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Indeholder "Preface to the Sloan Technology Series", "Proloue: Deliveries", "Part One: A Choice between Worlds", "1. 'A Smell of Nuclear Powder'", "2. Diffusion", "3. 'Material of Immense Value'", "4. A Russian Connection", "5. 'Super Lend-Lease'", "6. Rendezvous", "7. 'Mass Production'", "8.
Luis Alvarez er med til at lave bomben og flyver med over Hiroshima. Stort set samtidig starter a-våben kapløbet mellem USA og Sovjet. I 1939 er teorien ved at tage form, man kan måske lave bomber med hurtig fission og Uran-235 og/eller reaktorer med Uran-238. Stalin slagter løs, men skåner nok til at kunne lave a-bomber. Russerne er dygtige, men er hele tiden bagud fordi de mangler penge, folk og adgang til amerikanernes og englændernes forskning. Takket være spioner, specielt Klaus Fuchs, får de dog alligevel store dele af forskningen foræret, men hele tiden på bagkant, så fx finder de først ud af at grafit/naturligt uran er en mulighed (og dermed plutoniumfremstilling), mange måneder efter at Fermi har den første pile kørende.
Under Lend/Lease aftalen får de enorme mængder af amerikansk teknologi foræret, vi snakker ugentlige flyladninger og hele skibe lastet med dokumenter.
Samtidig kører Stalin en-gros forretning på spionage og det er ingen overraskelse for ham, da Truman fortæller om bomben. Fx ved russerne alt om initiatorens design med 5 curie polonium indeni.
Efter krigen er Sovjet på ca halv styrke i forhold til før krigen. Stalin giver ordre til at skaffe ham bomben. Han satser på at bygge en tro kopi af den amerikanske bombe. Russerne fandt 130 tons uranmalm i Tyskland og USA og Sovjet havde dermed delt alt hvad tyskerne havde skaffet sig af malm.
Igor Kurchatov er i spidsen af projektet med Beria som garant for at skaffe hvad skaffes skal. Kurchatov/Beria er samme konstruktion som Oppenheimer/Groves i USA.
USA/Sovjet kommer hurtigt på kant efter sejren over Hitler. Den 5. marts 1946 holder Winston Churchill sin berømte "Sinews of Peace" tale.
Amerikanerne har udgivet en rapport, Smyth-rapporten, som beskriver store dele af processen, men russerne forsøger at malke Niels Bohr for flere detaljer helt uden held.
I 1934 havde Ernest Rutherford, Marcus Oliphant og Paul Hartteck opdaget og beskrevet deuteriumkerners kollision med tungt vand, hvilket gav en fusionsreaktion.
Når man først har en fissionbombe er der nærliggende at se om den kan lave temperaturer på 100 millioner grader og dermed lave fusion i større stil end blot nogle enkelte kerner. Allerede i september 1941 får Enrico Fermi ideen til en super og diskuterer det med Edward Teller. Et gram deuterium omdannet til helium giver samme energi som 150 tons TNT. 12 kilogram flydende deuterium giver så en 1 megaton. Teller gør brintbomben til sit livs projekt. Det er meget kompliceret at regne på hvad der sker i en brintbombe. Heldigvis er ENIAC på banen fra starten af 1945. Von Neumann møder Herman Goldstine på en perron i Aberdeen, Maryland i 1944, og de kommer til at snakke om ENIAC. I vinteren 1944/1945 skriver von Neumann en 101-sider rapport om computere generelt og får lagt en masse grundprincipper fast.
Brintbomben er anderledes end fissionsbomben, for den brænder bare så længe, der er brændstof. Stjernerne viser jo klart at der ikke er nogen særlig begrænsning på hvor stor man kan lave en bombe. Allerede i 1946 forudsiger forskerne at en brintbombeeksplosion nærmere kan sammenlignes med naturkatastrofer som 1906-jordskælvet i San Francisco eller Krakatoa (Krakatau) i 1883. Teller overvejer også alvorligt om der er en risiko for at starte en kædereaktion i atmosfæren.
Undervejs dukker der også mange ideer op til at forbedre fissionsbomber.
I 1946 stopper USA med at give fødevarehjælp til Sovjet selv om der er udbredt hungersnød ovenpå en tørkeramt høst. Samme år brugte Sovjet ca 270 millioner rubler på a-våben programmet. Imens laver USA stadig atombomber, men de er mildt sagt ikke operative.
USA tester et par bomber mod skibe ved Bikini, men luftvåbenet insisterer på at bruge deres egne fejlbehæftede tal og rammer ved siden af.
Imens har Igor Kurchatov travlt med at lave plutonium i reaktor F-1. Det når kritisk masse 25 december 1946.
Imens har amerikanerne faktisk præcis 0 bomber klar til brug. Og Hanford reaktorerne havde fået Wigner's sygdom, dvs neutronflux havde fået dem til at svulme op, så de ikke kunne bruges på fornuftig vis.
Våbenkapløbet fortsætter. Edward Teller mener ikke at et lagkagedesign virker, for det kan ikke lave bomber i megatonklassen. Stanislaw Ulam og Edward Teller får en god ide med strålingskompression, hvor en fissionsbombe vha røntgenstålingsflux tænder fusionsdelen, der kan placeres lidt væk.
Man laver også eksperimenter med forstærkede fissionsbomber, fx George på 225 kiloton, hvor de ca 25 kom fra mindre end 1 ounce tritium.
Greenhouse på 45,5 kiloton hvor halvdelen kom fra en DT-gas.
Peter Kapitza var i 1930'erne i Cambridge og lavede nogle virkelig elegante maskiner til at producere flydende brint, helium, kvælstof etc, så amerikanerne var urolige for hvad han mon lavede for russerne, efter at han tog tilbage til dem.
I 1952 laver amerikanerne en Ivy Mike (M for megaton) og en Ivy King (K for kiloton) prøvesprængning ved Eniwatok. Mike er en stationær bombe, for den er meget upraktisk med flydende tritium og deuterium, men King kan transporteres med fly.
De gætter på at Mike vil give 5 megaton, men måske helt op til 50 eller 90 megaton. Testen er timet med præsidentvalget, så den første brintbombe i megatonstørrelse er lavet under Truman, mens Eisenhower kommer til at hænge på den nye opfindelse. Vannevar Bush synes det er en rigtig dårlig ide. Truman vil ikke stoppe testen, men lader vide at det vil være fint, hvis tekniske vanskeligheder udskyder testen. Eniwetok blev erobret fra japanerne i februar 1944 og reserveret til testformål. 1948 Sandstone, 1949 Greenhouse og 1952 Ivy.
Mere end 500 målestationer overvågede Mike testen. Nogle af dem bare en skive af eksotiske metalskiver til at måle neutronstrålingens virkninger på, nogle af dem større bunkeranlæg. Udover Mike pølsen var den særeste konstruktion en 2.5 x 2.5 x 2700 m lang krydsfinertunnel fyldt med heliumballoner - tyve tusinde 100-kilos flasker! Krause-Ogle kassen ledte neutron- og gamma-stråling videre til Bogon, så man kunne måle præcist på starten af fission- og fusion-processerne. Bogon-bunkeren ville sikkert blive beskadiget af bomben, så måleresultaterne blev transmitteret live til den næste bunker i kæden.
Fissionsbomben bliver skiftet fra en plutonium version til en med mere uran i for at mindske risikoen for at fissionen starter for tidligt. Man brugte 92 detonatorer (for at slippe for det meget større cirkus med sprængstof "linser"). Det var vigtigt, fordi strålingen fra fissionsbomben skal tænde den store termoflaske med deuterium og tritium og jo mindre irrelevant stof imellem, jo bedre.
Mike virker perfekt. Fissionsbomben tænder og nogle få mikrosekunder senere tænder røntgenstrålingen for fusionsbomben. Se side 506.
Ildkuglen er mere end 5 km i diameter. Til sammenligning var Hiroshima-bomben under 200 meter i diameter.
Termoflasken var pakket ind i polyethylen og i midten var der et tændrør af plutonium. Nogle af neutronerne fra fusionen er 14 MeV og de kan sagtens spalte Uran-238, så der er også en god sjat Uran-238 brugt som indpakning. Fusionsprocesserne D+D, D+T, T+T, Li-6 + n, He-3 + D giver allesammen bidrag til bombens energi. D = H-2, T = H-3.
To timer efter eksplosionen flyver Red Leader, et F-84 fly udstyret til prøveoptagning, igennem stilken på paddehatteskyen. Den er stadig rødglødende og piloten, oberst Meroney, skynder sig væk. 8 ud af de 10,4 megaton kom fra fission af U-238, så egentlig var Mike en fission-fusion-fission snavset bombe. På University of California kan man se på en seismograf at bomben virkede. 20 minutter fra eksplosion til seismografudsving i Berkeley.
Pointen ved Mike-testen er at den viser hvordan man kan skalere uhindret opad. Rene fissionsbomber har formentlig en max-grænse ved ca 1 megaton.
I 1953 dør Stalin og Lavrenti Beria bliver arresteret. Centralkomiteen bliver chokeret over at opdage at Beria havde gang i et projekt med at lave en russisk brintbombe. En masse papirer var underskrevet uden at Centralkomiteen eller regeringen vidste noget.
USA henretter ægteparret Rosenberg i juni 1953. Julius Rosenberg dør hurtigt, men Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg overlever de første stød og dør først efter 4 1/2 minut. Beria bliver tilsvarende dømt i Moskva og bliver skudt i sin celle af general Pavel Batitsky.
Den 12 august 1953 - efter en større evakuering af tusinder af folk fra Semi-palatinsk området - tester russerne deres lagkagebombe, Joe-4. Amerikanerne analyserer nedfald og kan rekonstruere bomben. Joe-4 var ca 400 kilotons og et godt gæt er at den højst kunne laves dobbelt så stor.
I USA begynder McCartny og konsorter at sværte Robert Oppenheimer. Hans sikkerhedsgodkendelse bliver trukket tilbage.
1. marts 1955 tester USA den første lithium-deuterium brintbombe, Castle Bravo. Den bruger lithium beriget til ca 40 procent Li-6 og beregning på forhånd af størrelsen af eksplosionen overså at de 60 procent Li-7 også ville tænde. Den bliver på 15 megatons og dermed den største USA nogensinde testede. Ildkuglen er 6 kilometer i diameter og tager også den nærmeste testbunker med i købet. Nogle af videnskabsfolkene er på et skib 45 kilometer væk og får nedfald på sig. Fx Marshall Rosenbluth, der får 10 rad. En japansk fiskerbåd og indfødte på Rogelap, Ailinginae og Utirik får også nedfald i dødsensfarlige mængder at føle.
Castle Romeo er også meget større end beregnet med 11 megatons. Flere andre tests giver interessante resultater, fx Nectar der vejede under 4 tons og gav 1,69 megaton sprængkraft.
Det amerikanske luftvåben bruger a-våbnene som løftestang til at få større bevillinger og enkelte mener faktisk at de kan vinde en krig. Power og LeMay er iblandt dem og det er ikke rar læsning at se hvordan de ville have håndteret Cuba-krisen.
Glimrende og til tider meget spændende bog. Kapitsa har mod og mandshjerte nok til at kritisere Beria og klage til Stalin over ham.
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Explosions", "9. 'Provide the Bomb'", "10. A Pretty Good Description", "Part Two: New Wapons Added to the Arsenals", "11. Transitions", "12. Peculiar Sovereignties", "13. Changing History", "14. F-1", "15. _Modus Vivendi_", "16. Sailing Near the Wind", "17. Getting Down to Business", "18. 'This Buck Rogers Universe'", "19. First Lightning", "20. 'Gung-ho for the Super'", "Part Three: Scorpions in a Bottle", "21. Fresh Horrors", "22. Lessons of Limited War", "23. Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors", "24. Mike", "25. Powers of Retaliation", "26. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer", "27. Scorpions in a Bottle", "Epilogue: The Gradual Removal of Prejudices", "Acknowledgments", "Notes", "Glossary of Names", "Bibliography", "Index".Luis Alvarez er med til at lave bomben og flyver med over Hiroshima. Stort set samtidig starter a-våben kapløbet mellem USA og Sovjet. I 1939 er teorien ved at tage form, man kan måske lave bomber med hurtig fission og Uran-235 og/eller reaktorer med Uran-238. Stalin slagter løs, men skåner nok til at kunne lave a-bomber. Russerne er dygtige, men er hele tiden bagud fordi de mangler penge, folk og adgang til amerikanernes og englændernes forskning. Takket være spioner, specielt Klaus Fuchs, får de dog alligevel store dele af forskningen foræret, men hele tiden på bagkant, så fx finder de først ud af at grafit/naturligt uran er en mulighed (og dermed plutoniumfremstilling), mange måneder efter at Fermi har den første pile kørende.
Under Lend/Lease aftalen får de enorme mængder af amerikansk teknologi foræret, vi snakker ugentlige flyladninger og hele skibe lastet med dokumenter.
Samtidig kører Stalin en-gros forretning på spionage og det er ingen overraskelse for ham, da Truman fortæller om bomben. Fx ved russerne alt om initiatorens design med 5 curie polonium indeni.
Efter krigen er Sovjet på ca halv styrke i forhold til før krigen. Stalin giver ordre til at skaffe ham bomben. Han satser på at bygge en tro kopi af den amerikanske bombe. Russerne fandt 130 tons uranmalm i Tyskland og USA og Sovjet havde dermed delt alt hvad tyskerne havde skaffet sig af malm.
Igor Kurchatov er i spidsen af projektet med Beria som garant for at skaffe hvad skaffes skal. Kurchatov/Beria er samme konstruktion som Oppenheimer/Groves i USA.
USA/Sovjet kommer hurtigt på kant efter sejren over Hitler. Den 5. marts 1946 holder Winston Churchill sin berømte "Sinews of Peace" tale.
Amerikanerne har udgivet en rapport, Smyth-rapporten, som beskriver store dele af processen, men russerne forsøger at malke Niels Bohr for flere detaljer helt uden held.
I 1934 havde Ernest Rutherford, Marcus Oliphant og Paul Hartteck opdaget og beskrevet deuteriumkerners kollision med tungt vand, hvilket gav en fusionsreaktion.
Når man først har en fissionbombe er der nærliggende at se om den kan lave temperaturer på 100 millioner grader og dermed lave fusion i større stil end blot nogle enkelte kerner. Allerede i september 1941 får Enrico Fermi ideen til en super og diskuterer det med Edward Teller. Et gram deuterium omdannet til helium giver samme energi som 150 tons TNT. 12 kilogram flydende deuterium giver så en 1 megaton. Teller gør brintbomben til sit livs projekt. Det er meget kompliceret at regne på hvad der sker i en brintbombe. Heldigvis er ENIAC på banen fra starten af 1945. Von Neumann møder Herman Goldstine på en perron i Aberdeen, Maryland i 1944, og de kommer til at snakke om ENIAC. I vinteren 1944/1945 skriver von Neumann en 101-sider rapport om computere generelt og får lagt en masse grundprincipper fast.
Brintbomben er anderledes end fissionsbomben, for den brænder bare så længe, der er brændstof. Stjernerne viser jo klart at der ikke er nogen særlig begrænsning på hvor stor man kan lave en bombe. Allerede i 1946 forudsiger forskerne at en brintbombeeksplosion nærmere kan sammenlignes med naturkatastrofer som 1906-jordskælvet i San Francisco eller Krakatoa (Krakatau) i 1883. Teller overvejer også alvorligt om der er en risiko for at starte en kædereaktion i atmosfæren.
Undervejs dukker der også mange ideer op til at forbedre fissionsbomber.
I 1946 stopper USA med at give fødevarehjælp til Sovjet selv om der er udbredt hungersnød ovenpå en tørkeramt høst. Samme år brugte Sovjet ca 270 millioner rubler på a-våben programmet. Imens laver USA stadig atombomber, men de er mildt sagt ikke operative.
USA tester et par bomber mod skibe ved Bikini, men luftvåbenet insisterer på at bruge deres egne fejlbehæftede tal og rammer ved siden af.
Imens har Igor Kurchatov travlt med at lave plutonium i reaktor F-1. Det når kritisk masse 25 december 1946.
Imens har amerikanerne faktisk præcis 0 bomber klar til brug. Og Hanford reaktorerne havde fået Wigner's sygdom, dvs neutronflux havde fået dem til at svulme op, så de ikke kunne bruges på fornuftig vis.
Våbenkapløbet fortsætter. Edward Teller mener ikke at et lagkagedesign virker, for det kan ikke lave bomber i megatonklassen. Stanislaw Ulam og Edward Teller får en god ide med strålingskompression, hvor en fissionsbombe vha røntgenstålingsflux tænder fusionsdelen, der kan placeres lidt væk.
Man laver også eksperimenter med forstærkede fissionsbomber, fx George på 225 kiloton, hvor de ca 25 kom fra mindre end 1 ounce tritium.
Greenhouse på 45,5 kiloton hvor halvdelen kom fra en DT-gas.
Peter Kapitza var i 1930'erne i Cambridge og lavede nogle virkelig elegante maskiner til at producere flydende brint, helium, kvælstof etc, så amerikanerne var urolige for hvad han mon lavede for russerne, efter at han tog tilbage til dem.
I 1952 laver amerikanerne en Ivy Mike (M for megaton) og en Ivy King (K for kiloton) prøvesprængning ved Eniwatok. Mike er en stationær bombe, for den er meget upraktisk med flydende tritium og deuterium, men King kan transporteres med fly.
De gætter på at Mike vil give 5 megaton, men måske helt op til 50 eller 90 megaton. Testen er timet med præsidentvalget, så den første brintbombe i megatonstørrelse er lavet under Truman, mens Eisenhower kommer til at hænge på den nye opfindelse. Vannevar Bush synes det er en rigtig dårlig ide. Truman vil ikke stoppe testen, men lader vide at det vil være fint, hvis tekniske vanskeligheder udskyder testen. Eniwetok blev erobret fra japanerne i februar 1944 og reserveret til testformål. 1948 Sandstone, 1949 Greenhouse og 1952 Ivy.
Mere end 500 målestationer overvågede Mike testen. Nogle af dem bare en skive af eksotiske metalskiver til at måle neutronstrålingens virkninger på, nogle af dem større bunkeranlæg. Udover Mike pølsen var den særeste konstruktion en 2.5 x 2.5 x 2700 m lang krydsfinertunnel fyldt med heliumballoner - tyve tusinde 100-kilos flasker! Krause-Ogle kassen ledte neutron- og gamma-stråling videre til Bogon, så man kunne måle præcist på starten af fission- og fusion-processerne. Bogon-bunkeren ville sikkert blive beskadiget af bomben, så måleresultaterne blev transmitteret live til den næste bunker i kæden.
Fissionsbomben bliver skiftet fra en plutonium version til en med mere uran i for at mindske risikoen for at fissionen starter for tidligt. Man brugte 92 detonatorer (for at slippe for det meget større cirkus med sprængstof "linser"). Det var vigtigt, fordi strålingen fra fissionsbomben skal tænde den store termoflaske med deuterium og tritium og jo mindre irrelevant stof imellem, jo bedre.
Mike virker perfekt. Fissionsbomben tænder og nogle få mikrosekunder senere tænder røntgenstrålingen for fusionsbomben. Se side 506.
Ildkuglen er mere end 5 km i diameter. Til sammenligning var Hiroshima-bomben under 200 meter i diameter.
Termoflasken var pakket ind i polyethylen og i midten var der et tændrør af plutonium. Nogle af neutronerne fra fusionen er 14 MeV og de kan sagtens spalte Uran-238, så der er også en god sjat Uran-238 brugt som indpakning. Fusionsprocesserne D+D, D+T, T+T, Li-6 + n, He-3 + D giver allesammen bidrag til bombens energi. D = H-2, T = H-3.
To timer efter eksplosionen flyver Red Leader, et F-84 fly udstyret til prøveoptagning, igennem stilken på paddehatteskyen. Den er stadig rødglødende og piloten, oberst Meroney, skynder sig væk. 8 ud af de 10,4 megaton kom fra fission af U-238, så egentlig var Mike en fission-fusion-fission snavset bombe. På University of California kan man se på en seismograf at bomben virkede. 20 minutter fra eksplosion til seismografudsving i Berkeley.
Pointen ved Mike-testen er at den viser hvordan man kan skalere uhindret opad. Rene fissionsbomber har formentlig en max-grænse ved ca 1 megaton.
I 1953 dør Stalin og Lavrenti Beria bliver arresteret. Centralkomiteen bliver chokeret over at opdage at Beria havde gang i et projekt med at lave en russisk brintbombe. En masse papirer var underskrevet uden at Centralkomiteen eller regeringen vidste noget.
USA henretter ægteparret Rosenberg i juni 1953. Julius Rosenberg dør hurtigt, men Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg overlever de første stød og dør først efter 4 1/2 minut. Beria bliver tilsvarende dømt i Moskva og bliver skudt i sin celle af general Pavel Batitsky.
Den 12 august 1953 - efter en større evakuering af tusinder af folk fra Semi-palatinsk området - tester russerne deres lagkagebombe, Joe-4. Amerikanerne analyserer nedfald og kan rekonstruere bomben. Joe-4 var ca 400 kilotons og et godt gæt er at den højst kunne laves dobbelt så stor.
I USA begynder McCartny og konsorter at sværte Robert Oppenheimer. Hans sikkerhedsgodkendelse bliver trukket tilbage.
1. marts 1955 tester USA den første lithium-deuterium brintbombe, Castle Bravo. Den bruger lithium beriget til ca 40 procent Li-6 og beregning på forhånd af størrelsen af eksplosionen overså at de 60 procent Li-7 også ville tænde. Den bliver på 15 megatons og dermed den største USA nogensinde testede. Ildkuglen er 6 kilometer i diameter og tager også den nærmeste testbunker med i købet. Nogle af videnskabsfolkene er på et skib 45 kilometer væk og får nedfald på sig. Fx Marshall Rosenbluth, der får 10 rad. En japansk fiskerbåd og indfødte på Rogelap, Ailinginae og Utirik får også nedfald i dødsensfarlige mængder at føle.
Castle Romeo er også meget større end beregnet med 11 megatons. Flere andre tests giver interessante resultater, fx Nectar der vejede under 4 tons og gav 1,69 megaton sprængkraft.
Det amerikanske luftvåben bruger a-våbnene som løftestang til at få større bevillinger og enkelte mener faktisk at de kan vinde en krig. Power og LeMay er iblandt dem og det er ikke rar læsning at se hvordan de ville have håndteret Cuba-krisen.
Glimrende og til tider meget spændende bog. Kapitsa har mod og mandshjerte nok til at kritisere Beria og klage til Stalin over ham.
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Publication
New York : Simon & Schuster, c1995.
Description
In this work of history, science and politics, Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, tells for the first time the secret story of how and why the hydrogen bomb was made; traces the path by which "the Bomb," the supreme artifact of twentieth-century science and technology, became the defining issue of the Cold War; and reveals how close the world came to nuclear destruction before the United States and the former Soviet Union learned the lesson of nuclear stalemate - a stalemate, Rhodes makes clear, that forced the superpowers to tenuous truce for more than four decades, in the end bankrupting and destroying the Communist state and foreclosing world-scale war. From the day in September 1941 when the first word of Anglo-American atomic-bomb research arrived in Moscow via Soviet espionage to the week of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when Curtis LeMay goaded President Kennedy to attack the USSR with everything in the US arsenal, this book is full of unexpected - and sometimes hair-raising - revelations based on previously undisclosed Soviet as well as US sources.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member name99
A fairly interesting look at the invention of the hydrogen bomb.
I would have preferred something more technical, but, to be fair, it was about as technical as one would expect in a popular book.
My second disappointment was that it really covered only the US, and only up to the first dry bomb; I
I would have preferred something more technical, but, to be fair, it was about as technical as one would expect in a popular book.
My second disappointment was that it really covered only the US, and only up to the first dry bomb; I
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would have preferred much more coverage of other countries, and of post-invention technical developments. But, again to be fair, the author wrote the book he wanted, not the book I wanted. Show Less
LibraryThing member chrisod
An alternate, and more accurate subtitle for this book would be, “How the Soviets Stole The Bomb.” There is a fair amount of science in the book, and I had flashbacks to high school chemistry when Rhodes started printing nuclear equations. However, if science isn’t your thing you can skim
A fair amount of the book focuses on the post WWII espionage efforts of the USSR to catch up on bomb making by stealing all the secrets from the US. They mostly succeed in that department and the book often reads like a top notch spy thriller.
Another focus is the political machinations around getting the thermonuclear bomb built. Scientists with egos invested in the process had differing opinions of how best to go about it. Some scientists, upon seeing the devastation in Hiroshima, had second thoughts about building an exponentially more powerful bomb. And some thought we should build the bomb, but that just one nation having it was a destabilizing influence in the world. Not surprisingly, these differing factions didn’t get along with each other.
The final third of the book is a somewhat quickpaced history of the beginnings of the cold war. There are accusations online that Rhodes' history is not entirely accurate through this part of the book. Details aside, what I took from it is that we were much closer to nuking Korea during that war than I had ever imagined, and that elements within SAC strongly believed that a preemptive nuclear strike on the USSR (before they got their bomb program rolling) was a really fine idea. Also, and this really isn’t news, the CIA was generally widely inaccurate with their estimates of Soviet capabilities. Also interesting to me was just how much of the US economy was going into the bomb program in the 50s. Those glory days of free market capitalism in mid-century didn’t really exist. The economy was booming in big part to all the money the government was spending building bombs. Overall, the book is highly recommended as a richly detailed look at the early years of the cold war and the political machinations surrounding The Bomb.
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those sections as the book overall is definitely recommended.A fair amount of the book focuses on the post WWII espionage efforts of the USSR to catch up on bomb making by stealing all the secrets from the US. They mostly succeed in that department and the book often reads like a top notch spy thriller.
Another focus is the political machinations around getting the thermonuclear bomb built. Scientists with egos invested in the process had differing opinions of how best to go about it. Some scientists, upon seeing the devastation in Hiroshima, had second thoughts about building an exponentially more powerful bomb. And some thought we should build the bomb, but that just one nation having it was a destabilizing influence in the world. Not surprisingly, these differing factions didn’t get along with each other.
The final third of the book is a somewhat quickpaced history of the beginnings of the cold war. There are accusations online that Rhodes' history is not entirely accurate through this part of the book. Details aside, what I took from it is that we were much closer to nuking Korea during that war than I had ever imagined, and that elements within SAC strongly believed that a preemptive nuclear strike on the USSR (before they got their bomb program rolling) was a really fine idea. Also, and this really isn’t news, the CIA was generally widely inaccurate with their estimates of Soviet capabilities. Also interesting to me was just how much of the US economy was going into the bomb program in the 50s. Those glory days of free market capitalism in mid-century didn’t really exist. The economy was booming in big part to all the money the government was spending building bombs. Overall, the book is highly recommended as a richly detailed look at the early years of the cold war and the political machinations surrounding The Bomb.
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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Not being a scientist and being even less interested in making a bomb of any sort, I found some of Rhodes's Dark Sun tedious. Having said that, I firmly believe to dumb it down for the sake of the common reader would be to turn Dark Sun into a children's bedtime story for the nuclear physicists who
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truly are interested in U235 and CP-1. The sections involving espionage were far more exciting and hard to believe they weren't scenes taken straight from a spy movie thriller. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Pulitzer Prize (Finalist — History — 1996)
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
731 p.; 25 cm
ISBN
068480400X / 9780684804002
Local notes
Omslag: Indbundet, men der var jo nok et smudsbind
Omslag: Ikke angivet
Omslaget viser en brintbombesprængning
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
The Making of the Nuclear Age, bind 2
Side 16: Much that follows is new, and some of it surprising.
Side 16: Readers unfamiliar with Russian names may take comfort in knowing that they are transliterated phonetically from their original Cyrillic, an alphabet borrowed from Greek and Hebrew. Sounding them out aloud two or three times usually fixes them in memory.
Side 18: A single plane disguised as a friendly transport can now wipe out a city ....
Side 18: I looked in vain for the city that had been our target. The cloud seemed to be rising out of a wooded area devoid of population.
Side 27: January 1939: Georgi Flerov: .. There was a smell of nuclear powder in the air.
Side 29: Stalin: We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good the lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.
Side 60: Just as important much else was missing in the journals, the whole field of nuclear physics
Side 177: Now that the Americans have invented it, we must steal it.
Side 202: Feynman had calculated that Little Boys in mass production would cost about as much as B-29s.
Side 202: He sat in a bar in Manhattan one afternoon in the months after the war looking out the window at alle the people going by and shaking his head, thinking how sad it was that they didn't realize they had only a few years to live.
Side 202: Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!
Side 202: Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.
Side 250: John von Neumann. The story used to be told about him at Princeton, that while he was indeed a demi-god hed had made a detailed study of humans and could imitate them perfectly.
Side 253: During the war, 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.
Side 261: I look at these Moscovites and before my eyes they turn into shadows of people who have gone up in smoke in the fire of an atomic explosion.
Side 277: Everyone understood that if the bomb didn't explode, the whole team would be in trouble
Side 273: Enrico Fermi stolede mere på sine beregninger end Kurchatov gjorde. Fermi havde mange tilskuere på, da hans første reaktor gik kritisk. Kurchatov spærrede hele området af og nøjedes med 4 assistenter.
Side 274: Ever since his Leningrad days, taking measurements, Igor Vasilievich would always start a stopwatch or flip a switch to his favorite countdown: 'Ready? Dzik!' and on 'dzik!' he would activate.
Side 317: Accidents were acts of sabotage in Berialand. The scientists attributed the fire to spontaneous combustion - a passing bird had shat on the charge, they claimed, and the splash of liquid had functionen as a lens to focus the sunlight. It was a story only technological illiterates would swallow, and the bosses did.
Side 481: Having met Judge McGranery in his professional capacity, as one might say, I've never been able to find anything funny in the thirty-year sentence he gave me. -- Harry Gold
Side 488: Sir James Dewar / Is a better man than you are / None of you asses / can liquify gases. - Om James Dewar, der opfandt dewar-flasken og cordit og som den første der producerede flydende ilt i større stil og som i 1898 som den første fik brint på væskeform. I husholdninger findes typisk mange dewar-flasker under navnet termoflasker.
Side 493: The problem of plutonium behaviour at liquid hydrogen temperaturs had never been faced before, and there were plenty of problems with plutonium even at room temperature.
Side 495: Illustration, der viser indmaden af The Mike Sausage, testet den 1. november 1952.
Side 501: Harold Agnew caught a five-foot nurse shark. Marshall Holloway hadn't been very collegial in managing the program. He tended to give orders without exlaining why. So I put the shark in his bed. He never said anything, but after that he has much more collegial.
Side 501: The cubes turn into powder, probably black powder - I never looked at it, it's pyrophoric as hell.
Side 504: When we flared off the extra (hydrogen), the day we were going to leave to get on a ship out there on the Mike site, it was funny. We had two of these dewars sitting there flaring off, couldn't see a thing, just this roaring noise and all there terns flying around. They'd fly along about a hundred feet in the air above you and they'd hit that spot where this invisible hot air was going and whoa, talk about getting your tail feathers singed. That was a real hotfoot.
Side 508: Once the explosion broke through the casing, it expanded in seconds to a blinding white fireball more than three miles across and rose over the horizon like a dark sun; the crews of the task force, thirty miles away, felt a swell of heat as if someone had opened a hot oven, heat that persisted long enough to seem menacing.
Side 509: In nanoseconds uranium nuclei captured neutron upon neutron to form isotopes in measurable amounts all the way from U-239 up to mass number 255. Those quickly decayed, to produce a swath of transuranic species from uranium up to element 100, first isolated from that bomb debris and named fermium.
Side 509: As soon as I dared, I whipped off my dark glasses and the thing was enormous, bigger than I'd ever imagined it would be. It looked as though it blotted out the whole horizon, and I was standing on the deck of the Estes, thirty miles away.
Side 509: The explosion vaporized and lifted into the air some eighty million tons of solid material that would fall out around the world.
Side 582: ...the unconscionable risk both superpowers took of omnicidal war.
Side 584: We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war. -- Niels Bohr
Side 587: "Defence suffiency was exceeded" as the lawyers say. This was a fateful error.
Side 541: It was pretty frightening. There was a huge fireball with these turbulent rolls going in and out. The thing was glowing. It looked to me like a diseased brain up in the sky. It spread until the edge of it looked as if it was almost directly overhead.
Side 541: Bravo vaporized a crater 240 feet deep and 6500 feet in diameter out of the atoll rock. Rosenblut's 'terrible white stuff' was calcium precipitated from vaporized coral.
Gad vide om den engelske første sprængning "Hurricane" i 1952 er nævnt i Rhodes bøger? Ah, ja, side 502 i Dark Sun. HMS Plym blev sprængt af en 25 kilotons bombe.
Omslag: Ikke angivet
Omslaget viser en brintbombesprængning
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
The Making of the Nuclear Age, bind 2
Side 16: Much that follows is new, and some of it surprising.
Side 16: Readers unfamiliar with Russian names may take comfort in knowing that they are transliterated phonetically from their original Cyrillic, an alphabet borrowed from Greek and Hebrew. Sounding them out aloud two or three times usually fixes them in memory.
Side 18: A single plane disguised as a friendly transport can now wipe out a city ....
Side 18: I looked in vain for the city that had been our target. The cloud seemed to be rising out of a wooded area devoid of population.
Side 27: January 1939: Georgi Flerov: .. There was a smell of nuclear powder in the air.
Side 29: Stalin: We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good the lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.
Side 60: Just as important much else was missing in the journals, the whole field of nuclear physics
Side 177: Now that the Americans have invented it, we must steal it.
Side 202: Feynman had calculated that Little Boys in mass production would cost about as much as B-29s.
Side 202: He sat in a bar in Manhattan one afternoon in the months after the war looking out the window at alle the people going by and shaking his head, thinking how sad it was that they didn't realize they had only a few years to live.
Side 202: Is four square miles in one bomb not enough? Men are still thinking. Just tell us how big you want it!
Side 202: Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.
Side 250: John von Neumann. The story used to be told about him at Princeton, that while he was indeed a demi-god hed had made a detailed study of humans and could imitate them perfectly.
Side 253: During the war, 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.
Side 261: I look at these Moscovites and before my eyes they turn into shadows of people who have gone up in smoke in the fire of an atomic explosion.
Side 277: Everyone understood that if the bomb didn't explode, the whole team would be in trouble
Side 273: Enrico Fermi stolede mere på sine beregninger end Kurchatov gjorde. Fermi havde mange tilskuere på, da hans første reaktor gik kritisk. Kurchatov spærrede hele området af og nøjedes med 4 assistenter.
Side 274: Ever since his Leningrad days, taking measurements, Igor Vasilievich would always start a stopwatch or flip a switch to his favorite countdown: 'Ready? Dzik!' and on 'dzik!' he would activate.
Side 317: Accidents were acts of sabotage in Berialand. The scientists attributed the fire to spontaneous combustion - a passing bird had shat on the charge, they claimed, and the splash of liquid had functionen as a lens to focus the sunlight. It was a story only technological illiterates would swallow, and the bosses did.
Side 481: Having met Judge McGranery in his professional capacity, as one might say, I've never been able to find anything funny in the thirty-year sentence he gave me. -- Harry Gold
Side 488: Sir James Dewar / Is a better man than you are / None of you asses / can liquify gases. - Om James Dewar, der opfandt dewar-flasken og cordit og som den første der producerede flydende ilt i større stil og som i 1898 som den første fik brint på væskeform. I husholdninger findes typisk mange dewar-flasker under navnet termoflasker.
Side 493: The problem of plutonium behaviour at liquid hydrogen temperaturs had never been faced before, and there were plenty of problems with plutonium even at room temperature.
Side 495: Illustration, der viser indmaden af The Mike Sausage, testet den 1. november 1952.
Side 501: Harold Agnew caught a five-foot nurse shark. Marshall Holloway hadn't been very collegial in managing the program. He tended to give orders without exlaining why. So I put the shark in his bed. He never said anything, but after that he has much more collegial.
Side 501: The cubes turn into powder, probably black powder - I never looked at it, it's pyrophoric as hell.
Side 504: When we flared off the extra (hydrogen), the day we were going to leave to get on a ship out there on the Mike site, it was funny. We had two of these dewars sitting there flaring off, couldn't see a thing, just this roaring noise and all there terns flying around. They'd fly along about a hundred feet in the air above you and they'd hit that spot where this invisible hot air was going and whoa, talk about getting your tail feathers singed. That was a real hotfoot.
Side 508: Once the explosion broke through the casing, it expanded in seconds to a blinding white fireball more than three miles across and rose over the horizon like a dark sun; the crews of the task force, thirty miles away, felt a swell of heat as if someone had opened a hot oven, heat that persisted long enough to seem menacing.
Side 509: In nanoseconds uranium nuclei captured neutron upon neutron to form isotopes in measurable amounts all the way from U-239 up to mass number 255. Those quickly decayed, to produce a swath of transuranic species from uranium up to element 100, first isolated from that bomb debris and named fermium.
Side 509: As soon as I dared, I whipped off my dark glasses and the thing was enormous, bigger than I'd ever imagined it would be. It looked as though it blotted out the whole horizon, and I was standing on the deck of the Estes, thirty miles away.
Side 509: The explosion vaporized and lifted into the air some eighty million tons of solid material that would fall out around the world.
Side 582: ...the unconscionable risk both superpowers took of omnicidal war.
Side 584: We are in a completely new situation that cannot be resolved by war. -- Niels Bohr
Side 587: "Defence suffiency was exceeded" as the lawyers say. This was a fateful error.
Side 541: It was pretty frightening. There was a huge fireball with these turbulent rolls going in and out. The thing was glowing. It looked to me like a diseased brain up in the sky. It spread until the edge of it looked as if it was almost directly overhead.
Side 541: Bravo vaporized a crater 240 feet deep and 6500 feet in diameter out of the atoll rock. Rosenblut's 'terrible white stuff' was calcium precipitated from vaporized coral.
Gad vide om den engelske første sprængning "Hurricane" i 1952 er nævnt i Rhodes bøger? Ah, ja, side 502 i Dark Sun. HMS Plym blev sprængt af en 25 kilotons bombe.
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