History of Atom Bomb
Between 1919 and the early 1930s,
scientists were piecing together the important parts of the atom's structure.
In 1919 New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered protons. In1932
James Chadwick discovered the neutron, neutrons share space with protons in the
atom's nucleus.
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi
thought to use neutrons for bombardment in 1934. Since neutrons have no charge,
they can hit an atom's nucleus without being repelled. He successfully
bombarded several elements and created new, radioactive ones in the process.
What Fermi had done, without recognizing it, was discover the process of
nuclear fission. Two German scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, were
the first to officially acknowledge this process in 1938 when they successfully
split uranium atoms into two or more parts. Meitner interpreted these results
as being nuclear fission and Hahn won the Nobel prize in physics for
discovering fission in 1944.
Early in 1939, the world's
scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets
of splitting a uranium atom. Fears soon spread over the possibility of Nazi
scientists utilizing that energy to produce a bomb capable of unspeakable
destruction.
Scientists Albert Einstein, who
fled Nazi persecution, and Enrico Fermi, who escaped Fascist Italy, were living
in the United States. They agreed that the President must be informed of the
dangers of atomic technology in the hands of the Axis powers.
Einstein penned a letter to
President Roosevelt urging the development of an atomic research program later
that year. Roosevelt saw neither the necessity nor the utility for such a
project, but agreed to proceed slowly. In late 1941, the American effort to
design and build an Atomic Bomb received its code name — the Manhattan Project. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada.
Scientists Who Invented the
Atomic Bomb under the Manhattan Project: Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, Leo
Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Otto Frisch, Rudolf Peierls, Felix Bloch, Niels Bohr,
Emilio Segre, James Franck, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs and Edward Teller.
By the summer of 1945,
Oppenheimer was ready to test the first bomb. On July 16, 1945, at 5:30 am at Trinity
Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, scientists of the Manhattan Project readied
themselves to watch the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb.
On August 6, 1945 the American
B-29 bomber known as the Enola Gay released the first atomic bomb to be used in
warfare. The 9,000 pound bomb nicknamed "Little Boy(uranium-235)" detonated in
Hiroshima, Japan. "Little Boy's" explosion was catastrophic and
resulted in 66 thousand instantaneous deaths. Total vaporization from the blast
measured one half a mile in diameter. Total destruction ranged one mile in
diameter and serious blazes extended as far as three miles in diameter.
Three days after the release of
"Little Boy" a second bomb named "Fat Man(plutonium)" was released on
the town of Nagasaki. "Fat Man" weighed 10,000 pounds and annihilated
nearly half of the city. In one split-second, the population of Nagasaki
dropped from 422,000 to 383,000.
Image Courtesy: http://abombisaok.blogspot.in/2013/05/some-background-info.html
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