Before The First Nuke Exploded... It Imploded.
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- Опубліковано 19 лип 2023
- The Trinity test was something of a moment of truth for the scientists and engineers behind the Manhattan project, and while Oppenheimer is getting the movie, the person that's most directly responsible for making the gadget work was the explosives experts who developed the implosion system.
Making an implosion successfully compress the pit required an understanding of explosion dynamics that simply didn't exist before it was studied at Los Alamos. And making it work required some hand tweaking, right down to the head of X-Division manually drilling out and filling air bubbles using a dentist drill.
And then the detonation system used technology which had been developed to take photographs.
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/ scottmanley - Наука та технологія
I love the attitude of “well if this goes wrong I won’t have to worry about it”
You would’ve loved Stockton Rush
@@Gregoreo1127 lol. That's funny!
Dentist drill put to good use. Lol
@@Gregoreo1127 dude you just cant not put more pressure on this meme can you
Truly epic on the mad scientist scale.
Dentist drill makes perfect sense, they're air powered and run at about 400,000 rpm. But have practically zero torque. I used to demonstrate by engraving on a piece of steel and would then jab it onto the back of my hand whilst still running, where it would immediately stall.
Same will happen if the dentist accidentally hits the gum or tongue, they're amazing from an engineering viewpoint. Other than the sound they make...
That's pretty cool. I'd never thought about that I always presumed they were just like really careful.
Dentist drills in the early '60s weren't air powered. At least for the dentists we went to. They were powered by an electric motor and a system of pulleys connected by loops of string/wire. I'm not sure when the air powered dentist drills became common. Maybe they had an air powered dentist drill at Los Alamos, though?
They'll still put a hole in your tongue. My dentist slipped about a year ago and hit the underside of my tongue. Put a nice hole in it.
17:43 the idea of a camera plane flying over and practically turning on the sun for a split second and everyone being stunned is so funny to me😂😂 Would have never knew that existed without this video
The usual way probably was to drop some pyrotechnic flash to act as a light source, but closer to the ground. And if you use a drogue chute to orient the thing, you can even have a sort-of reflector that shields the plane above from the flash.
And of course star shells were well known, too!
Is there any videos of something like this going off? Granted that probably wouldn’t represent the *experience* completely.
Now *THAT* would be one hell of a replica project! (Maybe someday…)
"Hey, I hear an airplane. I think it is coming our way... yeah it is definitely getting a lot closer, low too."
"Well if we can spot it silhouetting the stars we can take some shots at it."
**flash**
"AAARRRGH! Mein eyes!"
"AAARRRGH! Mein eyes!"
@@JonMartinYXD Seems someone has not heard about the new Flakscheinwerfer …
RAF used photo flash bombs at night bombers dropped them after bombs away to photo accuracy it meant flying straight after bomb release for accurate photo no evasive action ???
George Kistiakowski was a truly colorful character. He was my dad’s research director at Harvard in the late 50’s/early 60’s. I grew up hearing stories of his exploits in the OSS and at Los Alamos. He had a feel for explosives that was uncanny in its accuracy. He once used plastique to rescue his home concrete mixer after a load cured inside of it. The explosion shattered the concrete without harming the mixer and the particles were simply poured out of the drum. A very colorful character who my father loved as man and mentor.
Mythbusters did that too. Although they ultimately used enough that there was no concrete left in the truck, there wasn't any truck left either...
I can just imagine the scene, after his wife tells him about the blocked toilet "Oh hell no, we are calling the plumber this time!"
@@NemoConsequentaethe sound of that explosion is stuck in my head forever 😂
I used to drink beer regularly with a physicist from the Manhattan Project. He worked on detonation timing for the conventional explosives. He wanted to watch the bomb go off from one of the trenches but his boss said no way. After implacable badgering, his boss relented and declared, "OK but you'll be downwind!" He was the only physicist to witness the blast from a trench. He passed age 82 from MRSA infection after surgery. His name was Dick Davison.
The thing about the photography side was that the ultra fast gas switches were not used to fire the Xenon flash, which, for the technology of the time, was easy to do, using a simple high voltage pulse that ionised the gas in the Xenon flash tube at the cathode end. The big thing was they had to actually only fire the tube for a very brief period, so as to only have this very short burst of very bright light, so that the motion of the aircraft would not blur the image. Thus the need to develop a device that would be able to turn on very fast, and also handle a massive current pulse, so as to dump all the charge in the capacitor bank used to provide energy to light the flash tube, so as to drop the voltage across the flash tube (at this time it would be dropping from the 400V or so initial voltage, to the cut off point of around 60V, where the tube itself would start to slowly cut off due to the arc voltage being below the voltage needed to keep it on, slowly being in the order of tens of microseconds) to close to zero, and thus ensure it has a sharp cut off. Most devices at the time would either not last more than a single use, or would not have the fast response needed.
This device was the original gas thyratron, and the need for fast ones meant they made them with a hydrogen gas fill, with early ones filled with neon being both slow, and too low an operate voltage. Hydrogen gave the needed high voltage stand off needed, and because it is light, it also ionised very fast, giving the very rapid current path build up, in the order of nanoseconds from fully off to fully on. This has led to them being now an export controlled device, and to this day an item that is still made, on the original tube lines, by some specialist companies in the USA, as the US military needs them for operational parts, and, because of the hydrogen gas fill being able to penetrate almost all seals with ease, a part that has a very limited shelf life of around 2 years, before you need to either replace or rebuild it. Neither are cheap either.
You can test it at lower current, and do all your qualification at this level, as full power operation you only have around 5 uses, before it degrades to the point it is no longer usable. Selling them is ITAR restricted, as heavily as any part can be, because of the one use case, so there have been a few attempts to steal the technology. These days you still find it hard to get the same power delivery with small volume, it really is a part that is perfect in it's application. But you can do it, with modern high power semiconductors from specialist companies, with corresponding exotic semiconductor compounds, and prices that make the gold used to plate them the cheapest cost in production.
Incidentally the bridge wires also underwent massive changes, from simple thin wires, to the modern ones, mass produced using semiconductor wafer processes, to make thin film metal alloy strips that are precisely controlled in shape, composition and dimension, so that all of them are as close to atomically identical as possible. The difference in timing between them is in the order of picoseconds, they are that identical.
Why don't you just store them in hydrogen?
Nice
@@big0bad0brad It would just be more loss with very little gain.
@@big0bad0brad Because the internal pressure is critical, you would have to have an external chamber with gas at the right low pressure to have any hope to keep it correct, and that container would also leak hydrogen even faster.
This is wonderful in depth technical information that I have never seen before in writing. Even expansive histories on the creation of early nuclear weapons don't provide any deep background on this part of the fusing system. Thanks for the education!
Not only does Scott know his stuff, but he is also a great story teller.
well he's good at leaving out the part about white supremacy
Absolutely!!!!
@@BobBob-nr1zt When did that happen???
Exactly what I was goin to comment after watching, haha.
@@rockjano dispossessing Native Americans of the land that was seized and poisoning their neighboring land that wasn't seized.
I met Doc Edgerton in 1976 in my freshman year at MIT. I was really impressed with his regular-guy attitude: I spent about 4 hours in his lab, ending after midnight, with just him and a fellow student. We had fun shooting cards in half with a rifle bullet and getting a flash picture of it. We played with all the original apparatus we've seen in the famous photographs like the milk crown, the water drops, etc. And he was having as much fun as we were, no pretensions at all. What a nice guy he was!
My favorite safety mechanisms that got built into modern nuclear weapons. They built the implosion soccer ball in slightly differently sized segments. Without a precisely timed electrical detonation any outside forces such as fire or bullets would not set off the bomb in the correct sequence to acheive critical mass. Further more you can add another layer of safety by encrypting the precise firing order for the explosive lenses. Grandpa was smart
ב''ה, not smart enough to make them unnecessary
Newer ones are similar they only have 2 points of implosion but the paraboloid pit is slightly off center so that there needs to be a precise delay before firing the second charge, and it us unlikely to do much more than a blue flash without a very precisely timed neutron pulse. Also uses fiber optics so it is intrinsically safe.
For anyone wondering, high explosives are somewhat hard to detonate, you usually need another smaller explosion to set it off.
Not for C4
@@Rob-tr1st especially for C4, what do you mean?
@@vrmousse He probably read it on the internet :3
@@vrmousse I meant you need pressure and heat
Well with c4 you need an electric ignition block normally timed or remote detonated (edit ... its the energy needed to start the plastik chemical reaction)
Funny story about TNT. I was born in 1957 and had an interest in chemistry when I was in grade school, probably 4th through 6th grade at the time. I had a chemistry set and did all the examples in there, then I went to thrift stores and bought a bunch of chemistry books. This was in the early 60's and the books were mostly introductory college chemistry as taught during world war 2 as far as I could tell. They described reactions that would produce all sorts of explosives. I made gunpowder, thermite, nitrogen tri iodide, and other stuff. The TNT was a soaplike or waxy white stuff that could melt but could not be ignited by a fuse or hammer. My dad freaked. He explained that this was nothing like the burning stuff I had seen. Its hard to set off, but if you did, it would shatter the hammer head, even the tiny amount i thought would be safe. No parent went to the school and demanded those books be removed. Just sayin.
Either you made it through with all ten fingers or type patiently with whatever you have left. 😅
Nor would they now.
Blowing people up, shooting them, generally causing havoc is just fine these days too. Its really "dangerous" books you worry about in the USA, you know, ones that might just make someone think. The USA is just Nuts! ...
When I was in high school one of my friends managed to get hold of a floppy disk which supposedly held a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook. What it actually was was a bunch of text files of questionable accuracy describing how to make stuff including TNT. But most of it was bogus, I think designed specifically to make people blow themselves up. For example I remember one of the supposed recipes called for you to carefully react, and you'd better keep it below 5°C or else, a few hundred mls of unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine with a few hundred mls of red fuming nitric acid. Because of course that's a nice tame reaction as long as you keep it cold.😂
In the movie The Peacemaker, a teeny-tiny, 'backpack', implosion nuke is disabled at the end by the 'heroes' by prying off the cap of one of those 'soccer-ball' explosive segments. It went off as a teeny-tiny, 'dirty', chemical bomb rather than a 'nuke'.
And that is correct
@@scottmanley I wonder if a fungus could be employed to covertly eat holes in someone's blocks...
I walked in on the end of that, had no idea what it was. I have no idea how long ago that was, but now I know what I saw 😂
@@JoshuaTootell I sat through the whole thing (walked in on the beginning of it?), and years later don't remember anything specific other than the part you saw. So consider yourself an efficient movie goer.
@@marcmcreynolds2827I watched it multiple times for the jingoistic portrayal of US military intervention .
The nice thing about being a bomb tech is that if anything goes wrong it will suddenly no longer be your problem.
So, as a bomb tech, if someone pointed a loaded gun at you, and if anything goes wrong, then "it will suddenly no longer be your problem". Yeah, that sure sounds like a "nice" philosophy to live by. 🤦♂
You go from biology to physics in a few microseconds.
@@sunnyjim1355did you willfully misinterpret what they said or are you really not able to see that you're adding to the scenario that makes it different?
That reminds me of a T-Shirt I saw with the caption: "BOMB SQUAD. If you see me running, try to keep up!"
@@davidharding1732 Another read as Bomb tech outranks all at a run.
21:30 to be fair, TNT isn't exactly looking for an excuse to just go off. If you give it an explosion, it'll join in without hesitation, but TNT really doesn't like to start explosions.
If anybody doesn't know that yet, the author Richard Rhodes has a wonderful book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" that has this story and many more. It's a wonderful, well-researched classic. Highly recommend.
A number of years ago, I spent an evening with a distant cousin of mine and his wife in their chateau in Vail, CO (they were loaded. through the wife's family). When he found that I was an engineering student, he told me the story of his work on the Manhattan Project. I didn't drink back then, but he sure did, and he waxed poetic about the night before Trinity. A great many of the people who worked on it were recent graduates in physics; in other words, college boys. According to him, the crew they had hooking up the EBW firing harness consisted of recent college grads who drank their dinner nightly, and were three sheets to the wind while prepping the Gadget. He was pretty stewed himself while telling the story, and I've never been sure whether that added or took away from its credibility. But there were reckless college grads at Los Alamos: Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin were both killed in separate prompt criticality tests of the same plutonium bomb pit, known these days as "the demon core". Slotin had supposedly been warned by Enrico Fermi that he would "be dead in a year" using the experimental procedure he employed. Decades later, a senior engineer from Rocketdyne told me of his visit to Los Alamos, where he observed some of the college kids setting up their own little nuclear reactors up in remote areas of the mountains, just to do their own experiments. You might do another video on something that is verifiable, namely the Ra-La experiments. Those were tests of the implosion system using radioactive lanthanum, which put out huge amounts of gamma rays, to image the implosion of a lead pit simulating the bomb's pit. They contaminated a lot of land, but solved the problem. Great video, as usual!
I agree that a video on the Ra-La experiments would be quite interesting.
In movies about the Manhattan project it fascinated me to hear the physicists talking about how difficult it is to make a nuclear bomb explode: the timings, the implosion, the precise geometric shapes of the explosives, etc.! Even though this is extremely complicated many people today still believe that a nuclear reactor can accidentally explode like a bomb!
That didn't fascinate me because they can figure that out by testing. What did fascinate me is engineering and problem solving they needed to do just to get material that can explode. Once they got that it was easy sailing from there.
Chernobyl acted sort of like a bomb. The reaction hall was completely destroyed and the force spread the radioactive cloud far and wide.
@@Safetytrousers Like a powerful conventional bomb, but you SHOULD know that's not what is meant.
@@SafetytrousersA bomb, not a nuke. High pressure steam and hydrogen i think.
@@Safetytrousers He meant nuclear bomb...
To put the spending in contrast, the U.S. spent roughly $3 billion on the Manhattan Project during the war. It spent roughly $3 billion to develop the B-29 Superfortress. It spent roughly $3 billion to develop the VT fuze. It spent about $30 billion on the strategic bombing campaign over Europe. This gives an idea of the scale of industrial and monetary resources the United States devoted to the war effort.
The US got their money's worth from it though as they have had nearly 80 years technological, economic and military hegemony superseding the British Empire.
It's also sobering to realize that at no point did the US feel that switching to a "total war" economic plan was needed. Sure, there was rationing, and a lot of production switched to supporting the war effort. But it was never a matter of devoting production at every level and in every form to producing war material.
For context, $1,000 in 1944 was equivalent in purchasing power to about $17,336 in 2023. @primmakinsofis614 is rounding up a bit (est. was more like $2.5b by 1947), but that's not accounting for inflation.
@@mousermindPurchasing power conversion of dollar amounts are specifically correction for inflation .
$2 Billion, not $3 Billion for the Manhattan Project. The #1 biggest project was the B-29, with the Manhattan Project at #2. Just over $1 billion was spent on the VT fuse - haven't seen any actual development cost to develop the fuse - most of the billion was manufacture millions of them at $20 each that were used during the war. The US spent approx $295 Billion in WWII. The $3B for the B-29 resulted in 3970 being built. The $2B for the Manhattan Project resulted in 3 bombs and 1 core that was made in August 1945 but never left the country, and the huge facilities of Oak Ridge and Hanford for making the weapons grade Uranium and Plutonium.
In the video clip of the scientists working on Trinity in the tent, you can see Louis Slotin (wearing sunglasses). He would end up dying while conducting experiments one the later cores that were meant to be dropped on other parts of Japan if they didn't surrender. Those experiments involved handling the core with a screwdriver. One day, the screwdriver slipped...
At 13:37 : Louis Slotin was the second to be killed by the Demon Core. The guy sitting in the background is Harry Daghlian, the first physicist the core killed.
Slotin knew exactly what was going to happen to him because he sat by the bedside of Daghlian as he died.
The implosion seems like trying to float water on top of gasoline, you might be able to do it with the surface tension but the slightest asymmetry or disturbance and and they instantly swap places
Well not an accurate analogy but equally hard to achieve, so you really do get a sense of how accurate their timings had to be.
hmm, seems like a challeng NileRed / NileBlue might want to do..
@@unitrader403 I'd rather see NileGreen's take on that one :P
@@paulmichaelfreedman8334is say it’s pretty accurate as an analogy since the greater the surface area and difference in density, the more unstable it is
The waiter never can get that right!
I thought I knew ALL the Manhattan Project trivia! I didn't know ANY of this (and, outside of the demon core hoopla and the failed dress code, this is easily one of my favorites)! Thanks so much, Scott! Everyone and their dog is putting out Oppenheimer videos right now... thanks for not being the same crap in a different nuclear pile (heh. "Fissile Pile" would be an awesome name for a band.)!
BTW, the guilds say to watch movies and stuff until they call for specific boycotts, so everyone can Barbenheimer it up without guilt!
Interesting piece of Manhattan Project trivia I was not aware of.
The other thing that I doubt most folks are aware of is developing the B-29 was more expensive then the Manhattan Project.
I used to work at MIT, and one of my fond memories is going to a Doc Edgerton lecture in the mid '80's. Later on, I helped his son Robert who was doing a short-term experiment in one of the buildings associated with the Edgerton Laboratory. A wonderful time, honored to interact with such people.
In case anyone is planning on showing solidarity with the writers and actors, they actually want people to go watch these movies because it shows the studios how valuable writers and actors are.
I am not much of a TV/movie guy, haven't seen one in years. But I'm interested in this one, and am a union guy myself, so I looked it up:
"Am I crossing the picket line by seeing one of those movies?
No, the unions have not asked fans to boycott productions, and are quick to make that explicit. Instead, the guilds have asked supporters who aren't members to post on social media and donate to community funds."
Came here to point that out. So here my pointless comment just to help your comment rise under the algorithm.
The vast majority of those Hollywood people demonstrate no respect for my beliefs, so their strike means nothing to me.
@@RCAvhstapeA vast majority of regular people don't respect your beliefs either
@@scrambledmandible Cool, dude. How does that make you feel?
I hope you saw "Fat Man and Little Boy" 1989 starring Paul Newman as Groves and Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer. That film centered on them at Los Alamos and the Trinity test. The only gripe I had was the depiction of one of the Criticality accidents with the "Demon Core" which didn't happen till after the Nagasaki mission.Two older flicks were "The Beginning or the End" 1947 B&W and was highly fictionalized as it was just 2yrs after the fact but did portray the Hiroshima mission. Also "Above & Beyond" 1952 B&W which centered on Col. Paul Tibbets who commanded the group to fly the B-29's and he flew the 1st bombing of Hiroshima.
Putting the accident in there for dramitic effect would have been par for the course for any Hollywood portrayal of a real event. What was unforgivable was how they used it to smear Groves by claiming Groves didn't allow for his parents to see him beforhe died. Groves had his parents flown down from Canada on an army plane the day after the accident. That movie was a lying leftist propaganda hit job against Groves. Leslie Grove wrote a book called Now it Can be Told which is worth reading.
Don't you mean the only bombing of Hiroshima?
Anyway, another early movie about the nuclear bomb issue was "days on a cloud" (screenplay and theatrical playz), which cleverly omitted all technical details to portray the moral dilemma of allowing the technology to exist .
@@johndododoe1411 I just referred to it as the 1st bombing and the 2nd obviously was Nagasaki.
Ahh, nuclear physics, always a delight
Nuclear fizzlesists, I guess? No, they gamble.
@@voornaam3191lmaoo. I don’t see you succeeding regularly on gambles this advanced
@@voornaam3191 The French-Canadian pronunciation!
A delight, or a very bright light.
@@Sableaglesecond sun type shiz
The people on strike made a point of saying not to stop watching movies.
And why should we care what union people say? It's such an interesting assumption, that allowing "ganging up" is okay, which is essentially what unions do. If companies were allowed to "gang up" against employees, it would clearly cause outrage. Valid outrage, I might add.
@@suserman7775it’s called collective bargaining, it helps to overcome the power imbalance between employers and employees
Fun fact about TNT, one reason several countries did not start using it in until after ww1 was that it was quite difficult to get it to explode. It cannot burn to detonation, so would be pretty riskfree to drill in.
That's the main difference between high & low explosive. Low explosives _burn-very-fast._ High explosives decompose/explode due the the shockwave travelling through the material, faster than any flame front could go. it can be _hard_ to get that initial shockwave going. It's why detonators are used. They being a small amount of low explosive.
So you fire the low explosive, to trigger the high explosive, witch then initiates the nuclear cascade. Boom, BOOM, *_BOOM!_*
@@NemoConsequentae ...which then triggers the hydrogen fusion core, as in the castle bravo test. 15 megaton boom.
@@oldfrend Big badaBOOM!
@@NemoConsequentae Not always, the UK (and others) used Picric acid (TNP), which is a high explosive, but can burn to detonation.
So not true. ALL general explosives will burn to detonation including TNT. IM explosives are about the only ones that wont, but even that relies on design of the device and not just the chemical part. I have 15 years of munitions design experience handling TNT, RDX and various primary explosive including lead azide and styphnate. Low explosives (gun propellants and pyrotechnic formulations for example) are typically not used in initiators as they don't detonate and you need the shock from detonation to function the main charge. You use primary explosives for that purpose. They usually are highly sensitive to a number of stimuli, and you keep the quantity low in the device to minimise the risk of initiating them. TNT is relatively inert but will burn and like most explosives will burn to detonation if the quantity is large enough.
One of my professors in grad school in the early 70s had worked at DuPont during the war, developing the high explosives that were used. At the time, he only knew it was for better explosives for conventional bombs.
My grandfather was an optical physicist and you're giving me flashbacks to the pre-digital era. 😁
Back when Dupont, 3M and Honeywell were industrial giants and household names.
Back when people would talk in hushed whispers about how impressive the creation of the post-it note was.
For those uninitiated, probably, the definitive book on the Manhattan Project is "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," by Richard Rhodes. Thanks , Scott.
I enjoyed that book. It starts off really slow and meanders through philosophy a bit in the first chapter, but really digs into the physics and history in an interesting way.
That book is phenomenal.
The best work of nonfiction. Period.
This was a Pulitzer prize winning book and my favorite science book of all time. If you want to learn how modern nuclear physics was born this is actually the book to do it. And believe it or not for this type of material it's an easy read.
I chose that book and read it cover to cover as my main source for my eight grade end of year history paper back in the early nineties. I still have that copy and have read it a few times again since.
Similar to the drilling into blocks of high explosives. Supposedly a bomb tech said that he was more concerned about disarming small devices rather than large ones because in the event of an issue the small ones would really hurt but the large devices would suddenly not be his problem anymore
The difference between being killed or being maimed for life.
The difference between being maimed and being instantly reduced to atoms.
Smooth or crunchy
Dead vs wishing you were dead
after WWII Edward Teller was pushing for the hydrogen bomb but it was too demanding to do the math for so it got pushed back (that changed when the Russians tested their first nuke). Von Neuman was bought in to help solve this problem and a big part of the reason we have computers today at all is because thermo-nuclear weapons would be impossible to build without those computations
Ya. No. How about you go read about Bletchley Park, and what they did first. While the computations for the H bomb are one of the major early uses of electronic programmable calculators (*), they were not quite the driver that Tunny was for computer development. Even the NCR stuff done in the US was far more computationally demanding than the cold spots and spikes that the original Super produced. (IIRC, the original Super calculations were run via gangs of IBM tabulators). The Ulam-Teller advance of the sparkplug was a result of the math showing that the classic super wouldn't have worked- which is another argument in favor of Oppenheimer being "more correct" than Teller- that the world wasn't there in 1949, until the Teller-Ulam ideas (which are still "classified", even though they are fairly widely distributed) had been formulated.
I'm just a layperson in this- but fairly well read.
(*) More "calculator" than "computer" because of the relatively limited storage involved- they printed punch cards, which were then fed back into the calculator to make the next set of computations...although that's really being fine on what a computer vice a calculator is...
An entire town full of physicists and nobody thought of thermal expansion ahead of time
Correct, but that was quickly theorized when the problem arose, then proven right.
I would highly recommend reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes for deep dive into the full history of the Manhattan Project.
So the Manhattan Project scientists set off the world's first dirty bomb before the Trinity explosion...😂 My late grandfather was a freight conductor on the Southern Pacific railroad who worked on the "Golden State" route (El Paso, TX to Tucumcari, NM) , and was working when the Trinity detonation happened, he saw the flash from it. The powers that be fed false information to the local papers the next morning, and it was reported as an ammunition depot explosion
That's interesting. I spoke to a woman who, as a child, was "kicked out" of a railroad car that her Mom and Dad were preparing breakfast for the workers. She was 6 or 7 as I recall, and it was very early in the morning. She saw the sky light up in a purple-violet color. She ran in to tell her Mom and Dad, and later were told an ammunition dump had blown up (cover story). So she was a witness to the very first nuclear detonation in human history.
I love how you get a physics, engineering and history lesson all in one.
Fascinating! I had heard of the Jumbo container, but was told that it was some random container they had dragged in to see how powerful the bomb was up close. Your explanation makes much more sense. A successful nuke going off inside Jumbo would be interesting.
I didn't catch it if you said it, but all those cables looping around the outside of the bomb were the same length. The signal to the detonators had to arrive simultaneously, and the length of travel affected the timing. (Or so I heard.)
I was going to mention the same thing.... absolutely correct.
It certainly would . Same reason PC memory modules are very near the CPU, with specially shaped signal traces on the PCB .
The jumbo container is still at the Trinity site, which you can visit on two days of the year. The visitors' line is miles long, so you need to arrive very early.
Yes, the cables needed to be he same length. I had the same problem with clocking circuits when I was building computers for Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1970s.
20:38 I can't believe you resisted saying "went off with a bang"
Hmm it's less important that the detonator be quick, than it have a low variance. It doesn't really matter if it takes milliseconds to trigger, as long as they ALL TRIGGER at the same time
Nice deep dive, I especially enjoyed the spark gap initiator! Thanks to you and your team Scott. Cheers!
I was expecting «Drill safe» this time :). Thanks Scott.
I am a HUGE atomic history buff/fan/infinitely interested. I have NEVER heard of the 200ton Jumbo device. Keep it up Mr.Manley, as always, great stuff!
theres more to the story about jumbo, I think part of it is actually still there, because it was too heavy to move, and you can see it on google maps.
Might want to also look up "Donald Hornig", a chemist/explosives expert who was tasked with babysitting the Trinity bomb the night before its detonation. The powers that be had gotten anxious about security, but they didn't want some random soldier right next to it. So there he was up at the top of the tower, in the shack with the bomb, as a lightening storm raged, reading by the light of a bare bulb IIRC a classic from literature about the end of the world.
Yes, the jumbo is still at the Trinity site.
"well if it goes wrong I won't have to worry about it" is such an Oceangate move...
The "Gadget" looks like it would have fit in just fine backstage at an early rock concert🎸🥁🎙️☢️💣💥✌️
I enjoy all of your videos, but this one I enjoyed immensely. Thank you Scott.
Scott, That was a really good one! No rehash of the same ol' same ol' but a completely new insight of the difficulties that had to be overcome. Thanks.
Scott, you’re amazing storyteller… you’re always going to such great details!
Wow… 👍
I hope one day you get to go into space you deserve it!
God bless and best regards,
Greg / Ft. Lauderdale Fl.
Kyle Hill has made some really good documentaries the last couple of years, many including his own recorded footage. Not long before the Ukraine war, he had gone to Prypyat and the nuclear plant. Extremely captivating. He might look like a rock guitarist, but I tell you he knows his shit about physics.
Those krytron triggers were also used in high-end xerox copiers. I bought one a while back on eBay, just for fun.
21:13 - "And I like to think that some of that yield comes down to the love and care that the engineers put into its assembly, including that guy with the dentist drill, drilling into blocks of explosives. I'm Scott Manley, fly safe." - Oh well, somehow I expected "drill safe".
So so interesting - I've previously read large parts of what you described, but you really brought it all together for me.
"Shadow Makers", Dwight Shultz (Mad Murdoch) & Paul Newman, Covers alot of what you talked about Scott & it is a really good film. Even covered the fact that they got the BRITS in to resolve the implosion failure
Fat Man and Little Boy
@@wolfecanada6726 like many films it gets renamed per country.
They got the entire British nuclear bomb team in early on, including Fuchs and indirectly the Bohrs .
@@johndododoe1411 British didn't turn up until late 1943 / Early 1944. Though it was the British that worked out an air deliverable weapon was viable (of course the guys who actually did the maths were Austrian and German (Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls)).
Little Man, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was also the test shot for the gun method, since the designers figured that it was sure to work.
Indeed yes, and I think the only shot. Accidental assembly of a U235 bomb is a very scary thing to contemplate I'd imagine!
James Tuck a British guy was also involved in shaped charges. He designed antitank shells using shaped charges. This was absolutely necessary because British tanks were on the field no match for the panzers . British tanks before shaped charge shells had to get in close as their guns were were not powerful enough at long range but shaped charge she'll meant they could keep a safer distance.
Rubbish!!! Shaped Charges were used in the PIAT Anti Tank Spigot Mortar during WWII. British Anti Tank Guns didn't use Shaped Charges as they don't work with Rifled guns. The high rotation speed of the gun round causes the Jet of molten copper on the HEAT Round to rapidly spread out, destroying its effect on armour. The British 6 pounder was quite capable of killing anything up to the Panzer IV and the 17 pounder AT Gun could kill anything German on the battlefield at long range with solid AP shot rounds.
The British still don't use HEAT rounds with their tanks as the Challenger II uses a 120mm rifled gun. The High Explosive Shells used by the British Tanks to this day are High Explosive Squash Head. The Explosives in the Shell are of the Plastic type and the shell has thin walls. On hitting the target, the explosive becomes a "Cow Pat" on the side of the armour with the base of the shell holding the detonator. As that goes into the side of the target it explodes the explosive "Cow Pat" which makes a large shock wave go through the armour and breaks off some of the metal on the inside of tank where the explosion happened, These fragments then fly around the inside of the tank at a great rate of knots chopping the crew and anything soft in the tank to bits.
Re: the yield of the Trinity test. It's easy to see why it was the biggest of its time; when building the first one, you'd not want to waste any of the material. Better put in a bit more to make sure it does actually detonate, learn from it, scale the next one down now that there's some confidence in it. Put too little into the first one and it fizzles, it's a big waste of plutonium.
EG&G had a division called Ortec that went on to make some really good equipment for radiation detection / measurement. They did very well out of the Chernobyl disaster (every municipality in Europe needed to be able to make monitoring measures for years to come).
The cold fusion fuss was also useful to them; they put together a "my first cold nuclear fusion testing kit" neutron detector, and sold a lot of these to all the research groups that sprang up suddenly to try and replicate the supposed feat. The number of these that were RMA'd as "not working" was apparently fantastic, the customers preferring to believe that the instrument was defective rather than their attempt at cold fusion had failed...
Scott, that was a great recap and explanation of the Trinity Test in NM. Small correction however as “Jumbo” was not made on site, it was hauled there after it was made. Also FYI 2 times a year you can tour both the actual test levels cation and the McDonald farmhouse that was used to do some of the preliminary work nearby the test site. it is very interesting to see firsthand. Keep up the great work!
Great story telling Scott. I am fascinated by the technology and the minds who created something out of nothing. Thank you, please tell us more!
Long time fan, Scott
Good luck catching views off Barbenheimer weekend!
Wow, with Veritasium's video the other day about Oppenheimer the man, and now this, we are getting spoiled for atomic goodness 🤘
An explosion creating an implosion to result in the mother of all explosions.🤯
Scott has a way of weaving a tale that makes us believe we are there, much appreciated! Thank you!
Remember SAG even in the strike is actually ASKING consumers to continue to support the movie/TV industry by continuing to watch. They had to tweet about it. The SAG strike is for most work by sag workers to stop producing content until a deal is reached. They still need the cash flow from consumers right now, a lot of actors are actually struggling financially
This video is so much better than all the other videos I’ve seen on this topic, so much more detail! I Love that you made this video.
A late friend of mine's grandfather worked in the metallurgical lab for the Manhattan Project. He later made halfway decent money coming up with a process for producing metal halide salts for lightbulbs and such, until the CCP stole their patented methodology. When I was in my early twenties, I got to go to their lab a couple times. I would've loved to work at a place like that. Machine shop, glass blowing shop, other lab spaces. I regret not asking my buddy's dad (who still worked there after his father-in-law retired) more seriously about a job. Could've learned so much in a place like that.
For anyone who's wondering the unions representing writers and actors have asked people not to boycott current pieces of art that are coming out/ already completed. Among other reasons it emphasises the difference good actors and writers make - people have been encouraged to see the Oppenheimer movie specifically in recent posts.
Fascinating insights not offered elsewhere, Scott! Thank you!
Thanks Scott! I always had visions of all this high tech (there was plenty of that) stuff going on with the “gadget” but to hear that some guy is sitting around with a dental drill and drilling holes into a block of high explosives is just🤯!
Terrific explanation, one of your best
I thought I knew almost all the history and detail of the engineering solutions and physics of nuclear weapons available in the public domain. I was wrong. You taught me a whole bunch more and reignited my curiosity. Cheers, ma man!
20:52 "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"
Yep, I will go see this movie.
Scott, great video! Thanks for sharing!
It’s mind blowing (pun kind of intended) to see vacuum tubes in the electronics package!
Those were the electronics of the time. 😊 I've worked on all sorts of stuff, from 1940 on up to present day, over the years.
@@ronaldlebeck9577Yep, first handmade working transistor was years later .
@@ronaldlebeck9577 That was my point. Incredible that they could have that level of precision and robustness with vacuum tubes.
Excellent Scott!!! I learned a lot! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Prototypes are almost always better than their cereal version because they're handcrafted. The problem is when something goes into serialized production. Because you have to then be able to make them around the clock. Very fast with quick turnaround times and no mistakes.
This was extremely interesting. You are an outstanding communicator. Thank you.
The two bombs used were a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb. "Little Boy", used on Hiroshima, was a uranium bomb that used the "gun" system that would get the critical mass to explode. That was easy. They didn't need to test it.
"Fat Man", used on Nagasaki, was a plutonium bomb. Plutonium doesn't chain react like uranium, so they had to use the implosion process. So that's the system they tested at Trinity.
They never built a second gun type bomb like little boy. Only one was ever built and they later found out even proper plans did not exist, they couldn't reproduce it after a lot of scientists had gone home after the projects end.
Incredible how Scott not only finds out all these untere details, but also manages to tell them in a way that it makes a compelling story!
The men sitting on the scaffolding really sets the vibe
Scott Manley, "Old MacDonald really had a farm"… 🤣Brilliant comment! Fascinating story about the dentist drill! I love learning new tings and adding to my knowledge about the Trinity Test. Yet another GREAT Episode! Thanks! 👍
Always bringing us new gems out of what we thought we knew pretty well.
In 2018 and 2019 there was an exhibit about the Manhattan Project at the National Building Museum in Washington DC. Part of the exhibit talked about the technical parts, but the majority of the exhibit was about the logistics. The amazing photographs on display showed the magnitude of the project from a people standpoint that is mind boggling. Scott mentioned at 4:30 that it involved standing up a whole new set of industries. It really was, it wasn’t just scientists and engineers needed, it was everything. A whole new industry, created completely in secret, and scattered over more than a dozen different project sites around the country. The main concentration was more than 125,000 people who lived in three cities that had been built from scratch, and in total secrecy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington.
Without using the W and L words that our friends at YT don’t like, you can see some of the photos from the exhibit called Secret Cities - The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project. There is also a brief video about the exhibit. You can find all of this by going to the place that we go to for this type of thing, and looking for that exhibit name at the National Building Museum. On their little corner of that place that we like to go to for these type of things they have a nice little write up about it.
The contribution General Groves made can't be overstated. Whatever was needed for that project, Groves made sure it happened. Incredible logistics.
I have no idea what the W and L words are.
@@owensmith7530 Sorry about that. You would be surprised what can trigger the deletion algorithm. For W think of it as worldwide, as in the “World Wide W…”. For L think of it as a “L… in a chain”, except this one involves a mouse if you are using a computer. But either way I can’t give you an L. I can only vaguely tell you where to look for the information about the past National Building Museum exhibit that they had called Secret Cities - The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project.
@@rreiter Yes. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I've got a feeling General Groves isn't going to get the credit he deserves. He made it all happen - getting the team together, building whole industries from scratch in Hanford, Oakridge and Los Alamos, not to mention security. He had a bunch of highly intelligent, ego-driven, nobel prize winning scientists to corral towards the one goal. He and Oppenheimer were a pair that really complemented each other in their style of management. I don't think one could have done it without the other.
@@rreiter Groves was the general who made the Pentagon building possible. Big project management was already an accomplishment for him in that sense. At the time the Pentagon was the largest building made, short of the aircraft plants during WW II.
Best video you've done in a while! Thanks Scott
An acquaintance of mine was a physicist during the 50s testing in Nevada. He was a chamsist. His photos of his work in the hot desert, in short shorts, boots and a hat. He has some wonderful high speed photos of the tower shots with the support wires burnt halfway off to the ground. He has some signed photos of his fellow scientist of the time too. Later on I met a small man also living in Nevada who was a docent on the Nevada test site tours. He told me he was one the last 'enlisted' assemblers in the 50s. He was part of Operation Crossroads. When the Supers came, the job went to the officers.
Hats off to you for supporting the artists who are striking for their fair share of the profits from their creative work. 👍🏽
The artist have made clear they want people to see the films that were completed and released. If nothing else, it shows the studios there's demand for the artist's work.
@@davidb6576I was about to say the same thing. It's also less about the fair share of the profit and more about the future use of "deep fakes" and "AI" to possibly "replace" (so to speak, can't remember the exact verbage they used) the actors and writers in future projects. It's about protecting their jobs in the first place
I’m curious how much of this technical detail will be in the movie.
Not likely much, cut to appeal to the average market, not any with the ability to think beyond Ooh shiny ball.
I would estimate about none.
@@SeanBZA The trailer has Chicago pile though. I think that already is a win, and the kind of detail I like. They knew how to generate power with controlled chain reaction, before they ventured into the runaway kind.
@@u1zha The book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" covers the first chain reaction in the Chicago pile, with a very good biography of the project leader Enrico Fermi, a Nobel prize winner.
It'll be as bad or worse than _First Man_ or _Hidden Figures._
Fascinating stuff. Around 13:30 you can see I think L. Slotin and H. Daghlian, the poor souls.
I too have not seen the movie. But I did see segments of a program about Oppenheimer. That program spent about 7 seconds on the topic which you detailed in this 20min video. That is the kind of details I enjoy about videos like this. Thanks for sharing.
Wow! Fascinating. I have visited the Trinity Site, and my father worked in various nuclear weapons programs. He met Oppy and Einstein, and took a class from Linus Pauling. I asked him who he thought was the smartest person he ever met- he didn't equivocate- "Linus Pauling".
What I want to know is, was the photo flash plane ever used in war?! I had never heard of it!
RAF used photo flash bombs in ww2 bombers for after bomb release photos
This video didn’t disappoint. I’ve been reading about this stuff for years - this really lays it out well
I am very impressed that they got the detonation wave perfect using Comp B.
RDX has a higher density than TNT and sinks to the bottom while the TNT is solidifying, meaning it's almost impossible to get a uniform distribution.
Apparently he used a Dremel tool (or it's equivalent) to drill in and fill the voids in the explosive. So tell the story about how one of the first the bombs was assembled wrong on Tinian island, and could have gone off and caused a bit of a mess while it was being fixed.
He definitely wouldn't have used a dremel tool. The point of using a dentist's drill is that it is powered by air and thus doesn't have a risk of a spark igniting the explosive.
@@MontegaB Not necessarily - in olden times the dentist would have a treadle to power the drill, probably via a flexible cable in a sheath.
More modern ones are indeed air powered - and water cooled. You probably do not want a glowing hot drill head inside high explosives any more than electrical sparks - and yes, I know some high explosives do well as a camp fire fuel source until you try to stamp out the flames …
And of course nowadays lasers are an option for drilling…
its equivalent
@@MontegaB You dont need a spark. Explosives will initiate bases on any one of 4 stimuli. Friction, Impact, Spark or Heat. Drilling will result in Friction and Heat. No need for a spark, but yes they would have used air to eliminate the potential for spark.
@@advorak8529 My chemistry teacher served in the Korean War. He told the class a story on how he used to heat his coffee up with a chunk of burning TNT. As an Army Engineer, he knew exactly what it took to set off explosives. But to the layman solders nearby, they were flabbergasted at the use of the stuff, burning.
I had some relatives on my mom's side who worked for the Schaefer Pen Company in Ft. Madison, IA. That plant made some parts for the Manhattan Project. Also, my dad, who was in the Navy during WW2 was attending Signal School at the University of Chicago during that time. While there, he got to meet Albert Einstein and he stood guard duty at Soldier Field when the first controlled chain reaction took place. A guy who became his best friend was an Electrical Engineering student who had some involvement with the early RADAR development (he later went on to work for Motorola and became the head field rep in the state of Iowa, and encouraged my interest in electronics; I went on to be an Electronics Technician in the Navy, then eventually working my way through college to get my degrees in Computer and Electrical Engineering). I wonder how many other people have been similarly encouraged by folks who were associated with such projects...
Very interesting! With a couple of details I didn't know. Thanks Scott!
Thank you for a great explanation of the implosion system and the trigger mechanism. Fascinating history!
The story of the nuclear bomb is incredible. That was a point in time that decides the future of humanity, it could be the beginning of our great filter, or the answer to it, and the future of energy.
The goal of fusion energy is not be the only source of energy, but just part of it among other renewable sources. And fusion energy owes very little to bomb technology.
Fun fact: the "future of energy" (controlled chain reaction) was already done testing before Trinity. Google Chicago pile. And it is seen in Oppenheimer trailer. I'm excited.
@@u1zha I know, but the Trinity test really marks the beginning of the nuclear age.
Try not to boycott going to movies theaters that doesn't help anybody
I always admire your research on the topics!
Luis Alvarez is the person responsible for the precision detonation system. Alvarez won a Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to elementary particle physics (invention of the bubble chamber) and is the person responsible for the meteor impact dinosaur extinction theory.
Did a lot of radar work before going to Los Alamos. Designed the most accurate bombing radar of WWII and came up with the first Ground Controlled Approach Radar.
if the movie is releasing then what does it matter if the writers are on strike ? other than you being busy , which one can understand .
Love your content and always have for years and years!
i was wondering the same thing. what's this movie have to do with the strike?
Yeah, the actors and writers were all on-contract while the movie was being made. If anything, making a film a success would put more pressure on management for a still viable market.
@@ICKY427 I'm guessing it's because patronizing theaters right now might signal support for the production companies and distributors that are opposing the writer's guild and SAG.
I won't complain when we don't have any good television or movies in about a year or so but I'm not sure I'm willing to miss Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible just to signal my support for organized labor.
@@dougpowersExcept not going tells producers that, well, people aren't going/aren't interested in seeing the product, and therefore bolsters the producers'position.
The movie is already through production on the existing contracts.
@@dougpowers the Era of Hollywood is over, AI will replace writers and eventually actors, the indie creator is the next generation of entertainment and that comes in streaming platforms like Rumble, Odysee, Dlive, UA-cam and others.