Trending: When the Second World War was going on, a very secret project known as the Manhattan Project was being carried out. The aim behind this project was to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. Several hundres of scientists came together to work on it and this also included theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. However, this project resulted in brutal historical event. Louis Slotin was among the scientists involved in the project. He played a central role in building the “Trinity” device for the first test in July 1945.
Then, two atomic bombs were dropped in Japan in 1945. Two major cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki were blown away and more than 100,000 people got killed. As the purpose of the project was to end the war and the war had already ended, some scientist started to questions the continuation of the nuclear weapon project. Scientists including Oppenheimer and Slotin returned to their normal lives. When the project was underway, all the scientists were sheltered at secret military base along with their family.
Help in medical and space exploration
“Manhattan Project harnessed the enormous energy in the nucleus of the atom for the first time,” stated Cynthia Kelly. Cynthia is the founder and president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization unearthing the history of the Manhattan and the atomic age. However, the exploration of the project not just resulted in nuclear weapons but also in the field of medicine as well as space exploration and the science and engineering of civilian nuclear energy as said by Kelly.
The name of the project was Manhattan because the U.S Army Corps of Engineers created the Manhattan Engineer District in June 1942 and this place was to hide the development of the atomic bomb during the war. Moreover, Alex Wellerstein, historian of science, revealed in an online overview that the idea of this project originated in late 1930s—that Nazi Germany are in the process of building an atomic bomb, so the U.S. should do so first. As per historical records, Germany didn’t get far, however, the prospect of a Nazi bomb was horrifyingly real.
As per reports, Albert Einstein was the one who sent a letter in 1939 informing that the Nazi may be developing anatomic bomb. However, he was not a part of the program. This was because the US Army Intelligence office had concerns about Einstein’s political ideology due to which, in July 1940, he was denied the security clearance to work on the project.
