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Part of rows 4–7 of the left half of the periodic table. The row of ‘rare earth’ elements (Z = 58–71) that usually appears as a separate row has been deleted as these elements play no role in the Manhattan Project, and the ‘actinide’ elements (Z = 90 onwards) have been moved up into the bottom row to emphasize the expected chemical similarity between element 93 and manganese (Z = 25).
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The Manhattan Project was the United States Army's program to develop and deploy nuclear weapons during World War II. In these devices, which are known popularly as 'atomic bombs', energy is released not by a chemical explosion but by the much more violent process of fission of nuclei of heavy elements via a neutron-mediated chain-reaction. Three y...
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... The Manhattan Project was a centrally directed federal project with a singular objective: create the nuclear bomb before the Axis powers. In the midst of WWII, the U.S. government provided a 'blank check' to the development team, being led by General Leslie Groves [8]. The entire project was kept secret from high-ranking members of the U.S. government and military, and General Groves, the director of the project, had full control over its operation. ...
Rapid global warming driven by human activity is altering the Earth’s ecosystems, and it is imperative for humanity to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing the challenges of climate change is a race against time, and while countries around the world have pledged to cut their emissions, progress is slow and the pledges are far from being achieved. The U.S. has faced challenges before that required a large investment of resources, financial and human, to achieve goals in a short time frame. The Manhattan Project is the largest of such projects and it operated with unlimited funds under a centrally controlled bureaucracy. We apply the framework of the Manhattan Project to the threat of climate change and consider its effectiveness in combating the challenges posed by climate change. We also analyze recent U.S. climate policy to compare and contrast it with a hypothetical Manhattan Project for climate. We find that the Manhattan Project approach, while effective at delivering technological advancements and working in secrecy, falls short at dealing with problems that require transparency and collaboration and that cannot be solved by ‘silver-bullet’ technologies.
... Canada's contribution was not limited to supplying the U.S. with ore, but it also handled the supply chain for the element from other countries. Additionally, a nuclear research laboratory Manhattan Project had cost nearly $2 billion by 1945 (Reed B. C., 2014). ...
These were the most important events during World War II that changed the system of the world we live in today. In this article, we will reveal what impact uranium production had on the world during World War II. We will also show how this production changed the balance of power during the war for the allied countries.
... This paper is the third in a series of Invited Comments in this journal on the topic of the Manhattan Project. The first paper dealt with the organization and physics of the Project, and the second with its legacy [1,2]. In a sense, the present paper is really a prequel to these earlier papers, but as explained in what follows there are good reasons to publish it as a sequel. ...
... The memoranda were largely qualitative (although based on underlying calculations), but the Primer was a physics paper intended to bring its readers, many of whom already knew parts of its contents quite intimately, up to speed on a much larger project of which their work had been but one of many components. The Primer assumed much prior knowledge, and it is for this reason that this paper is published as a sequel to [1,2]. ...
... According to Peierls, Frisch approached him in February or March of 1940 with the question 'Suppose someone gave you a quantity of pure 235 isotope of uranium -what would happen?' A few months earlier, Peierls had published a paper on how to estimate the critical mass necessary to sustain a chain reaction, and they proceeded to work out a rough estimate of that quantity for U-235, arriving at a figure of about a pound 1 . This turned out to be a serious underestimate, but it did alert them to the fact that an atomic bomb might be a possibility. ...
In April 1943, a group of scientists at the newly established Los Alamos Laboratory were given a series of lectures by Robert Serber on what was then known of the physics and engineering issues involved in developing fission bombs. Serber's lectures were recorded in a 24 page report titled The Los Alamos Primer, which was subsequently declassified and published in book form. This paper describes the background to the Primer and analyzes the physics contained in its 22 sections. The motivation for this paper is to provide a firm foundation of the background and contents of the Primer for physicists interested in the Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons.
... Section 4 summarizes the current global nuclear weapons landscape, and offers some thoughts on how it might evolve over coming years. This paper can be regarded as a complement to my earlier Invited Comment on the scientific background of the Manhattan Project [2]. Together, these papers should provide readers with a survey of all of the major aspects and consequences of one of the most remarkable developments in human history. ...
August 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These bombs, the products of the United States Army’s Manhattan Project, helped to end World War II and had enormous long-term effects on global political strategies by setting the stage for the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. This article explores the context and legacy of the Manhattan Project. The state of the war in the summer of 1945 is described, as are how the target cities came to be chosen, deliberations surrounding whether the bombs should be used directly or demonstrated first, and the long-term effects of the Project on individual scientists, the relationship between scientists and society, the subsequent development of nuclear arsenals around the world, and the current status of these arsenals and how they might evolve in the future.
... Reed [10] reviews the history of the atomic bomb development and the corresponding physics. ...
Some emerging technologies promise to significantly improve the human condition, but come with a risk of failure so catastrophic that human civilization may not survive. This article discusses the great downside dilemma posed by the decision of whether or not to use these technologies. The dilemma is: use the technology, and risk the downside of catastrophic failure, or do not use the technology, and suffer through life without it. Historical precedents include the first nuclear weapon test and messaging to extraterrestrial intelligence. Contemporary examples include stratospheric geoengineering, a technology under development in response to global warming, and artificial general intelligence, a technology that could even take over the world. How the dilemma should be resolved depends on the details of each technology’s downside risk and on what the human condition would otherwise be. Meanwhile, other technologies do not pose this dilemma, including sustainable design technologies, nuclear fusion power, and space colonization. Decisions on all of these technologies should be made with the long-term interests of human civilization in mind. This paper is part of a series of papers based on presentations at the Emerging Technologies and the Future of Humanity event held at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 17 March 2014.
Durant le second conflit mondial, un effort de guerre intense conduit la recherche scientifique à conquérir une nouvelle forme d’énergie, démontrée de façon radicale et cataclysmique par les bombardements nucléaires américains. L’énergie de l’atome vient au monde marquée du sceau de la géopolitique, du militaire et de la science. Le développement de l’énergie nucléaire qui s’ensuit en France n’échappera pas à ces trois déterminants : tout au long des années 1945 à 1970, le lien civil-militaire est manifeste dans les technologies de réacteurs développées par les deux grandes institutions françaises en charge de cette énergie, le CEA en premier lieu et EDF dès le milieu des années 1950.
