Oppenheimer : Few Best Movie Moments in Physics, Leadership, Atomic Diplomacy

Oppenheimer film as expected by many had won the Oscar race in multiple categories.

Film has captivating story about the race to create the world’s first nuclear weapon. In the early 1940s, scientists from the United States, Germany, and Japan began working independently to develop a nuclear-powered weapon. All of them were pessimistic and overestimated the difficulty associated with nuclear weapon creation, but the scientists from Manhattan project was able to hold the nerve and create powerful but disastrous weapon. Once created, this weapon went out of scientists control and it became political weapon. Film has multiple poignant moments related to science and leadership. Listing some of them here

A Bomb Alvarez A Bomb — Oppenheimer

On January 29, 1939, a young aspiring physicist, Luis Walter Alvarez, was reading the “San Francisco Chronicle” newspaper in a Berkeley barbershop. While reading, he found an extraordinary scientific news. Otto Hahn and Straussmann have just successfully demonstrated that the atom can be divided into two or more parts. Shocked by the news, he asked the barber to stop cutting his hair. With his hair cut in half, he started running to the radiation lab with newspaper. His friend and physicist Philip Albose saw him first. He too was thrilled by this discovery. Within 1 day, Albose managed to discover that uranium can be fissionable, with tellurium-52 and zirconium-42 as byproducts.

When Alvarez approached Oppenheimer about nuclear fission, Oppenheimer initially refused to accept it. Oppenheimer showed a theoretical equation on the board that said nuclear fission was impossible. The next day, Alvarez asked him to watch his oscilloscope in the radiation lab, with enormous ionizing pulses appearing in between. These pulses were 25 times larger and originate from nuclear fission. In 15 minutes, the astonished Oppenheimer agreed that it was a real effect. With his quick thinking, Oppenheimer concluded that some of the neutrons would leak out during the reaction, setting off a nuclear chain reaction and potentially setting the stage for a bomb of unimaginable size

In the film, dialogues are.

Oppie, You Owe Me ten Dollars — Kistiakowsky

On July 14, 1945 (just two days prior to the trinity test), Oppenheimer received disastrous news from the Los Alamos Laboratory, where George Kistiakowski and his X division colleagues were working on complex explosive lenses. The precise operation of these complex explosive lenses is necessary to symmetrically push the fissile plutonium in all directions to reach supercritical mass. A chain reaction is only possible when the plutonium core reaches a supercritical level. In Los Alamos Edward Cruetz and his team were involved in verifying the design of explosive lenses at the laboratory. When Cruetz’s team tested a duplicate of the explosive model at Los Alamos, they did not get the expected results. On July 14, Cruetz called Oppenheimer and informed him that the trinity test was going to fail due to this finding. The news was devastating to all the leaders of the Manhattan Project including General Groves ,Vannevar Bush and James Conant.

When top officials began coldly questioning Kistiakowsky, he feared that the tragic failure of the Manhattan Project would fall on him. News of this report even spread to visitors, including Nobel laureates, scientists and generals, who came to observe the Trinity test. Oppenheimer was nervous about Cruetz’s report that the $2 billion Trinity test would be dud. But later, Kistiakowsky was confident that the explosive lens would work and the trinity test would succeed. To reassure Oppenheimer Kistiakowski offered his 1 month salary against $10 as a bet. With trinity doom and gloom in the air and only a few hours before the test Oppenheimer found solace by reciting a verse of the Bhagavad Gita, which he had translated from Sanskrit.

In battle, in the forest, at the precipice of the mountains

On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,

In sleep, in confusion, and in the depths of shame,

the good deeds a man has done before defending himself

Vane rane shatrujalaabdhimadhye mahaarnave parvatmastake vaa.

Suptam pramattam vishamasthitam vaa rakshanti punyaani purakrutaani.

The next day (July 15, 1945), Sunday morning, Oppenheimer received excellent news from his Los Alamos colleague, Hans Bethe. Bethe had spent the whole night on Saturday studying the results of the Cruetz verification experiment patterns. Bethe had determined that the instrumental design was perfect, and that even a flawless implosion could not produce any oscilloscope records other than what had been observed. On July 16, 1945, the Trinity test was scheduled to begin at dawn. As the automatic timer began to reach below the 10-count mark, Kistiakowski got excited and assumed that the test yield would be less than one kilo ton; however, a few seconds later, an explosion occurred and Kistiakowski was knocked out. This was because of the shock waves generated by the 25-kilogram yield was huge. He scrambled back, looked at the mushroom cloud and went inside again at the control post. Later in his own words, “I said to Oppenheimer, ‘You owe me 10 dollars,’. The distracted director looked in his wallet and saw it was empty. ‘You will have to wait,’ Oppenheimer added.”

In the film, dialogues are.

Be Yourself Only Better, Isidor Rabi

Originally, Los Alamos was a military lab. Because of the sensitive nature of the weapon to be manufactured, scientists were required to follow military regulations and wear military fatigues as part of the compartmentalization process. . There was a scene in the film when Oppenheimer, dressed in a military uniform, told another Los Alamos physicist, Isidor Rabi, that all Manhattan Project scientists should enlist in the US Army. Rabi refuses to agree and informs Oppenheimer that scientists should remain independent civilians Realizing that Rabi’s comments were true, Oppenheimer changes his lieutenant colonel’s outfit to a civilian suit with a cowboy hat, showing his love of New Mexico.

Until Somebody builds a bigger one — Edward Teller

In one scene of the movie, trucks carrying fat man bomb parts are being transported from the Los Alamos laboratory with background conversion between Edward Teller and Oppenheimer, Edward Teller is known as the father of hydrogen bomb. He was involved in the field of nuclear research from 1930’s. In the background of the conversion, Oppenheimer expresses his fear of the terrible consequences of the use of atomic bombs on the civilian population. He predicts that once the use of atomic weapons in war takes place, the future becomes unimaginable, nuclear war all around. Teller replies, “Not until someone builds a bigger bomb.”

In reality, too, the nuclear arms race lasted for 35 years between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the four years following the Trinity test, the Soviet Union also developed its own atomic weapon. The United States proceeded with the development of the hydrogen bomb, also called the super, in 1952. In 1955, the Soviet Union, with the assistance of leading scientists such as Andrei Sakharov, developed its own thermonuclear weapons. The competition went beyond the hydrogen bomb in many areas, such as miniaturization of nukes and the delivery of payloads. Fortunately, this arms race did not lead to nuclear war, because of the nuclear restraint among the nations, who were aware of the terrible consequences of war. After 15 years of the Second World War, Joseph Stalin predicted that the Third World War would occur. Due to the nuclear restraint, this did not happen. To this day, no nuclear weapon has been attempted in any war in human history after 1945. Today, the power of a nuclear weapon is atleast 1000 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Conclusion

Apart from the physics, the politics, and the leadership involved with the weapon, the film also portrays the devastating consequences of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945). Global nuclear disarmament is one of the areas where nuclear states must step up and play their part, as the film and history demonstrate. As technology advances, there’s always a risk that a nuclear weapon could fall into the wrong hands, which is why countries must take steps to enhance security and mitigate the risk. As one of Hiroshima’s victims said, “War is a torment on the innocent.”