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I remember reading a while ago that when Einstein was working on his theory of relativity (or whatever theory lead eventually to the development of the bomb, I know almost nothing about science whatsoever) someone figured out the kind of force it had and tried to warn him by passing him a note about it on the street, but Einstein dismissed it and never heeded the warning. Any historians know if that's correct? Do we know who gave him the note or tried to warn him? Can you fill me in on the details or link me to a page about this? Or is this sort of a legend?
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Jan 23, 2016 20:26
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Einstein was a signatory to a letter to the president urging the manhatten project. He was pro-nuclear bomb (at the time) but only to the point of beating the nazis to it. source: http://www.doug-long.com/einstein.htm
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Jan 23, 2016 23:13
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My understanding is that he recognized the utility in developing it, but he wasn't advocating using it. Subtle but distinct difference. In the WWII thread there's a great discussion at some point about the Nazi's development of atomic weapons, the best part of which is that the OSS (CIA predecessor) sent a pro baseball player named Moe Berg to Germany to determine how likely it was that the Nazis would develop the bomb. He decided they were making some fundamentally flawed calculations/assumptions and decided not to assassinate any of the German physicists.
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Jan 23, 2016 23:18
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adorai posted:Einstein was a signatory to a letter to the president urging the manhatten project. He was pro-nuclear bomb (at the time) but only to the point of beating the nazis to it. This is probably the letter you heard about. A bunch of physicists wrote it when it looked like uranium could be weaponized, Einstein signed it, FDR took it seriously and the Manhattan Project was born. Before that point, nobody would have been in a position to warn Einstein of anything because the first person who thought of making a weapon out of a fission device ran pretty much straight to him and blew his socks off. He would say later that he regretted signing the letter because the Germans, as it turns out, wouldn't have invented the weapon (they never saw its potential and everyone who did was either Jewish or from a country that the Nazis had attacked) so there would have been no need for the US to have done so and a few hundred thousand civilians wouldn't have been set on fire. I personally don't think that would've mattered because Enrico Fermi and Neils Bohr were both somewhat competent physicists in their own right; if he hadn't signed the letter then the people who wrote it probably would've taken it to one of those two guys next. flakeloaf fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 04:14
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Oppenheimer has a particularly interesting reaction: http://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac
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Jan 25, 2016 05:52
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Its worth mentioning that at the time the Einstein-Szilard letter was written, a lot was unclear about what exactly a nuclear weapon would be. What was certain is that uranium could sustain a nuclear chain reaction, and this could produce an explosion several orders of magnitude greater than chemical reactions. Back of the envelope calculations and common sense, based on what was known at the time, indicated that the amount of uranium needed would probably be many tons. The Einstein letter indicates that a uranium weapon could very well be too heavy to deliver by air, and gives an example of such a weapon being stored on a ship that is detonated in port. Though the possibility of a chain reaction in uranium was all but certain, the practical and economic feasibility of a nuclear bomb was much less so. The spirit of the letter was basically a heads up, saying that this sort of thing might be possible, lots of German physicists know this, and Germany has access to high quality uranium reserves in occupied Czechoslovakia. The letter does not directly advocate the construction or use of such weapons, but calls for serious attention to be devoted to the matter since the Germans would probably be doing so. While Roosevelt took the letter seriously and formed an Advisory Committee to study and keep an eye on things, no real effort was taken towards making a nuclear weapon based on Einstein's letter. About 3 years later, two (Austrian and German born) scientists working in the UK, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, realized that 1.) Uranium that was isotopically enriched to be nearly pure U-235 would allow efficient and powerful nuclear weapons to be made with kilogram quantities of uranium and 2.) the required isotopic separation was technically and most likely economically feasible. In fact, due to the lack of good experimental data at the time, their calculations actually underestimated the critical mass of U-235 and their report indicated that a bomb could be made with just 1 pound of it. This was communicated in a secret memorandum to the government of the UK and eventually US, and it was this memorandum that really lit a fire under everyone's rear end to start working on a bomb. Something else to point out, is that Einstein's famous "E=mc^2" from special relativity, which he published in 1905, was not important in illustrating the potential possibility of nuclear weapon. The discovery of fission in 1938by Otto Hahn--23 years later--was what made physicists realize that a nuclear chain reaction, and therefore an atomic weapon, could be possible.
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Jan 25, 2016 10:19
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Lawnie posted:Oppenheimer has a particularly interesting reaction: http://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac quote:
One of the reasons I heard for the failure of the Nazi nuclear weapons project (aside from a critical lack of materials) was that physics was considered to be a Jewish discipline, and so True Ayran Germans should not be studying it and should be studying proper German physics (which didn't work properly)
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Jan 25, 2016 16:30
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Morbus posted:While Roosevelt took the letter seriously and formed an Advisory Committee to study and keep an eye on things, no real effort was taken towards making a nuclear weapon based on Einstein's letter. About 3 years later, two (Austrian and German born) scientists working in the UK, Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, realized that 1.) Uranium that was isotopically enriched to be nearly pure U-235 would allow efficient and powerful nuclear weapons to be made with kilogram quantities of uranium and 2.) the required isotopic separation was technically and most likely economically feasible. In fact, due to the lack of good experimental data at the time, their calculations actually underestimated the critical mass of U-235 and their report indicated that a bomb could be made with just 1 pound of it. This was communicated in a secret memorandum to the government of the UK and eventually US, and it was this memorandum that really lit a fire under everyone's rear end to start working on a bomb. Cool, I never knew that part of it!
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Jan 25, 2016 16:34
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Shooting Blanks posted:My understanding is that he recognized the utility in developing it, but he wasn't advocating using it. Subtle but distinct difference. Link to the ww2 thread?
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Jan 25, 2016 18:26
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A Saucy Bratwurst posted:Link to the ww2 thread? Can't link right now as I'm phone posting but I assume he's talking about the "WW2 Debate Thread" over in D&D. It's been consistently on the first page so you should be able to find it easily.
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Jan 25, 2016 18:30
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I heard that Einstein took #Drugs andf mastered the talent of the #selfsuck is that true ??
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Jan 25, 2016 18:57
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MikeCrotch posted:One of the reasons I heard for the failure of the Nazi nuclear weapons project (aside from a critical lack of materials) was that physics was considered to be a Jewish discipline, and so True Ayran Germans should not be studying it and should be studying proper German physics (which didn't work properly) This is really overblown by a lot of people and didn't factor into much. The "Deutsche Physik" movement was the result of a relatively small group of physicists getting a nationalistic hair up their asses in WW1 and taking the road down to poisonous anti-Semitism once Einstein's theories became heavily debated. There is a lot of stuff mixed in, including professional rivalries, but they were never more than a fringe force. They tried to hitch their wagon to the Nazis in a big way after 1932 but that didn't go anywhere, mostly because Heisenberg was a pretty big proponent of Einstein's work and was pretty vital to German physics research once the Jewish scientists lost their jobs. Note that this wasn't because of "Jewish science" but because of the general policy of the NSDAP to kick Jews out of academia. It included philosophers, historians, etc. along with the scientists. As an interesting side note Heisenberg and Himmler went to school together as kids. This became important when the more nutso (even for those guys) fringe of the SS started given Heisenberg a hard time because they'd been drinking the Deutsche Physik koolaid. Heisenberg's mom phoned Himmler's mom and asked her to lean on Heinrich to make his guys be nicer to Werner. Who knows how much influence this had, but Heisenberg ended up investigated and vetted by the SS as an "Aryan thinker."
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Jan 25, 2016 18:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:This is really overblown by a lot of people and didn't factor into much. The "Deutsche Physik" movement was the result of a relatively small group of physicists getting a nationalistic hair up their asses in WW1 and taking the road down to poisonous anti-Semitism once Einstein's theories became heavily debated. There is a lot of stuff mixed in, including professional rivalries, but they were never more than a fringe force. They tried to hitch their wagon to the Nazis in a big way after 1932 but that didn't go anywhere, mostly because Heisenberg was a pretty big proponent of Einstein's work and was pretty vital to German physics research once the Jewish scientists lost their jobs. Note that this wasn't because of "Jewish science" but because of the general policy of the NSDAP to kick Jews out of academia. It included philosophers, historians, etc. along with the scientists. ur a #nerd lol
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Jan 25, 2016 19:22
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Cyrano4747 posted:This is really overblown by a lot of people and didn't factor into much. The "Deutsche Physik" movement was the result of a relatively small group of physicists getting a nationalistic hair up their asses in WW1 and taking the road down to poisonous anti-Semitism once Einstein's theories became heavily debated. There is a lot of stuff mixed in, including professional rivalries, but they were never more than a fringe force. They tried to hitch their wagon to the Nazis in a big way after 1932 but that didn't go anywhere, mostly because Heisenberg was a pretty big proponent of Einstein's work and was pretty vital to German physics research once the Jewish scientists lost their jobs. Note that this wasn't because of "Jewish science" but because of the general policy of the NSDAP to kick Jews out of academia. It included philosophers, historians, etc. along with the scientists.
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Jan 25, 2016 23:44
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