Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your
Speaker 1: host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and how the tech are here. It's time
Speaker 1: for a tech Stuff classic episode. This episode originally published
Speaker 1: July fifteen. It is titled The Manhattan Project Part One,
Speaker 1: So I bet you can guess what next week's classic
Speaker 1: episode is. This episode had been bolan of stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know, and Ridiculous History joined the
Speaker 1: episode to talk about the Manhattan Project. We really get
Speaker 1: into the physics in this one. Hope you enjoy. I
Speaker 1: don't want to disparage the gravity of what we're doing
Speaker 1: anything less than a few tangents or puns in this story,
Speaker 1: because this is a fascinating story. It's a fascinating story,
Speaker 1: and and you can't get around the fact that the
Speaker 1: end of the story is massively tragic, right like, like,
Speaker 1: there's there's a ton of things that we can talk about,
Speaker 1: and what we are talking about is the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna go ahead and let you guys know,
Speaker 1: this sucker is going to be a two parter because
Speaker 1: in order to cover the Manhattan Project. You have to
Speaker 1: have an understanding of what was going on in physics
Speaker 1: leading up to the beginning of the project, which will
Speaker 1: be this episode, and then there's another episode that will
Speaker 1: be all about the actual developments of the project itself.
Speaker 1: And this is complicated for multiple reasons. One, nuclear physics
Speaker 1: not straightforward as it turns out. Yeah, actually lots of
Speaker 1: pressure because of the implosion technique, but we'll get into
Speaker 1: that in episode two. Also politics, a lot of politics.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, the Manhattan Project was formed as a
Speaker 1: result of World War Two. If World War Two had
Speaker 1: not been happening, the Manhattan Project probably would not have
Speaker 1: been formed, and nuclear power may have either been pushed
Speaker 1: back by quite a bit or someone else would have
Speaker 1: ended up developing it ahead of the United States. So
Speaker 1: both of those things. Science and politics by themselves are complex,
Speaker 1: and when you combine the two and you try to
Speaker 1: make science work within the realm of a political structure,
Speaker 1: it gets messy. Yeah, and not not in like a
Speaker 1: cool I got my hair cut at a nice salon,
Speaker 1: Look at me. Messy. No, not like rolled out of bed.
Speaker 1: Oh this didn't take me any time at all, right,
Speaker 1: messy as in uh is a massive loss of blood
Speaker 1: and treasure. I think we're looking at the equivalent of
Speaker 1: when it got rolling thirty billion dollars you you know,
Speaker 1: in money. All yeah, today's money. It all depends upon
Speaker 1: the well, it really depends upon how you define the
Speaker 1: scope of the project. Because that's something else that's kind
Speaker 1: of confusing, because you hear Manhattan Project and you think, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, that's the one that took place in oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington,
Speaker 1: Los Alamos, New Mexico. Makes sense. We will explain all
Speaker 1: of that as we go through. So in case you
Speaker 1: weren't aware, the Manhattan Project was the code named the
Speaker 1: United States government gave to the the effort to design
Speaker 1: and build an atomic bomb for use in World War two.
Speaker 1: And in order for us to talk about we have
Speaker 1: to go back way before World War two. In fact,
Speaker 1: we have to go back before World War One. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to go all the way back to the
Speaker 1: I guess the end of the nineteenth century, that is correct,
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century. Uh, there was a fella by the
Speaker 1: name of Henrie Beccarell alright, who had made an interesting
Speaker 1: observation observing that some material when placed against some plates
Speaker 1: would create a negative image. And he had assumed that
Speaker 1: this material was phosphorescent, that it absorbed light and then
Speaker 1: given off some form of ray to create this image,
Speaker 1: but later determined that he was mistaken, that there was
Speaker 1: no need for the sunlight. The stuff was giving off
Speaker 1: the rays by itself. And then you had the Curies
Speaker 1: coming along, who who went on to study this themselves.
Speaker 1: Marie Cury coined the term radioactive radioactive with the word
Speaker 1: ray in it. And so at this point there was
Speaker 1: an understanding that certain elements had a type of energy
Speaker 1: they could give off spontaneously, spontaneous radiation. And that is
Speaker 1: the beginning the nub, that the kernel that forms the
Speaker 1: the very center of the Manhattan Project's purpose. So building
Speaker 1: on that we then have there's a guy in Nive.
Speaker 1: He had a little theory. It was a special theory,
Speaker 1: I mean relatively special man. Yes, yes, And that that
Speaker 1: man you may know today through countless Internet memes Albert Einstein. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, al to his friends, was a brilliant physicist, obviously,
Speaker 1: and it was all the way back in n when
Speaker 1: Einstein proposed the special theory of relativity, which, among many
Speaker 1: other things, positive that energy and matter are pretty much interchangeable.
Speaker 1: And this is where the the famous equation E equals
Speaker 1: MC squared comes from. The E means energy, the M
Speaker 1: means mass. The C squared C stands for the constant
Speaker 1: of the speed of light through a vacuum. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that light actually can travel at different speeds depending
Speaker 1: upon the medium through which it travels. Travels more slowly
Speaker 1: through water than through a vacuum, for example. So you
Speaker 1: take that constant of lights the speed of light in
Speaker 1: a vacuum, and you square it, so a number that's
Speaker 1: already huge gets huger. That huge number, by the way,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, is two hundred fifty eight meters
Speaker 1: per second. Squaring that you get eight point nine nine
Speaker 1: times ten to the sixteen power. It's a big number.
Speaker 1: So what that tells you if you look at that equation,
Speaker 1: what that tells you is that a very tiny amount
Speaker 1: of mass is equivalent to an enormous amount of energy,
Speaker 1: and vice versa, an enormous amount of energy is equivalent
Speaker 1: to a teeny tiny little bit of mass. So if
Speaker 1: you were to have a physical process in which you
Speaker 1: start with an atom and you split that atom and
Speaker 1: the two components of that split atom collectively have less
Speaker 1: mass than the original atom. You can't destroy or create
Speaker 1: energy or mass, but you can convert one to the other.
Speaker 1: That mask gets converted into energy, essentially kinetic energy, which
Speaker 1: gets convered into heat, and then you get a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of heat from it. Yeah, that's what Einstein had said.
Speaker 1: He says, this is this is the way the universe works.
Speaker 1: Energy and mass ultimately the same thing. And then there
Speaker 1: were if I recall, there were three broad historical reactions.
Speaker 1: Some people said nah, some people said maybe a lot
Speaker 1: of people went oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, And and so
Speaker 1: this really uh, you know, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: a lot about two different types of scientists. Theoretical scientists
Speaker 1: not they're not theoretical, they work in the realm of theory,
Speaker 1: and experimental scientists who take theory apply experiments to test
Speaker 1: those theories and then find out if the results either
Speaker 1: bear the theorial or it needs to be tweaked or whatever. Right, So, uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eleven we get another important development by discovery
Speaker 1: by the fellow named Ernest Rutherford. Now, Rutherford proposes a
Speaker 1: model of the atom in which you have a nucleus
Speaker 1: of positive particles which are dubbed protons, and they're orbited
Speaker 1: by negatively charged particles dubbed electrons. That's the Rutherford model
Speaker 1: of the atom. And it's the simplest version question. Yes,
Speaker 1: just just for you and the audience. I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of people have wondered this when they were learning this.
Speaker 1: When I can go with no trons, no tron's I mean,
Speaker 1: this sounds so much cooler because he was pro it's
Speaker 1: a positive thing. Well, they're like protons, electrons, protons, no trons. Oh,
Speaker 1: I got you. But being being negative, those would be
Speaker 1: the no trons. Well, because electrons are the agent through
Speaker 1: which electricity is you know, it's a matter of priority
Speaker 1: and that transcends a matter of marketing. But I'm saying
Speaker 1: we could even go back to the fact that Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin was convinced that current means that that's the movement
Speaker 1: of positively charged particles from one point to the other,
Speaker 1: which is why current flows in the opposite direction of
Speaker 1: actual electricity, which, by the way, drives me crazy. You've
Speaker 1: talked about it before, and which, by the way, I
Speaker 1: think we could cut to the end of the show
Speaker 1: because this means clearly that nuclear weapons are should be
Speaker 1: the blame for those should be laid at the at
Speaker 1: the field of Benjamin Franklin, like so many things. Bad guy.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, so Ernest Rutherford, So he discovers this,
Speaker 1: He creates this model, and then Neil's Bore, another important physicist.
Speaker 1: He refines that model. He starts to concentrate on the
Speaker 1: quantum behavior of electrons, and that's where we get the
Speaker 1: Bore model of Adams. And then I'm going to skip
Speaker 1: ahead to nineteen nineteen, and that's when Rutherford transmutes nitrogen
Speaker 1: into oxygen. This is something that alchemists had been attempting
Speaker 1: to do for centuries, although their form of transportation was
Speaker 1: more about lead into gold. Sure, sure, or the Philosopher's
Speaker 1: stone or whatever. But this is an actual transmutation. This
Speaker 1: is a point where Rutherford uh crosses. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say it as though he's like doing something bad,
Speaker 1: but where he where he goes from just a theory
Speaker 1: to the application the way we're talking about demonstrating it
Speaker 1: in the real world. And uh, this triggers even more
Speaker 1: changes in our timeline. Right. So the way he does
Speaker 1: this is he takes some nitrogen atoms and he bombards
Speaker 1: them with something called alpha particles and alpha particles essentially,
Speaker 1: although he didn't know this yet, an alpha particle is
Speaker 1: essentially to protons and two neutrons, also known as a
Speaker 1: heli helium nucleus. So if you use a helium nucleus,
Speaker 1: if you strip away the electrons, what you're left with
Speaker 1: is essentially an alpha particle. And he bobards these nitrogen
Speaker 1: adoms with that. That's what converts it over into oxygen.
Speaker 1: So then we skip ahead by a couple of decades.
Speaker 1: Are well a little more than a decade to two. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is when James Chadwick, was one of Rutherford's colleagues,
Speaker 1: discovers the nucleus of an atom can by the way,
Speaker 1: two big year in physics. Yeah, so he discovers that
Speaker 1: the nucleus of an atom can also contain particles that
Speaker 1: have no charge at all, hanging out. They're just they're
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of like that roommate I used to have,
Speaker 1: who you know. I felt like, come on, dude, just
Speaker 1: just pay your part of the utilities already. Come on.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I wasn't gonna be so yeah, these are
Speaker 1: these are neutral. That's that's the neutrons. And by this
Speaker 1: time there was an understanding now that the atoms typically
Speaker 1: consisted of protons and neutrons, and the nucleus and orbited
Speaker 1: by a number of electrons that were equal to the
Speaker 1: number of protons, and that's what balances out the charge.
Speaker 1: There's a but oh, let's infommercial it. But wait, there's more.
Speaker 1: There is more. Two things that you can you can
Speaker 1: talk about, one which is really important in nuclear physics,
Speaker 1: and one which is not going to really play a part.
Speaker 1: One of the that being that if you have an
Speaker 1: atom that has an excess or of electrons or too
Speaker 1: few electrons, it's an UH. It's an ion of that
Speaker 1: particular atom. But you can also have a different number
Speaker 1: of neutrons from the protons. You can have a variety
Speaker 1: of them, and we call these different varieties of these
Speaker 1: various atoms isotopes. So an isotope of an atom is
Speaker 1: UH is a version of that atom that has a
Speaker 1: specific number of neutrons. So that's important to remember now.
Speaker 1: At the time when Chadwick made this discovery, hydrogen was
Speaker 1: the the the lightest, the least massive of all the
Speaker 1: elements at one and the heaviest or the one with
Speaker 1: the most mass, was uranium at ninety two. That number
Speaker 1: refers to the number of protons in the atom, not
Speaker 1: the number of neutrons. So chemists had discovered that the
Speaker 1: atoms of the of the same elements sometimes had different weights.
Speaker 1: This is what led to the discovery of isotopes. So
Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, well, here's a uranium atom, but we've
Speaker 1: got this other uranium atom and they they're chemically identical.
Speaker 1: They're exactly the same chemically, but this other one is
Speaker 1: a little heavier than this one. So what is what?
Speaker 1: That doesn't make sense, and that's where they discovered isotopes.
Speaker 1: So uranium has three isotopes. All of them have ninety
Speaker 1: two protons and ninety two electrons, because if they didn't,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be uranium. But it does have a different
Speaker 1: number of neutrons. So you've got uranium two three eight.
Speaker 1: That's the most common form of uranium found in nature.
Speaker 1: U It has a hundred forty six neutrons in the
Speaker 1: nucleus and it's nine. It makes all natural uranium. So
Speaker 1: when you when you go uranium hunting, odds are you
Speaker 1: going to find? You two thirty eight. Then you have
Speaker 1: uranium two thirty five which has a hundred forty three neutrons,
Speaker 1: and uranium two thirty four, which has at two neutrons.
Speaker 1: And you two thirty five will become incredibly important in
Speaker 1: this DISCUSSI and you two thirty four is one of
Speaker 1: the decay products. Right. So, also in ninety two going
Speaker 1: on at the same time, you had physicists J. D.
Speaker 1: Crocroft and E. T. S. Walton split a lithium atom
Speaker 1: into two helium nuclei. Uh, the the protons and neutrons
Speaker 1: I was talking about, by bombarding the lithium with protons
Speaker 1: using a particle accelerator. And this is the first example
Speaker 1: of someone splitting the atom the very first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. In my opinion, this is up there with
Speaker 1: the first human footfall on the move. Ye. This fundamentally
Speaker 1: changes everything, and it's strange that we don't hear more
Speaker 1: people talk about it. Yeah, a lot of people will
Speaker 1: talk about the early work in nuclear fission, which we
Speaker 1: will get to, which happened in a place that precipitated
Speaker 1: the need from men on projects. So in California two
Speaker 1: same time as everything else, you had a group with
Speaker 1: Ernest oh Lawrence, who will be incredibly important in this conversation.
Speaker 1: Stanley Livingston and Milton White who operated the first cyclotron
Speaker 1: on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, and
Speaker 1: Lawrence would end up playing an instrumental role in the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. Yeah. No, for everyone who's wondering a cyclotron,
Speaker 1: it was a particle accelerator, right right. It was this
Speaker 1: is the era where we start getting the earliest particle accelerators.
Speaker 1: The Vandergraf would build one as well, in a different style. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Lawrence was was working on this early and not
Speaker 1: with the goal of nuclear fission necessarily. It was part
Speaker 1: of particle physics to understand more about the fundamental particles
Speaker 1: that make up all the stuff around us. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it ultimately would end up being used to help create
Speaker 1: the material real for nuclear weapons, but at the time
Speaker 1: no one had any concept of doing that. Three. There
Speaker 1: were some early attempts to find a reliable way to
Speaker 1: split atoms, but they're largely unsuccessful or very inefficient. They
Speaker 1: require huge amounts of power, and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: Most of them used protons fired at an atomic nucleus.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Protons have a positive charge. Correct
Speaker 1: atomic nucleus also has a positive charge because it's only
Speaker 1: made up of protons and neutrons, so we have positive
Speaker 1: and positive So what happens if you put two ends,
Speaker 1: like two northern ends of two different magnets together hate
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, they do. It's uh, you know a
Speaker 1: lot like me and Josh Clark, we just despite the
Speaker 1: fact we sit right next to each other, there's just
Speaker 1: this repulsion. It's the other one. It's kind of amazing, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, like if I start walking towards Josh's chair
Speaker 1: just rolls the other way. Now Josh and I get
Speaker 1: along just time. Obviously he was just recently on the
Speaker 1: tech stuff, so um. But yeah, it was really hard
Speaker 1: to get a direct hit on a nucleus because of
Speaker 1: this these light charges repelling one another. In fact, there
Speaker 1: were some estimates that said that it only happened one
Speaker 1: every one million tries non efficient way to split at him.
Speaker 1: So while people were starting to think there might be
Speaker 1: a way of getting some energy from this, like to
Speaker 1: use this as a means of generating power or perhaps
Speaker 1: even creating a weapon down the line, the efficiency was
Speaker 1: so low that it didn't seem like it was going
Speaker 1: to be uh A viable exactly, Like it's a good
Speaker 1: proof of concept. Yeah, So Albert Einstein, niels Bore, and
Speaker 1: Rutherford all felt that the process would be great for
Speaker 1: getting a better understanding of nuclear physics, but would remain
Speaker 1: impractical for pretty much anything else. Now, Rutherford actually described
Speaker 1: the idea of harnessing nuclear inner g as moonshine. That
Speaker 1: was what he called it. Einstein his version was saying,
Speaker 1: it's like the ability to get a proton to to
Speaker 1: collide with the nucleus would be akin to walking into
Speaker 1: an enormous room that's pitch black and shooting at a
Speaker 1: couple of birds flying around randomly through the right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his his comparison. And then no way to
Speaker 1: make it not an accident, right, and heels Bore said,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much a long shot unless we figure out
Speaker 1: something else. And then you had another fellow, a Hungarian
Speaker 1: physicist who was living in the United States, Leo sciss Lard,
Speaker 1: and sciss Lard hypothesized that if you use something else,
Speaker 1: not protons, what have you used a beam of neutrons
Speaker 1: aimed at an atom, Because neutrons have no charge, so
Speaker 1: there's no repulstion there. Yeah, The only thing is that
Speaker 1: how do you shoot a non charged particle, Because if
Speaker 1: you're using protons, then all you can do, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is created a positive charge to repel
Speaker 1: it or a negative charge to attract it and move
Speaker 1: it that way, but a neutral one is a little trickier.
Speaker 1: Um But he thought if you could do this, and
Speaker 1: if the atom was large enough where it had its
Speaker 1: own neutrons, sometimes when that atom splits up, it might
Speaker 1: give off neutrons too. And if it gives off neutrons
Speaker 1: with enough energy and you have enough atoms there, those
Speaker 1: neutrons could collide with other atoms, which could cause them
Speaker 1: to break apart, and those neutrons could go out and
Speaker 1: hit other atoms, and each time you would be multiplying
Speaker 1: this effect. As long as you had more than one
Speaker 1: neutron being given off and as long as those were
Speaker 1: colliding with some other atoms, this trend would continue until
Speaker 1: you were out of stuff or the neutrons or therere
Speaker 1: just weren't enough atoms for the neutrons to make contact,
Speaker 1: and you would get a nuclear chain reaction which you
Speaker 1: could use to either power or a city or blow
Speaker 1: one up. Yes, yes, at that point they you know,
Speaker 1: the next question and becomes like, well, yes, at that point,
Speaker 1: the next question becomes a matter of control, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's all well and good from an academic perspective to say, oh, guys,
Speaker 1: look at this neat thing that we think we can do.
Speaker 1: And then you know, for someone to say, okay, well
Speaker 1: let's let's try it. Let's get the rubber on the road,
Speaker 1: and then what do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 1: And they say, well, one or two things. It's either
Speaker 1: going to power the city or blow it up. But
Speaker 1: we're pretty confident it's going to be one of those two.
Speaker 1: So the next question is like, how do you make
Speaker 1: this use right? And and for Leo, I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: Leo because I'm just gonna Putcher his last name off
Speaker 1: otherwise the Hungarian physicist. Uh. For Leo, the problem was
Speaker 1: that when he was first trying this out, he was
Speaker 1: using lighter atoms and he couldn't get these sustained reactions,
Speaker 1: so he kind of he kind of thought, well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's a bust. It's like a good idea, but
Speaker 1: it's not working. So so so there it became an
Speaker 1: academic question for a while because there was, they weren't.
Speaker 1: He wasn't using the heavier atoms, which would have created
Speaker 1: a sustainable reaction, would have been dense enough to have
Speaker 1: that impact. They don't decay in the same way that
Speaker 1: other other ones might just take on the neutron, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't split apart. In other words, we'll be back with
Speaker 1: more of this classic episode of tech stuff after this
Speaker 1: quick break. So moving on with four, we get another
Speaker 1: fellow who becomes very important in Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi,
Speaker 1: an Italian physicist. He begins to use neutrons to bobard atoms,
Speaker 1: and he figured the uncharged particles wouldn't meet that same
Speaker 1: resistance as protons, just as Leo had. He was right.
Speaker 1: He bombarded sixty three different stable elements with neutrons and
Speaker 1: created thirty seven new radioactive atoms. And he also found
Speaker 1: out that if he used urban and hydrogen, he could
Speaker 1: actually slow the movement of the neutrons a little bit,
Speaker 1: and that would actually increase the chances of a nucleus
Speaker 1: accepting a new neutron. So you wanted to fire the
Speaker 1: neutrons fast, but not too fast. You had you had
Speaker 1: to control that. So he then bombarded uranium with neutrons
Speaker 1: had created something, but he had no idea what it was.
Speaker 1: In fact, no one was really sure at the time.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of disagreement in the scientific community
Speaker 1: about whatever for Me had made because it was new,
Speaker 1: and because it was new, they didn't know, right. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they were wondering if it was transuranic, as in
Speaker 1: a man made element that would not be found in nature,
Speaker 1: or if for Me had somehow managed to split up
Speaker 1: uranium so that behave like lighter elements, because some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that was left over it seemed really similar
Speaker 1: to lighter elements on the elemental table, But how could
Speaker 1: that be magic? Yeah, and it's fine because he had
Speaker 1: actually achieved nuclear fission but did not know it. He
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't understand it enough to know that that's
Speaker 1: what had happened at the time. And that takes us
Speaker 1: to thirty eight. And this is the event that really
Speaker 1: creates the need for the Manhattan Project because it takes
Speaker 1: place in Berlin. Now, nineteen thirty eight. In Berlin, it
Speaker 1: was already a very tumultuous time in Europe, right. World
Speaker 1: War two had not yet begun, but Germany had started
Speaker 1: to really cause huge problems, including UH cracking down on
Speaker 1: the Jewish population already UH, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: the whole Germany Austrian alliance was was an issue. And
Speaker 1: then there were rumblings about Germany possibly invading other countries.
Speaker 1: And then this was also spreading to you know, Italy
Speaker 1: as well. Yes, Italy was also invading African nations at
Speaker 1: the time. So this was really a tumultuous period. So
Speaker 1: in Berlin, UH, Germany was a place where there where
Speaker 1: particle physics, theoretical physics had really blossomed at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century beginning of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: you had a collection of scientists who all were just
Speaker 1: interested in furthering our understanding of the universe. They just
Speaker 1: happened to be in a place where that understanding was
Speaker 1: going to be UH tilted toward the ends of the
Speaker 1: German government. So radiochemists Auto Han and Fritz Strassman, we're
Speaker 1: using firms method of bombarding atoms with neutrons, and they
Speaker 1: found that uranium nuclei, unlike other nuclei, didn't just absorb
Speaker 1: the neutrons. They broke apart into two more or less
Speaker 1: equal pieces. They became fragments of uranium and radioactive barrium isotopes,
Speaker 1: which explained why some of the substances from firms experi
Speaker 1: ements resembled lighter elements because they were they were Merriam.
Speaker 1: So that was the the scientific explanation of what was
Speaker 1: going on with Firm and firm. He's like, hum, that's interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: What's also interesting is that this information, because you know,
Speaker 1: it also released some energy. Uh. This information was examined
Speaker 1: by Lease Mightener and her nephew Otto Frish Uh. Mightener
Speaker 1: was a Jewish exile. She had fled Austria and was
Speaker 1: living in Sweden and was working with Han and Strassmann
Speaker 1: through correspondence. UM and she and Fresh looked at the
Speaker 1: results of the experiments and concluded that they released an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of energy and that this marked a new
Speaker 1: type of process, which was explained by the equals MC
Speaker 1: squared equation. So again we see a physical proof of
Speaker 1: a theoretical proposition. Right, and this also started bring a light. Hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we should really take that Einstein equation thing really seriously. Um.
Speaker 1: So Fresh was the one who called the process fission
Speaker 1: that's where we get nuclear fission was from Otto Frisha's
Speaker 1: description of the of this. He was taking um inspiration
Speaker 1: from biological processes and cell division, so that's where he
Speaker 1: came up with fission. And just to just to interject
Speaker 1: not too much of the political landscape, but I do
Speaker 1: think it's important to note a big thing Hack happened
Speaker 1: to firm me in thirty eight as well, And why
Speaker 1: don't you tell me about that? Well, in he left
Speaker 1: Italy to uh receive his Nobel Prize in physics, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a pretty good deal. It's like when
Speaker 1: you get that tenth stamp on your subway card. Oh.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, you finally get that star on
Speaker 1: the on the Walk of Fame. Yeah, yeah, you finally
Speaker 1: get the star, which I think I don't remember which
Speaker 1: subway stamp that is. No, it's it's like, I think
Speaker 1: you've got to go like at least twelve times. Oh, Mick,
Speaker 1: come on, that's a commitment anyway. Well, somehow I'm going
Speaker 1: to go out on a limb and say it's because
Speaker 1: he was a genius, uh, and the based on his
Speaker 1: discoveries for me, leaves Italy to receive the Nobel Prize,
Speaker 1: and he never returns because you know at the time,
Speaker 1: as you know to your earlier point, the situation in
Speaker 1: Europe is at a slow boil, and especially if you
Speaker 1: are Jewish, as firm he is, this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is a time where you can, like legois, smell a
Speaker 1: fell wind. Yeah, there's actually there's a I mean, if
Speaker 1: you and I'm sure I know I've talked about this
Speaker 1: in a previous episode. I can't remember what the subject was,
Speaker 1: but I remember specifically talking about um uh German scientists,
Speaker 1: German and Austrian scientists who fled Europe in advance of
Speaker 1: the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. UH, and
Speaker 1: then some who stuck around believing that things would get better,
Speaker 1: only to find out that in fact was not the case.
Speaker 1: And how despite their brilliance and their contributions to science,
Speaker 1: because of their their heritage, they were treated, they were
Speaker 1: they were pulled away from their work, some of them,
Speaker 1: of them were imprisoned. Um. And of course there's a
Speaker 1: whole other story we could talk about with the United
Speaker 1: States liberating certain scientists to work for them instead of
Speaker 1: for the Nazis. That might be it would be a
Speaker 1: little bit of Yeah, that is definitely a different too far.
Speaker 1: That's actually more in rocketry than it is with the man.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, so nine our buddy Leo. He
Speaker 1: realizes the work by Han and Strassmann could be the
Speaker 1: answer to his failures to produce a nuclear chain reaction,
Speaker 1: and that uranium would be heavy enough and commit neutrons
Speaker 1: at an energy great enough to cause a split in
Speaker 1: another atom. So if you had enough uranium, you could
Speaker 1: presumably create a nuclear chain reaction that way. Uh So
Speaker 1: this is this renews his interest in the possibility of
Speaker 1: creating one of these. Um. He actually asked that for
Speaker 1: me and Frederick Jolie Currie refrain from publishing their findings.
Speaker 1: He asks them not to publish them because since he's
Speaker 1: made this realization that a nuclear chain reaction could be possible,
Speaker 1: his fear is that if they publish their findings, the
Speaker 1: Nazis will hear about it, and because the initial study
Speaker 1: was done in Berlin, they could end up putting this
Speaker 1: on the fast track to developing a weapons program, which
Speaker 1: would change the course of the war. Yeah, which keep
Speaker 1: in mind, this is when the war officially begins, right
Speaker 1: when you know, when the World War two start, Well,
Speaker 1: people would say that's when Germany invaded Poland, and that's
Speaker 1: that happens in the nine. So he asks them not
Speaker 1: to publish their findings now for me, says okay and
Speaker 1: holds off. But Curie goes ahead and publishes his work
Speaker 1: in April ninety nine. So it turns out those concerns
Speaker 1: were warranted to Leo turns to the the rock star
Speaker 1: of rock stars, because keep in mind, this is an
Speaker 1: era when scientists had a certain prestige among the public.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the era of people like Tesla
Speaker 1: making headlines and Edison, and meanwhile you've got other scientists
Speaker 1: and engineers who are capturing the imagination of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people. He turns to the most influential of
Speaker 1: them all, good old Einstein, and Leo says to al
Speaker 1: listen here, bat Bubby, Uh that equation you made awesome,
Speaker 1: turns out your right problem. Now we know how to
Speaker 1: make a practical application of that. Potentially it's gonna take
Speaker 1: some years, but the juryman's are already aware of this.
Speaker 1: And you know how bad the Germans can be. We're
Speaker 1: having this conversation not in Germany. And when I say Germans,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm talking about the Nazi Party. I have nothing
Speaker 1: against Germans at any rate. So he says, we need
Speaker 1: to convince the United States government that we have to
Speaker 1: get on this right now, because if we don't, they will,
Speaker 1: and then that's just going to be domination for Germany.
Speaker 1: And so Einstein, convinced by Leo, decides to write a
Speaker 1: letter to President Roosevelt FDR not not Teddy. So he
Speaker 1: writes a letter to Roosevelt and expresses their concerns about
Speaker 1: the possibility of a nuclear weapon program starting in Germany
Speaker 1: and arguing that, uh, the United States really has to
Speaker 1: take that endo consideration. Uh. The letter is sent in
Speaker 1: August nineteen nine, and on September one, nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Germany invades Poland. World War two begins officially because that's
Speaker 1: when you get other nations in Europe declaring war against Germany.
Speaker 1: So Roosevelt has a meeting with his close friend and
Speaker 1: unofficial advisor, Alexander Sachs, who's not a politician, he's a
Speaker 1: financial advisor type. Saxon Roosevelt sit down and on October eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, they talk about Einstein's letter. On October nineteenth,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt writes back to Einstein and says he has formed
Speaker 1: a committee made up of representatives from the Army and
Speaker 1: the Navy plus sacks to research uranium. Yeah, the Advisory
Speaker 1: Committee on Uranium headed by Lyman J. Briggs. Yeah, Briggs
Speaker 1: would become another important figure in this in this story.
Speaker 1: That has formed officially on October twenty one, nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: So this happens fast, right, They talked about on the eleventh,
Speaker 1: on the nineteenth rights back to Einstein. On the twenty one,
Speaker 1: this new committee meets for the first time. Uh. Briggs,
Speaker 1: by the way, was the former director of the National
Speaker 1: Bureau of Standards. Now you get Faremi and Leo concentrating
Speaker 1: on using carbon in the form of graphite to slow
Speaker 1: down neutrons in a pile of you two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and by slowing down the neutrons, they hope to increase
Speaker 1: the chances of a chain reaction. But they discovered that
Speaker 1: that method would really only be suitable for probably generating
Speaker 1: power because it would require too large a form factor
Speaker 1: to make an effective bomb out of it. The uranium
Speaker 1: didn't react at a level fast enough for it to
Speaker 1: be an explosive release of power. Yeah, So Faremi thought
Speaker 1: the chances of this being useful in a weapon are
Speaker 1: pretty slim, but it could be a really useful way
Speaker 1: of generating electricity. Now, meanwhile, uh, if we moved to
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, physicists were starting to run into a problem.
Speaker 1: You're two thirty eight was not prone to creating these
Speaker 1: nuclear chain reactions. They were they were having issues with this,
Speaker 1: and that's the most common when that's the one that
Speaker 1: is of the world's uranium. Right, So here's your stuff,
Speaker 1: but it don't work. It would be like imagine that
Speaker 1: you you have, you know, a big battery drawer, and
Speaker 1: of those batteries have just a little juice in them.
Speaker 1: They're not enough for you to like, you know, you
Speaker 1: put them in your RC car and your car just goes.
Speaker 1: You know, I hate that. But there's another eight percent
Speaker 1: still out there. Yeah, and some of that is uranium
Speaker 1: two thirty five, but it's it's usually wrapped up in
Speaker 1: you two thirty eight. It's not you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like you just find little veins of YouTube out there.
Speaker 1: So John are Dunning observed that uranium two thirty five
Speaker 1: appeared to be a lot more promising, but only if
Speaker 1: you could separate it from you two thirty eight. So
Speaker 1: now they're they're thinking, well, if there's some way for
Speaker 1: us to separate these isotopes from two from two thirty
Speaker 1: eight and concentrate enough to thirty five and one spot,
Speaker 1: we might be able to create a nuclear reaction chain
Speaker 1: reaction that is sustainable until a significant amount of that
Speaker 1: fuel is converted into energy, in which case you would
Speaker 1: have either a big boom or a sustained power source.
Speaker 1: So we're going for the boom. Yes, so without enriching you,
Speaker 1: two thirty five is pretty much impossible to experiment further,
Speaker 1: they didn't have a way of doing this, like they figure, well,
Speaker 1: to thirty five, according to the math, is better. Here's
Speaker 1: the problem. I don't know how to get the two
Speaker 1: thirty five out from the two yet right in a
Speaker 1: way that would come across come up with more than
Speaker 1: just microscopic amounts of you. And we're talking about the
Speaker 1: need for kims of the stuff. So it's a problem.
Speaker 1: It was also in nineteen forty that the Advisory Committee
Speaker 1: on Uranium recommended that the government fund research into isotope
Speaker 1: separation and nuclear chain reactions, which the committee did. So
Speaker 1: separating two from two thirty five was hard. They're chemically identical.
Speaker 1: So you can't use chemistry to do it because they're
Speaker 1: going to react exactly the same way. They're telling Masses
Speaker 1: differ by less than one per cent, so finding a
Speaker 1: way of separating them by mass is also a little tricky.
Speaker 1: But one of the more promising methods was the electro
Speaker 1: magnetic method. Now, this meant that you would create a
Speaker 1: magnetic field generated by a mass spectrometer to separate particles,
Speaker 1: and essentially you create a magnetic field, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: had the particles come into contact with a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: The magnetic field would deflect particles. Particles that had greater
Speaker 1: mass would be deflected a shorter distance. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: can't push those as far right. So you could do
Speaker 1: this and deflect those particles, but it wasn't exactly fast.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty they estimated that to create a gram
Speaker 1: of you two thirty five using a mass spectrometer. In
Speaker 1: this a if you took you two thirty eight and
Speaker 1: two thirty five together and tried to just get one
Speaker 1: gram of you two thirty five, it would take you
Speaker 1: approximately twenty seven thousand years. Not not like not the
Speaker 1: ideal time frame. Not if you wanted to respond to
Speaker 1: escalating aggression in Europe, not not so much twenty seven years.
Speaker 1: Probably some multiple conflicts would have had that happened and
Speaker 1: resolved during that time. I think Hitler, who was admittedly
Speaker 1: an ambitious dude, was only planning on the Reich itself
Speaker 1: to be like a thousand years. Yeah, so it would
Speaker 1: have been a pretty it would have been a pretty
Speaker 1: long long bet. We would have been embarrassingly late to
Speaker 1: the party. Yes, So luckily there were other ones too
Speaker 1: that they were looking into. One of them was Gassiest diffusion,
Speaker 1: which I have suffered from myself an occasion to say
Speaker 1: thank you. Gassiest diffusion was that's where you would use
Speaker 1: a porous barrier and you would use gas that has
Speaker 1: you two thirty eight and YouTube thirty five atoms in
Speaker 1: it to pass through this porous barrier. Now, the you
Speaker 1: too thirty five, being of less mass, would pass more
Speaker 1: readily through the barrier. So you would do this once
Speaker 1: and then the mixture you would have would have a
Speaker 1: higher concentration of you two thirty five than the previous
Speaker 1: one did because fewer of the You two thirty eight
Speaker 1: would have gone through. But then you have to repeat
Speaker 1: the process, and you repeat the process over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. It's kind of like passing a solution
Speaker 1: through a filter, and each pass the filter catches more
Speaker 1: and more of the stuff you don't want and allows
Speaker 1: the stuff you do want to go through. But it's
Speaker 1: not full proof. That's why you have to keep on
Speaker 1: doing it. TOSS so again, not terribly efficient. John Dunning
Speaker 1: focused on that particular method. Then you also had the
Speaker 1: possibility of using centrifuges. And a centrifuge, you know it
Speaker 1: essentially it spins around and around and around and use
Speaker 1: a centrifugal force or tripital force if you prefer, but
Speaker 1: centrifical force to to separate out materials. The heavier materials
Speaker 1: sink to one end, the lighter materials are pushed to
Speaker 1: the top. So in this case, you two thirty five
Speaker 1: would be kind of at the top and center of
Speaker 1: the centrifuge, and the U two three it would be
Speaker 1: would it sinkle down lower and you would skim it
Speaker 1: off the top. Centrifuges, however, at the time not terribly reliable.
Speaker 1: That was headed off by a guy named Jesse W.
Speaker 1: Beams at the University of Virginia. We've got more to
Speaker 1: say in this classic episode of tech stuff. After these
Speaker 1: quick messages, we're gonna get into the politics. And there's
Speaker 1: a guy. I have a feeling that he's come up
Speaker 1: and stuff they don't want you to know. Maybe once
Speaker 1: or twice. Have you guys ever talked about Vanavar Bush.
Speaker 1: We have talked about Vanavar Bush. He is a He
Speaker 1: was an American engineer and inventor. He headed the US
Speaker 1: Office of Scientific Research and Development. Yeah. Uh, and he
Speaker 1: was one of the early uh now, well, okay, he
Speaker 1: was the go to guy from military R and D
Speaker 1: at the time in the US. He was also kind
Speaker 1: of like the liaison between the politicians and the scientists.
Speaker 1: It's a great way to put it, because he had
Speaker 1: the analytical scientific mind. He had the chops that would
Speaker 1: be required from a scientist. Again, like a rock star
Speaker 1: to respect you. He's incredibly ambitious as well as effective
Speaker 1: at maneuvering through different power structures. This guy was like
Speaker 1: he could get stuff done and no offense to the
Speaker 1: various stereotypes of scientists. But he probably was better at
Speaker 1: playing the game of diplomacy. Yeah, you know, because he
Speaker 1: was he knew he understood how that particular science worked.
Speaker 1: So he was the president of the Carnegie Foundation, and
Speaker 1: then was appointed the head of the National Defense Research Committee,
Speaker 1: which was a voice within the executive branch of government.
Speaker 1: And under that the Uranium Committee was reorganized. So the
Speaker 1: Uranium Committee gets uh kind of a new version, a
Speaker 1: new yeah, that kind of mission statement. Um And and
Speaker 1: it also meant that it was no longer organized under
Speaker 1: the military department, so it didn't have to yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: they could get their funding outside of the military. So
Speaker 1: instead of the Army or the Navy deciding, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to allocate this much of our budget towards
Speaker 1: uranium research, it was an independent organization underneath this new committee,
Speaker 1: um so Bush allocated funds to continuing research in nuclear
Speaker 1: power and weapons. But he made some decisions that ended
Speaker 1: up um really shaping the direction that the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: would move in. The first decision he made was that
Speaker 1: no one on the Middy would be allowed to be
Speaker 1: foreign born. No foreign born scientists would be allowed on
Speaker 1: the committee. The man Einstein was not part of this party.
Speaker 1: He also barred the publication of scientific findings on uranium
Speaker 1: research for an indetermined amount of time because again, like
Speaker 1: like the the Leo's previous concerns. He didn't want this
Speaker 1: any know, the discoveries to make their way across into
Speaker 1: enemy hands. So now we're getting up to nineteen forty one.
Speaker 1: World War two is in full swing in Europe. UH.
Speaker 1: Glen T. S Borg, another important person, identifies element ninety four,
Speaker 1: a trans uranium or man made element that was produced
Speaker 1: from radioactive decay of an isotope of neptunium. Neptunium is
Speaker 1: also a trans uranium element, that's ninety three, So ninety
Speaker 1: four he gets to name it. I call it plutonium. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he discovers that one of the features of plutonium
Speaker 1: is that's one point seven times more likely to undergo
Speaker 1: fission as uranium two thirty five. It loves fission, yeah,
Speaker 1: to thirty five loves fishing more than two thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Plutonium loves fission more than uranium two thirty five. So
Speaker 1: the experiments took place at Ernest Lawrence's radiation laboratory at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: So Lawrence again very important here. Lawrence personally felt that
Speaker 1: the Uranium Committee was a little slow, that it was
Speaker 1: not responding fast enough, it wasn't funding the research. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so he met with Van of our Bush and
Speaker 1: then Bush saw Lawrence as being really persuasive and and influential,
Speaker 1: so he makes Lawrence an advisor to Briggs. You know,
Speaker 1: Briggs was the head of that uranium committee. And so
Speaker 1: once that happens, suddenly the coffers opened up a little bit,
Speaker 1: more and more research gets funded. Uh. Vanavar Bush also
Speaker 1: created a committee to report on the uranium program in
Speaker 1: the US, and he put Arthur Compton, who was a
Speaker 1: physicist who specialized in radiation studies, in charge of it.
Speaker 1: So Compton makes a report in May nineteen forty one
Speaker 1: and confirmed that either you two thirty five or plutonium
Speaker 1: were the most likely candidates for some sort of atomic weapon. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And on June one, the United States establishes the Office
Speaker 1: of Scientific Research and Development. This is the one you
Speaker 1: referred to as Bush being of the head of it.
Speaker 1: This is when it was officially made a thing. It
Speaker 1: was officially. Yeah, we we had talked to I think
Speaker 1: and stuff that I want you to know about about
Speaker 1: that time, just a few days before this is actually
Speaker 1: was a few days after the twenty two when Germany
Speaker 1: invaded the Soviet Union. Yes, so yeah, various things are
Speaker 1: hitting various fans right right. The big one being that
Speaker 1: there is a lot of incentive to push this research through. Uh. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: James B. Conant, who was president of Harvard became the
Speaker 1: new head of the National Defense Research Committee, which was
Speaker 1: now an advisory board that would offer guidance on research
Speaker 1: and development funding. And guys, we know how not to
Speaker 1: interject too much, because we know how confusing it can
Speaker 1: be to hear these very long, dry names of committees.
Speaker 1: But part of this, part of all this restructuring you
Speaker 1: hear about and all these names, it comes because they
Speaker 1: were desperately trying to find the best way to approach
Speaker 1: this problem. Uh, simply because can you imagine. Of course
Speaker 1: there were, of course there were agents from what would
Speaker 1: become the Allies in in Germany at the time. However,
Speaker 1: the level of access they had was no guarantee. The
Speaker 1: only way to be there was, the only way to
Speaker 1: know that you would not be the victim of a
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb or an atomic weapon was to be first
Speaker 1: past the post. So this stuff is I mean, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: there were probably some egos involved. No, no, there are
Speaker 1: tons of egod but I think I think the I
Speaker 1: think the main thing to remember is that although we
Speaker 1: hear all these dry names. What they're really doing is
Speaker 1: desperately and it does that work correctly, Desperately trying to
Speaker 1: find the way to get massive amounts of funding because
Speaker 1: they already know it's going to be an expensive service.
Speaker 1: Well that and and at this stage in we're still
Speaker 1: talking theory, we're still we're still saying that they're saying,
Speaker 1: if such a thing as possible, you to thirty five
Speaker 1: and plutonium are our best bets that we can't guarantee
Speaker 1: it's possible. If Yeah, and that's the thing is that
Speaker 1: you've got that's why you have all this research and
Speaker 1: development going in. And they're going through multiple lines of inquiry,
Speaker 1: right because they don't want to say, well, let's just
Speaker 1: look at one and hope that that is going to
Speaker 1: work out. There's no let's look at all of them
Speaker 1: and find out which ones are the most promising and
Speaker 1: concentrate on those. So, uh so, Conan is head of
Speaker 1: this board that's going to look at these different um
Speaker 1: proposals and decide which ones are the ones most the
Speaker 1: most warrant additional funding. So if you are the head
Speaker 1: of a research department it's a Columbia university, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to receive funding than if you're some yahoo in
Speaker 1: your backyard saying if I smack these two rocks together,
Speaker 1: sparks fly. So that's the important part that this is
Speaker 1: all about. Like the goal here is pushing forward this research.
Speaker 1: So under this new organization, the Uranium Committee becomes the
Speaker 1: Office of Scientific Research and Development Section on Uranium. And
Speaker 1: that's a really long name and they recognized it, so
Speaker 1: they code named it S one. So as one becomes
Speaker 1: this specific committee that's looking at uranium research, can it
Speaker 1: be used as a way of making a weapon? July
Speaker 1: a group in Britain's National Defense Research Committee which was
Speaker 1: code named MAUD in a U d uh. They they
Speaker 1: their whole purpose was again to look and see if
Speaker 1: a nuclear weapon could be practical. They submitted a report that,
Speaker 1: based upon their calculations, you could use tens of you
Speaker 1: two thirty five to create an enormously destructive bomb and
Speaker 1: that could be dropped by existing aircraft of the time
Speaker 1: and it would probably be two years out in development,
Speaker 1: like within two years of concentrate development, such a bomb
Speaker 1: could be built. So by n Britain shares this report
Speaker 1: with America, and because Britain recognizes that America has an
Speaker 1: enormous resource in scientific expertise. So that report specifically recommended
Speaker 1: using gaseous diffusion to separate you two thirty five from
Speaker 1: you two thirty eight and outright dismisses the idea of
Speaker 1: using plutonium. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this
Speaker 1: text off classic episode right after we take this break.
Speaker 1: So the Brits say, you should use to thirty five,
Speaker 1: you should use gaseous diffusion to get your two thirty
Speaker 1: five from two thirty eight, and forget about plutonium. It's
Speaker 1: a dead end. That was their recommendation. So meanwhile you
Speaker 1: got fair Me, who becomes the head of theoretical studies
Speaker 1: at the Ranium Committee. And keep in mind fair Me
Speaker 1: is the plutonium guy. Yeah, so there when you say
Speaker 1: there are probably egos involved, yes there were, And there
Speaker 1: were people who were absolutely convinced that their approach was
Speaker 1: the one that was going to be the most economical,
Speaker 1: the most efficient, the most scientifically sound. So in these arguments,
Speaker 1: do you think there are a lot of those you
Speaker 1: fools moments? You fuse ye all be uh in dramatic
Speaker 1: like style? Uh dialects? Well, not one. In October, Bush
Speaker 1: meets with Roosevelt to discuss the state of research. He
Speaker 1: receives instruction from Roosevelt to continue research and development, but
Speaker 1: it was expressly told don't build a bomb until I
Speaker 1: tell you to, which was fine because they were at
Speaker 1: least a few years away from being able to build
Speaker 1: one in the first place, even under ideal situation. November
Speaker 1: six one, Arthur Compton reports that, based on his calculations,
Speaker 1: a critical mass of YouTube you two between two and
Speaker 1: one rams would produce a powerful fission bomb uh and
Speaker 1: could be created with an investment of around fifty million
Speaker 1: to a hundred million dollars in isotopes separation technologies, which
Speaker 1: turned out to be crazy optimistic. Yeah, they were low
Speaker 1: ba Yeah. So obviously the Brits come up with ten
Speaker 1: kilograms and Arthur Compton's and that's probably gonna be somewhere
Speaker 1: between you in a hundred. It's a slightly larger range.
Speaker 1: December seven, nineteen for one very important day in World
Speaker 1: War two, that was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It's
Speaker 1: when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor that brings the United
Speaker 1: States into World War two and sets this all on
Speaker 1: an even faster track than it was before. So January
Speaker 1: nineteenth ninety two, Roosevelt gives Vanavar Bush to go ahead
Speaker 1: to pursue the development of an atomic bomb. So we've
Speaker 1: gone from keep on researching this to see if it's
Speaker 1: possible to build one of these, keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: we're still working in the realm of theory. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the but the funding flight gates were open. They said, uh,
Speaker 1: no more um figuring out how to do it now,
Speaker 1: that just becomes a step in my mandate to you
Speaker 1: to give me a working atomic bomb. And they form
Speaker 1: what is called the Top Policy Committee, which was led
Speaker 1: by Vanavar Bush. They also had Vice President Henry A. Wallace.
Speaker 1: James Knitt was part of it. Henry L. Stimpson, who
Speaker 1: is the Secretary of War, was part of it, and
Speaker 1: General George C. Marshall, who was Chief of Staff at
Speaker 1: the Army, was part of it. And the Top Policy
Speaker 1: Group decided to pursue five strategies, four different isotope isolation
Speaker 1: methods and the use of plutonium as the five different
Speaker 1: methods of potentially creating an atomic bomb. The reason they
Speaker 1: decided to look at five again was because none of
Speaker 1: the five had so far emerged as the clear superior method.
Speaker 1: So because they didn't know, they said, well, we would
Speaker 1: rather go ahead and have all these different groups, all
Speaker 1: of which have brilliant engineers and physicists attached to them,
Speaker 1: to independently work on this stuff. They're motivated by one.
Speaker 1: Many of them come from Europe and they see what's
Speaker 1: going on in World War two too. Many of them
Speaker 1: have egos, and they want to prove that their method
Speaker 1: is the right one, and three they're they're genuinely interested
Speaker 1: in the science. So March of nineteen forty two, UH, Lawrence,
Speaker 1: the fellow who ran the cyclotron and Berkeley, pursues the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic isotope separation method using a cyclotron as a mass spectrometer,
Speaker 1: and he's so successful that vanavar Bush sends another message
Speaker 1: to Roosevelt saying, Hey, if this pans out, we might
Speaker 1: be able to have an atomic bomb as early as
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four. That would turn out to be optimistic. Uh.
Speaker 1: In April nineteen forty two, Arthur Compton, who was guiding
Speaker 1: research into plutonium. So we got Lawrence with electromagnetic isotope isolation.
Speaker 1: Now we've got Compton who's looking into plutonium. He's funding
Speaker 1: the work of j. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley, who may
Speaker 1: be familiar to some of you, especially if you've ever
Speaker 1: checked out of our shows. Yeah, Oppenheimer comes up a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, every single person that I'm mentioning here could
Speaker 1: warrant an entire episode and stuff you missed a history class.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it has covered many of them in the past.
Speaker 1: So Oppenheimer and Fermi also gets funding from Arthur Compton.
Speaker 1: He says, all right for me, he's got a pile,
Speaker 1: a nuclear pile he's working with at Columbia University. Also
Speaker 1: funds Eugene Wigner's theoretical work at Princeton. Now over at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago, Compton secured some space to create
Speaker 1: his own uranium and graphite nuclear pile. By securing some space,
Speaker 1: I mean he converted a racketball court underneath the grandstand
Speaker 1: at stag Field at the University of Chicago into a
Speaker 1: nuclear pile. This, by the way, would scare the heck
Speaker 1: out of everybody later on, because he didn't bother to
Speaker 1: tell anyone that that's what he was doing. Well, well, well,
Speaker 1: let us remember this was a top secret project. And also,
Speaker 1: if we're talking, I don't know why my voice was
Speaker 1: And also if we're if we're talking about public safety,
Speaker 1: then you know, the dangerous rationalization people can always make
Speaker 1: is what is the safety of the people above in
Speaker 1: a grandstand or even the University of Chicago compared to
Speaker 1: the safety of the world. But what I'm telling that
Speaker 1: he was a maverick, Well, I tell you now uh
Speaker 1: he uh into in his defense, this approach that he
Speaker 1: was using, which was very similar to Faremi's approach, was
Speaker 1: low energy. It was not something that was perceived to
Speaker 1: have risk of it becoming a runaway reaction. It was
Speaker 1: it was more again to study the actual physics involved
Speaker 1: to better understand it, and posed very little threat to
Speaker 1: the people of Chicago. Using the design that he used.
Speaker 1: He wasn't using it. He was using a design that
Speaker 1: didn't require a cooling system or a shield because he
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't the super high energy type of reactions
Speaker 1: that he was he was looking into. Two Compton Arthur
Speaker 1: Compton asks J. Robert Oppenheimer to take over research into
Speaker 1: fast neutron interactions to determine the necessary conditions for a
Speaker 1: critical mass to explode. So Oppenheimer takes on that work.
Speaker 1: Then of our Bush asks James Conant, the guy from Harvard,
Speaker 1: for recommendations on how to proceed, and the S one
Speaker 1: Leadership Committee decides that instead of focusing on one area
Speaker 1: of research, all of them still have to be funded
Speaker 1: and accelerated. They still weren't certain which of these were
Speaker 1: going to end up being successful. Is still too early,
Speaker 1: so they say, well, we can't, we can't pull the
Speaker 1: trigger on one of these yet, we still have to
Speaker 1: keep on going. And in June two, the Army's involvement
Speaker 1: in the project, uh really picks up. You have a
Speaker 1: guy named Colonel James C. Marshall come into the picture.
Speaker 1: So James C. Marshall, he's in charge of the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers involvement in this project, and the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers their main job was to secure sites
Speaker 1: that they could then use to build facilities on to
Speaker 1: test out the theory that was being generated in these
Speaker 1: various camps. So in your normal operations, if there's not
Speaker 1: a war going on, what you would typically do is
Speaker 1: you have the research and development work that is starting
Speaker 1: to be promising. You would build a pilot plant that
Speaker 1: would test these things out and it would be designed
Speaker 1: in such a way that you can make rapid changes
Speaker 1: to the plants design in order to best fit whatever
Speaker 1: the process. Yeah, exactly, so you might say, oh, it
Speaker 1: turns out that this design we came up with isn't
Speaker 1: the best one, we should change it to this. A
Speaker 1: pilot plant is the kind where you would be able
Speaker 1: to do that. Then once you figured out what was
Speaker 1: the best approach, you could build a full production facility, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And at this time I believe the US Army Corps
Speaker 1: of Engineers was based in New York. Yeah. The headquarters,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a temporary headquarters, was on
Speaker 1: Broadway in Manhattan, because you want to keep it locating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they called it the Manhattan Engineering District, or sometimes
Speaker 1: just the Manhattan District and sometimes just Manhattan. And that,
Speaker 1: in fact, is where the Manhattan Project gets its name.
Speaker 1: It gets his name from James C. Marshall's headquarters in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And he was really he was on the phone calling
Speaker 1: up potential land, you know, landowners who could potentially sell
Speaker 1: him the land necessary from the build these facilities. And
Speaker 1: the crazy thing here is the Army Corps of Engineers
Speaker 1: and and these scientists are essentially skipping the pilot stage.
Speaker 1: They're going straight from well, we're pretty sure this is
Speaker 1: the way it's gonna work to let's build this facility
Speaker 1: to do it. And by skipping the pilot stage it
Speaker 1: causes huge headaches down the line. But at the same
Speaker 1: time they said, well, we don't have the luxury of
Speaker 1: time to go the scientifically responsible routes, so we have
Speaker 1: to do it this way. So, uh we get the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. Technical the project has a different name. The
Speaker 1: the official code name for the project, because it's super secret, y'all.
Speaker 1: Is the Development of Substitute Metals or sometimes the development
Speaker 1: of substitute materials depending upon which citation you're reading, or
Speaker 1: d s M. That's the official code name, but everyone
Speaker 1: calls it the Manhattan Project. Uh So we are now
Speaker 1: at the point where the Manhattan Project comes into being,
Speaker 1: James C. Marshall being in charge of it, kind of
Speaker 1: being an administrator to make sure that the scientists are
Speaker 1: getting the resources they need. And this leads us to
Speaker 1: the conclusion of this episode so that in our next
Speaker 1: episode we can focus specifically on what happens with the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. You're going to have a whole list of
Speaker 1: new names. This is really just to prepare you in
Speaker 1: case you ever decide to read the Game of Throne series,
Speaker 1: so that way you know how to handle all these
Speaker 1: different characters, because it's kind of similar in that respect. Um. So, Ben,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about like super top secret stuff
Speaker 1: in the next episode. Keeping in mind the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: was a secret from almost everybody from two when it
Speaker 1: came into existence to mid nine after the bomb has
Speaker 1: dropped on Hiroshima. So this is when it comes to
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. This is it.
Speaker 1: You talk about massive government conspiracy. It doesn't get much
Speaker 1: bigger than this. We're talking a hundred thirty thousand people
Speaker 1: or thereabouts employed in somewhere or another, most of whom
Speaker 1: had no idea what they were contributing to. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is bigger than a you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that we talked about our previous fifty
Speaker 1: one podcast. I'm I'm excited. Yeah, so let's see. I
Speaker 1: guess this will be a little bit of a cliffhanger
Speaker 1: for the listeners. Yeah, so you guys have to tune
Speaker 1: in next week, same bad time, same bad channel. You know,
Speaker 1: it's always weird to talk about enjoying an episode that's
Speaker 1: about the technology that is so incredibly destructive, but I
Speaker 1: hope you learn something, and of course next week we
Speaker 1: will continue the discussion about the Manhattan Project. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, please reach out and let me know.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. To
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon, y. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.