how neutron stars form, why all stars don't decay into black holes, the stability of atomic nuclei, and so on. Read more here, among many places: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pauli.html#c1