Posted on 10/31/2007 1:24:01 AM PDT by neverdem
My, the webs we weave...
Ya. There was just no “right” side of the bed, this morning.
Ya. There was just no “right” side of the bed, this morning.
You should read the article in Physics Today from August 1995 on the Farm Hall tapes. After the War ended in Europe, German physicists, including Heisenberg, were kept under house arrest in an English estate called Farm Hall, where, unbeknownst to them, their conversations were recorded.
It's very clear that Heisenberg did not know how much uranium or plutonium were required to make a bomb and he obviously hadn't given it any serious thought. The idea that the German physicists didn't work to achieve an atomic bomb because of some sort of scruples was hatched right there, at Farm Hall. The German word is Lesart, but it translates to something like “version” or “story”. If Heisenberg had known how to make a bomb, he would clearly have tried.
From the article:
Writing of Farm Hall in a letter to the German publisher Paul Rosbaud on 4 April 1959, von Laue recalled the origins of the Lesart in the days following Hiroshima:The alternative excuse that the Germans couldn't have succeeded because their economy and industry was overstressed by the war also doesn't stand scrutiny. They spent more on the militarily worthless V-waffen than the U.S. did on the Manhattan Project.After that day, we talked much about the conditions for an atomic explosion. Heisenberg gave a lecture on the subject in one of the colloquia that we prisoners had arranged for ourselves. Later, during the table conversation, the version [Lesart] was developed that the German atomic physicist really had not wanted the atomic bomb, either because it was impossible to achieve it during the expected duration of the war or because they simply did not want to have it at all. The leader in these discussions was Weizsäcker. I did not hear the mention of any ethical point of view. Heisenberg was mostly silent.
Recently, the History Channel had a documentary on the recover of the heavy water from the wreck of the ferry that was sunk by the Norwegian resistance, at the cost of several Norwegian lives. The barrels were still intact and unopened. It turns out the heavy water was so little refined as to be worthless for weapons production. The British, who prevailed on the Norwegians to carry out what had to have been a very distasteful mission, killing fellow innocent Norwegians, had no way of knowing that the Germans did not have a "Szilard moment", that they knew something we didn't. Nor did they know that the heavy water was so dilute. (The barrels were marked on the outside with percentage of heavy water and physical analysis in England confirmed the validity of the markings.)
The real winner of WWII was the USSR ... thanks to FDR and his adminstration. The agreements from, for example, Teheran and Yalta are worth a quick scan. Operation KeelHaul is real page turned, especially as American troops were involved.
Without Lend-Lease, Hitler and Stalin would have bled each other to death ... No Iron Curtain, No Communist China, No Korean "police action" ... no USSR satellite countries.
So it goes ...
:’) Reportedly, he also took bets about the ignition of the atmosphere, i.e., that the atmospheric bomb ignition would literally destroy all the air and kill everyone and everything on the Earth.
Heh... IMHO, not, but of course there are some topics about that:
Ancient Atomic Warfare - Religious texts and geological evidence
New York Herald Tribune on February 16, 1947 | New York Herald Tribune on February 16, 1947 | Ivan T. Sanderson
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/720501/posts
Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times
Mammoth Trumpet | March 2001 | Firestone/Topping
Posted on 07/24/2006 3:03:03 AM EDT by ForGod’sSake
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671134/posts
Nice, maybe someday.
My handful has been on my desk for decades; it is not "hot" and does not glow in the dark.
I might be misremembering if Teller first thought about it but I know he was somewhat Chicken Little about it.
Here’s an interesting (and true) Halloween story for you freepers about Oak Ridge.
When I started college in the 1970s I gave my first speech in class about this true story:
Both my grandfathers were recruited from the coal mines when the “secret project” was built in Oak Ridge, and both retired from working there.
My first husband’s mother was a niece of John Hendrix, a local man who prophecized the coming of Oak Ridge before WWI.
He used to pray fervently for days in the woods, and had previously predicted (accurately) a major train route coming through a nearby area. My MIL told me everybody avoided him, thought he was crazy, because he always preached, prayed and talked about his “visions” from God when he’d return from praying and fasting in the woods for days.
One day he came out from such a fast and praying, and would tell anyone who’d listen about a vision he had about Black Oak Ridge, a high ridge near Clinton Tennessee.
He said God told him there would be a city there someday, and there would be tens of thousands of people going in and out, with great secrecy and urgency. The city would be built almost overnight, he said, and there would be something there that would end one of the greatest wars mankind would experience.
Again, my MIL said everyone laughed at him, because that was an absurd notion to the folks who lived in rural and isolated Black Oak Ridge and the surrounding area. So John Hendrix went down to the courthouse in Clinton (this was in about 1913 or somewhere near) and stood in front of the Courthouse and tried to tell people, preached it to the top of his lungs, while many people laughed and teased him.
If you visit the Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge now you’ll find a small plaque commenorating (sp) the man who knew about the Atomic Bomb before any scientist or anyone else.
BTW, I have one of my Grandfather’s Manhatten Project, A Bomb pin framed and hanging in my office as I type this.
Oak Ridge was mostly a production facility. The research was done all over, at the University of Chicago for example, with the worlds first self sustaining nuclear reactor, known as "the pile", being built under the stands at the football stadium.
“At least 5,000 people were coming and going to work, knowing only enough to get the job done.”
One of them was my Grandpa, a machinist from Wisconsin.
And as if ‘World Peace and American Domination’ weren’t enough, my Dad, also a Machinist, helped build the first Apollo craft that landed on the Moon.
I didn’t do anything THAT impressive, but I did spend 20 years in the Army, fighting off Communists while protecting the rights of the ‘Looney Left’ to spew their pablum. *ROLLEYES*
God Bless America. And make it soon Big Guy, because the Barbarians are at the gates! ;)
Let's just say that I remember the Tylenol cyanide scare of 1980.
You wouldn't be saying this if he had been right (of course none of us would be saying anything! Kind of a pointless idea to point out, because it would only be remembered if it was mistaken.
Multiculturalism (along with the PC definition of diversity) is a crock - in that it celebrates every culture and society as being equal. But diversity - being properly defined as celebrating each individual for the God-given gifts they bring to the endeavor - is a wonderful thing.
Imagine, actually being smart enough to judge a man (or woman) by the content of their soul and/or the capacity of their mind. Perhaps we should all have such a dream!
Again, in his memoirs Teller relates the story of the scientist who performed the calculation showing that there was absolutley no chance of such a chain reaction. The day before the test Teller dropped by as his colleague was planning to observe it in the desert. Among his supplies was a bottle of scotch, "in case of snake bite". Teller asked him if he was sure that there was absolutely no chance. "Yes, absolutely no chance." "What if you're wrong?" "I'll take a second bottle of Scotch."
Teller didn't seem too concerned.
Agreed. I think we only differ in semantics on this point. Diversity has been a strong factor in America's rise to greatness -- whatever any country is known for, we have here. We have the music, cuisine, and expertise of every nation on Earth. Because for 200 years, folks have wanted to -- even risked death to -- be a part of what we are without forgetting where they came from.
It was 1982. The Tylenol scare remains unsolved, but there were a lot of subsequent cases of copy cats who poisoned one person for personal motives, then poisoned several others to cover it up. Most product-poisoning scares have followed that trend.
Come to think of it, I'd like to see someone like Mark Fuhrman take a fresh look at the Tylenol scare. Re-examine the evidence with new tools like data mining for ways to connect the dots and new tech to find DNA traces on the packages. Terrorism doesn't fit; it was local and no one claimed credit. I'd bet it was one murder with motive, and the other killings were to blur the tracks.
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