Misplaced Pages

#250749

92-533: The production of Ivy King was hurried to be ready in case its sister project, Ivy Mike , failed in its attempt to achieve a thermonuclear reaction . The Ivy King test actually took place two weeks after the Mike test. Unlike the Mike bomb, the Ivy King device could theoretically have been added to United States' nuclear arsenal, because it was designed to be air-deliverable. On November 16, 1952 at 11:30 local time (23:30 GMT)

184-531: A B-36H bomber dropped the bomb over a point 2,000 feet (610 m) north of Runit Island in the Enewetak atoll, resulting in a 500 kiloton explosion at 1,480 feet (450 m). The tropopause height at the time of the detonation was about 58,000 feet (18 km). The top of the King cloud reached about 75,000 feet (23 km) with the mushroom base at about 40,000 feet (12 km). The Ivy King bomb, designated as

276-437: A Krause-Ogle box . This allowed gamma and neutron radiation to pass uninhibited to instruments in an unmanned detection station, Station 202, on Boken Island. From there signals were sent to recording equipment at Station 200, also housed in a bunker on Boken Island. Personnel returned to Boken Island after the test to recover the recording equipment. In total, 9,350 military and 2,300 civilian personnel were involved in

368-576: A Mk-18 bomb and named the "Super Oralloy Bomb", was a modified version of the Mk-6D bomb . Instead of using an implosion system similar to the Mk-6D, it used a 92-point implosion system initially developed for the Mk-13 . Its uranium - plutonium core was replaced by 60 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fashioned into a thin-walled sphere equivalent to approximately four critical masses . The thin-walled sphere

460-428: A prosthetic foot. The painkillers he was taking were interfering with his thinking, so he decided to stop taking them, instead using his willpower to deal with the pain, including use of the placebo effect , by which he convinced himself that he had taken painkillers rather than water. Werner Heisenberg said that it was the hardiness of Teller's spirit, rather than stoicism , that allowed him to cope so well with

552-629: A thermonuclear explosive in what was called Project Chariot , and Ronald Reagan 's Strategic Defense Initiative . Teller was a recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award and the Albert Einstein Award . He died on September 9, 2003, in Stanford, California , at 95. Ede Teller was born on January 15, 1908, in Budapest , Austria-Hungary , into a Jewish family. His parents were Ilona (née Deutsch),

644-488: A "white lie" in the 1955 article in order to "soothe ruffled feelings", and claimed full credit for the invention. Teller was known for getting engrossed in projects which were theoretically interesting but practically infeasible (the classic "Super" was one such project.) About his work on the hydrogen bomb, Bethe said: Nobody will blame Teller because the calculations of 1946 were wrong, especially because adequate computing machines were not available at Los Alamos. But he

736-608: A 720-kiloton atomic bomb tested by the United Kingdom on 31 May 1957, which remains to date the largest fission device ever tested. Ivy Mike Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device , in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion . Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll , in

828-482: A control room on USS  Estes where the firing party was located. It was set up on the Pacific island of Elugelab , part of the Enewetak atoll. Elugelab was connected to the islands of Dridrilbwij (Teiteir), Bokaidrikdrik (Bogairikk), and Boken (Bogon) by a 9,000 ft (2.7 km) artificial causeway. Atop the causeway was an aluminum -sheathed plywood tube filled with helium ballonets , referred to as

920-550: A filter paper from the Ivy Mike test. They were able to detect the existence of the elements einsteinium and fermium , which had been produced by intensely concentrated neutron flux about the detonation site. The discovery was kept secret for several years, but the team was eventually given credit. In 1955 the two new elements were named in honor of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi . A simplified and lightened bomb version (the EC-16 )

1012-522: A full-scale test would validate the idea of the Teller-Ulam design . Garwin was instructed to use very conservative estimates when designing the test, and told that it need not be small and light enough to be deployed by air. Liquid deuterium was chosen as the fuel for the fusion reaction because its use simplified the experiment from a physicist's point of view, and made the results easier to analyze. From an engineering point of view, its use necessitated

SECTION 10

#1732883661251

1104-606: A fusion weapon even though it had been put on a low priority during the war (as the creation of a fission weapon proved to be difficult enough). On a visit to New York, he asked Maria Goeppert-Mayer to carry out calculations on the Super for him. She confirmed Teller's own results: the Super was not going to work. A special group was established under Teller in March 1944 to investigate the mathematics of an implosion-type nuclear weapon . It too ran into difficulties. Because of his interest in

1196-694: A hydrogen bomb was feasible, and that further work should be encouraged on its development. Fuchs also participated in this conference, and transmitted this information to Moscow. With John von Neumann , he contributed an idea of using implosion to ignite the Super. The model of Teller's "classical Super" was so uncertain that Oppenheimer would later say that he wished the Russians were building their own hydrogen bomb based on that design, so that it would almost certainly delay their progress on it. By 1949, Soviet-backed governments had already begun seizing control throughout Eastern Europe , forming such puppet states as

1288-565: A hydrogen bomb. A date within 1952 seemed feasible. In October 1951 physicist Edward Teller pushed for July 1952 as a target date for a first test, but project head Marshall Holloway thought October 1952, a year out, was more realistic given how much engineering and fabrication work the test would take and given the need to avoid the summer monsoon season in the Marshall Islands. On June 30, 1952, United States Atomic Energy Commission chair Gordon Dean showed President Harry S. Truman

1380-503: A lingering animosity toward Communism and Fascism . From 1926 to 1928, Teller studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering . He once stated that the person who was responsible for his becoming a physicist was Herman Mark , who was a visiting professor, after hearing lectures on molecular spectroscopy where Mark made it clear to him that it

1472-475: A model of what the Ivy Mike device would look like; the test was set for November 1, 1952. One attempt to significantly delay the test, or not hold it at all, was made by the State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament , chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer , who felt that avoiding a test might forestall the development of a catastrophic new weapon and open the way for new arms agreements between

1564-468: A physicist. Teller then attended the University of Munich , where he studied physics under Arnold Sommerfeld . On July 14, 1928, while still a student in Munich , while riding a streetcar to catch a train for a hike in the nearby Alps , he jumped off the car while it was still moving. He fell, and the wheel nearly severed his right foot. For the rest of his life, he walked with a limp, and on occasion he wore

1656-672: A pianist, and Miksa Teller, an attorney. He attended the Minta Gymnasium in Budapest. Teller was an agnostic. "Religion was not an issue in my family", he later wrote, "indeed, it was never discussed. My only religious training came because the Minta required that all students take classes in their respective religions. My family celebrated one holiday, the Day of Atonement , when we all fasted. Yet my father said prayers for his parents on Saturdays and on all

1748-505: A postponement of it himself; however he did make it known that he would be fine if it was delayed past the election due to "technical reasons" being found. Atomic Energy Commission member Eugene M. Zuckert was sent to the Enewetak test site to see if such a reason could be found, but weather considerations – on average there were only a handful of days each month that were suitable for the test – indicated it should go ahead as planned, and in

1840-489: A practical megaton-range H-bomb. The exact contribution provided respectively from Ulam and Teller to what became known as the Teller–Ulam design is not definitively known in the public domain, and the exact contributions of each and how the final idea was arrived upon has been a point of dispute in both public and classified discussions since the early 1950s. In an interview with Scientific American from 1999, Teller told

1932-523: A stem 32 km (20 mi) wide. The blast created a crater 1.9 km (6,230 ft) in diameter and 50 m (164 ft) deep where Elugelab had once been; the blast and water waves from the explosion (some waves up to 6 m (20 ft) high) stripped the test islands clean of vegetation, as observed by a helicopter survey within 60 minutes after the test, by which time the mushroom cloud and steam were blown away. Radioactive coral debris fell upon ships positioned 56 km (35 mi) away, and

SECTION 20

#1732883661251

2024-577: A student in Pittsburgh and wanted to return to the United States. Her chance came in 1935, when, thanks to George Gamow, Teller was invited to the United States to become a professor of physics at George Washington University , where he worked with Gamow until 1941. At George Washington University in 1937, Teller predicted the Jahn–Teller effect , which distorts molecules in certain situations; this affects

2116-447: A yield of 10.4 megatons of TNT (44  PJ ). 77% of the final yield came from fast fission of the uranium tamper, which produced large amounts of radioactive fallout . The fireball created by the explosion had a maximum radius of 2.9 to 3.3 km (1.8 to 2.1 mi). The maximum radius was reached several seconds after the detonation, during which the hot fireball lifted up due to buoyancy . While still relatively close to

2208-597: Is controversial. Bethe considered Teller's contribution to the invention of the H-bomb a true innovation as early as 1952, and referred to his work as a "stroke of genius" in 1954. In both cases, however, Bethe emphasized Teller's role as a way of stressing that the development of the H-bomb could not have been hastened by additional support or funding, and Teller greatly disagreed with Bethe's assessment. Other scientists (antagonistic to Teller, such as J. Carson Mark ) have claimed that Teller would have never gotten any closer without

2300-417: Is in getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help to convince everybody that the next war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat-use might even be the best thing. On reflection on this letter years later when he was writing his memoirs, Teller wrote: First, Szilard was right. As scientists who worked on producing the bomb, we bore a special responsibility. Second, Oppenheimer

2392-409: Is this organization which ultimately decided on how the new weapons should initially be used. The committee's four-member Scientific Panel was led by Oppenheimer, and concluded immediate military use on Japan was the best option: The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the initial use of these weapons are not unanimous: they range from the proposal of a purely technical demonstration to that of

2484-657: The Hungarian People's Republic in Teller's homeland of Hungary, where much of his family still lived, on August 20, 1949. Following the Soviet Union 's first test detonation of an atomic bomb on August 29, 1949, President Harry Truman announced a crash development program for a hydrogen bomb . Teller returned to Los Alamos in 1950 to work on the project. He insisted on involving more theorists, but many of Teller's prominent colleagues, like Fermi and Oppenheimer, were sure that

2576-567: The Jahn–Teller and Renner–Teller effects), and surface physics . His extension of Enrico Fermi 's theory of beta decay , in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions , provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry. Teller made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory ,

2668-549: The Los Alamos Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico began. With Oppenheimer as its director, the laboratory's purpose was to design an atomic bomb . Teller moved there in March 1943. In Los Alamos, Teller managed to annoy his neighbors by playing piano late at night. Teller became part of the Theoretical (T) Division. He was given a secret identity of Ed Tilden. He was irked at being passed over as its head;

2760-613: The University of Chicago physics department, coordinated the uranium research of Columbia University , Princeton University , the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. To remove disagreement and duplication, Compton transferred the scientists to the Metallurgical Laboratory at Chicago. Even though Teller and Mici were now American citizens, they had relatives in enemy countries, so Teller did not at first go to Chicago. In early 1943, construction of

2852-432: The chemical reactions of metals, and in particular the coloration of certain metallic dyes. Teller and Hermann Arthur Jahn analyzed it as a piece of purely mathematical physics. In collaboration with Stephen Brunauer and Paul Hugh Emmett , Teller also made an important contribution to surface physics and chemistry : the so-called Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) isotherm . Teller and Mici became naturalized citizens of

Ivy King - Misplaced Pages Continue

2944-438: The "Mike" samples were extremely difficult to handle. Scientists at Los Alamos found traces in them of isotopes plutonium-246 and plutonium-244 . Al Ghiorso at the University of California, Berkeley speculated that the filters might also contain atoms that had transformed, through radioactive decay, into the predicted but undiscovered elements 99 and 100. Ghiorso, Stanley Gerald Thompson and Glenn Seaborg obtained half

3036-463: The "Mike" shot. The operation involved the cooperation of the United States army, navy, air force and intelligence services. The USS Curtiss brought components from the United States to Elugelab for assembly. Work was completed on October 31, at 5.00 p.m. Within an hour, personnel were evacuated in preparation for the blast. The test was carried out on 1 November 1952 at 07:15 local time (19:15 on 31 October, Greenwich Mean Time ). It produced

3128-602: The Interim Committee's decision to drop the bombs, having secretly endorsed an immediate military use of the new weapons. This was contrary to the impression that Teller had received when he had personally asked Oppenheimer about the Szilard petition: that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Following Teller's discovery of this, his relationship with his advisor began to deteriorate. In 1990,

3220-605: The Jewish holidays. The idea of God that I absorbed was that it would be wonderful if He existed: We needed Him desperately but had not seen Him in many thousands of years." Teller was a late talker , but he became very interested in numbers and for fun calculated large numbers in his head. Teller left Hungary for Germany in 1926, partly due to the discriminatory numerus clausus rule under Miklós Horthy 's regime. The political climate and revolutions in Hungary during his youth instilled

3312-587: The KB-29 tanker aircraft to refuel. They attempted to return to the field at Enewetak. Hagan, out of fuel, made a successful dead-stick landing on the runway. Robinson's F-84 Thunderjet crashed and sank 3.5 miles short of the island. Robinson's body was never recovered. Fuel tanks on the airplane's wings had been modified to scoop up and filter passing debris. The filters from the surviving planes were sealed in lead and sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico for analysis. Radioactive and contaminated with calcium carbonate ,

3404-446: The Super, Teller did not work as hard on the implosion calculations as Bethe wanted. These too were originally low-priority tasks, but the discovery of spontaneous fission in plutonium by Emilio Segrè 's group gave the implosion bomb increased importance. In June 1944, at Bethe's request, Oppenheimer moved Teller out of T Division, and placed him in charge of a special group responsible for the Super, reporting directly to Oppenheimer. He

3496-438: The United States and the Soviet Union . The panel lacked political allies in Washington, however, and no test delay was made on this account. There was a separate desire voiced for a very short delay in the test, for more political reasons: it was scheduled to take place just a few days before the 1952 presidential election . Truman wanted to keep the thermonuclear test away from partisan politics but had no desire to order

3588-488: The United States on March 6, 1941. When World War II began, Teller wanted to contribute to the war effort. On the advice of the well-known Caltech aerodynamicist and fellow Hungarian émigré Theodore von Kármán , Teller collaborated with his friend Hans Bethe in developing a theory of shock-wave propagation. In later years, their explanation of the behavior of the gas behind such a wave proved valuable to scientists who were studying missile re-entry. In 1942, Teller

3680-417: The accident. In 1929, Teller transferred to the University of Leipzig where in 1930, he received his PhD in physics under Heisenberg. Teller's dissertation dealt with one of the first accurate quantum mechanical treatments of the hydrogen molecular ion . That year, he befriended Russian physicists George Gamow and Lev Landau . Teller's lifelong friendship with a Czech physicist, George Placzek ,

3772-484: The actual use of the weapon and implies that Oppenheimer was being hypocritical. Despite an offer from Norris Bradbury , who had replaced Oppenheimer as the director of Los Alamos in November 1945 to become the head of the Theoretical (T) Division, Teller left Los Alamos on February 1, 1946, to return to the University of Chicago as a professor and close associate of Fermi and Maria Goeppert Mayer . Goepper-Mayer's work on

Ivy King - Misplaced Pages Continue

3864-566: The aid of the International Rescue Committee . He went briefly to England, and moved for a year to Copenhagen , where he worked under Niels Bohr . In February 1934 he married his long-time girlfriend Augusta Maria "Mici" (pronounced "Mitzi") Harkanyi , who was the sister of a friend. Since Mici was a Calvinist Christian, Edward and she were married in a Calvinist church. He returned to England in September 1934. Mici had been

3956-544: The assistance of Ulam and others. Ulam himself claimed that Teller only produced a "more generalized" version of Ulam's original design. The breakthrough—the details of which are still classified—was apparently the separation of the fission and fusion components of the weapons, and to use the X-rays produced by the fission bomb to first compress the fusion fuel (by a process known as "radiation implosion") before igniting it. Ulam's idea seems to have been to use mechanical shock from

4048-457: The concepts used for multi- megaton detonations. Samples from the explosion had traces of the isotopes plutonium-246 , plutonium-244 , and the predicted elements einsteinium and fermium . Beginning with the Teller–Ulam breakthrough in March 1951, there was steady progress made on the issues involved in a thermonuclear explosion and there were additional resources devoted to staging, and political pressure towards seeing, an actual test of

4140-528: The detonation of Ivy Mike , the first thermonuclear weapon to utilize the Teller–Ulam configuration, on November 1, 1952, Teller became known in the press as the "father of the hydrogen bomb". Teller himself refrained from attending the test—he claimed not to feel welcome at the Pacific Proving Grounds —and instead saw its results on a seismograph at Berkeley. There was an opinion that by analyzing

4232-405: The development of previously unknown technologies to handle the difficult material, which had to be stored at extremely low temperatures, near absolute zero . A large cryogenics plant was built to produce liquid hydrogen (used for cooling the device) and deuterium (fuel for the test). A 3,000-kilowatt (4,000 hp) power plant was also constructed for the cryogenics facility. The device that

4324-729: The early 1950s Edward Teller proposed project Sundial at a meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission , the bomb was intended to have a yield of 10 gigatons of TNT, while its counterpart, Gnomon, was intended to have a yield of 1 gigaton. Neither device was ever built or tested. Teller became controversial in 1954 when he testified against Oppenheimer at Oppenheimer's security clearance hearing . Teller had clashed with Oppenheimer many times at Los Alamos over issues relating both to fission and fusion research, and, during Oppenheimer's hearing, he

4416-495: The elucidation of the implosion mechanism. He was the first to propose the solid pit design that was eventually successful. This design became known as a " Christy pit ", after the physicist Robert F. Christy who made the pit a reality. Teller was one of the few scientists to actually watch (with eye protection) the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, rather than follow orders to lie on

4508-422: The end no schedule delay took place. The 82-short-ton (74-metric-ton) "Mike" device was a building that resembled a factory rather than a weapon. It has been reported that Soviet engineers derisively referred to "Mike" as a "thermonuclear installation". The device was designed by Richard Garwin , a student of Enrico Fermi , on the suggestion of Edward Teller . It had been decided that nothing other than

4600-510: The exact time depending on its distance. The film was also accompanied by powerful, Wagner -esque music featured on many test films of that period and was hosted by actor Reed Hadley . A private screening was given to President Dwight D. Eisenhower who had succeeded President Harry S. Truman in January 1953. In 1954, the film was released to the public after censoring, and was shown on commercial television channels. Edward Teller , perhaps

4692-536: The fallout from this test, the Soviets (led in their H-bomb work by Andrei Sakharov ) could have deciphered the new American design. However, this was later denied by the Soviet bomb researchers. Because of official secrecy, little information about the bomb's development was released by the government, and press reports often attributed the entire weapon's design and development to Teller and his new Livermore Laboratory (when it

SECTION 50

#1732883661251

4784-548: The ground with backs turned. He later said that the atomic flash "was as if I had pulled open the curtain in a dark room and broad daylight streamed in". In the days before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon (the Trinity test in July 1945), Hungarian Leo Szilard circulated the Szílard petition , which argued that a demonstration to the Japanese of the new weapon should occur prior to actual use on Japan , and that

4876-419: The ground, the fireball had yet to reach its maximum dimensions and was thus approximately 5.2 km (3.2 mi) wide. The mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 17 km (56,000 ft) in less than 90 seconds. One minute later it had reached 33 km (108,000 ft), before stabilizing at 41 km (135,000 ft) with the top eventually spreading out to a diameter of 161 km (100 mi) with

4968-560: The head of the rump project remaining at Los Alamos during the shot. The telegram contained only the words "It's a boy," which came hours earlier than any other word from Enewetak. An hour after the bomb was detonated, U.S. Air Force pilots took off from Enewetak Island to fly into the atomic cloud and take samples. Pilots had to monitor extra readouts and displays while "piloting under unusual, dangerous, and difficult conditions” including heat, radiation, unpredictable winds and flying debris. "Red Flight" Leader Virgil K. Meroney flew into

5060-461: The historian Barton Bernstein argued that it is an "unconvincing claim" by Teller that he was a "covert dissenter" to the use of the bomb. In his 2001 Memoirs , Teller claims that he did lobby Oppenheimer, but that Oppenheimer had convinced him that he should take no action and that the scientists should leave military questions in the hands of the military; Teller claims he was not aware that Oppenheimer and other scientists were being consulted as to

5152-468: The hydride bomb, and the result was a dud. Ulam once wrote to a colleague about an idea he had shared with Teller: "Edward is full of enthusiasm about these possibilities; this is perhaps an indication they will not work." Fermi once said that Teller was the only monomaniac he knew who had several manias . Carey Sublette of Nuclear Weapon Archive argues that Ulam came up with the radiation implosion compression design of thermonuclear weapons, but that on

5244-448: The idea "technically sweet". Though he had helped to come up with the design and had been a long-time proponent of the concept, Teller was not chosen to head the development project (his reputation of a thorny personality likely played a role in this). In 1952 he left Los Alamos and joined the newly established Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory , which had been created largely through his urging. After

5336-456: The idea would not work, Teller was fascinated by the possibility and was quickly bored with the idea of "just" an atomic bomb even though this was not yet anywhere near completion. At the Berkeley session, Teller diverted discussion from the fission weapon to the possibility of a fusion weapon—what he called the "Super", an early conception of the hydrogen bomb . Arthur Compton , the chairman of

5428-426: The immediate area around the atoll was heavily contaminated. Close to the fireball, lightning discharges were rapidly triggered. The entire shot was documented by the filmmakers of Lookout Mountain studios . A post-production explosion sound was overdubbed over what was a completely silent detonation from the vantage point of the camera, with the blast wave sound only arriving later, as akin to thunder , with

5520-526: The internal structure of the elements would earn her the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963. On April 18–20, 1946, Teller participated in a conference at Los Alamos to review the wartime work on the Super. The properties of thermonuclear fuels such as deuterium and the possible design of a hydrogen bomb were discussed. It was concluded that Teller's assessment of a hydrogen bomb had been too favourable, and that both

5612-438: The job was instead given to Hans Bethe . Oppenheimer had him investigate unusual approaches to building fission weapons, such as autocatalysis , in which the efficiency of the bomb would increase as the nuclear chain reaction progressed, but proved to be impractical. He also investigated using uranium hydride instead of uranium metal, but its efficiency turned out to be "negligible or less". He continued to push his ideas for

SECTION 60

#1732883661251

5704-411: The military application best designed to induce surrender ... Others emphasize the opportunity of saving American lives by immediate military use ... We find ourselves closer to these latter views; we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use. Teller later learned of Oppenheimer's solicitation and his role in

5796-484: The most ardent supporter of the development of the hydrogen bomb, was in Berkeley, California , at the time of the shot. He was able to receive first notice that the test was successful by observing a seismometer , which picked up the shock wave that traveled through the earth from the Pacific Proving Grounds . In his memoirs, Teller wrote that he immediately sent an unclassified telegram to Dr. Elizabeth "Diz" Graves ,

5888-471: The now independent island nation of the Marshall Islands , as part of Operation Ivy . It was the first full test of the Teller–Ulam design , a staged fusion device. Due to its physical size and fusion fuel type ( cryogenic liquid deuterium ), the "Mike" device was not suitable for use as a deliverable weapon. It was intended as a "technically conservative" proof of concept experiment to validate

5980-408: The other hand Teller has gotten little credit for being the first to propose fusion boosting in 1945, which is essential for miniaturization and reliability and is used in all of today's nuclear weapons. Sundial was the codename of one of two massive bombs planned for testing by the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch as part of a classified American weapons project In

6072-408: The petition. Teller therefore penned a letter in response to Szilard that read: I am not really convinced of your objections. I do not feel that there is any chance to outlaw any one weapon. If we have a slim chance of survival, it lies in the possibility to get rid of wars. The more decisive a weapon is the more surely it will be used in any real conflict and no agreements will help. Our only hope

6164-654: The precursor of density functional theory , a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, with Nicholas Metropolis , Arianna Rosenbluth , Marshall Rosenbluth , and Augusta Teller , Teller co-authored a paper that is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics and the Markov chain Monte Carlo literature in Bayesian statistics . Teller

6256-470: The primary to encourage fusion in the secondary, while Teller quickly realized that X-rays from the primary would do the job much more symmetrically. Some members of the laboratory (J. Carson Mark in particular) later expressed the opinion that the idea to use the X-rays would have eventually occurred to anyone working on the physical processes involved, and that the obvious reason why Teller thought of it right away

6348-469: The project of the H-bomb was technically infeasible and politically undesirable. None of the available designs were yet workable. However, Soviet scientists who had worked on their own hydrogen bomb have claimed that they developed it independently. In 1950, calculations by the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam and his collaborator Cornelius Everett, along with confirmations by Fermi, had shown that not only

6440-534: The quantity of deuterium needed, as well as the radiation losses during deuterium burning , would shed doubt on its workability. Addition of expensive tritium to the thermonuclear mixture would likely lower its ignition temperature, but even so, nobody knew at that time how much tritium would be needed, and whether even tritium addition would encourage heat propagation. At the end of the conference, in spite of opposition by some members such as Robert Serber , Teller submitted an optimistic report in which he said that

6532-426: The reporter: I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and had difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it." The issue

6624-494: The scientific community ostracized Teller. Teller continued to find support from the U.S. government and military research establishment, particularly for his advocacy for nuclear energy development, a strong nuclear arsenal, and a vigorous nuclear testing program. In his later years, he advocated controversial technological solutions to military and civilian problems, including a plan to excavate an artificial harbor in Alaska using

6716-458: The stem of the explosion first. In five minutes, he had gathered all the samples he could, and exited. Next Bob Hagan and Jimmy Robinson entered the cloud. Robinson hit an area of severe turbulence, entering a spin and barely retaining consciousness. He regained control of his plane at 20,000 feet, but the electromagnetic storm had disrupted his instruments. In rain and poor visibility, without working instruments, Hagan and Robinson were unable to find

6808-412: The weapons should never be used on people. In response to Szilard's petition, Teller consulted his friend Robert Oppenheimer. Teller believed that Oppenheimer was a natural leader and could help him with such a formidable political problem. Oppenheimer reassured Teller that the nation's fate should be left to the sensible politicians in Washington. Bolstered by Oppenheimer's influence, he decided to not sign

6900-454: Was Teller's earlier estimate of the quantity of tritium needed for the reaction to begin was low, but that even with higher amounts of tritium, the energy loss in the fusion process would be too great to enable the fusion reaction to propagate. However, in 1951 Teller and Ulam made a breakthrough, and invented a new design, proposed in a classified March 1951 paper, On Heterocatalytic Detonations I: Hydrodynamic Lenses and Radiation Mirrors , for

6992-448: Was Teller's idea. Teller even refused to sign the patent application, because it would need Ulam's signature. Thomas Powers writes that "of course the bomb designers all knew the truth, and many considered Teller the lowest, most contemptible kind of offender in the world of science, a stealer of credit". Whatever the actual components of the so-called Teller–Ulam design and the respective contributions of those who worked on it, after it

7084-560: Was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb " and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design based on Stanisław Ulam 's design. Born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, one of the many so-called "Martians" , a group of prominent Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics , spectroscopy (in particular

7176-493: Was a commonly used design, which ensured that the fissile material remained sub-critical until imploded. The HEU sphere was then enclosed in a natural-uranium tamper . To physically prevent the HEU sphere collapsing into a critical condition if the surrounding explosives were detonated accidentally, or if the sphere was crushed following an aircraft accident, the hollow center was filled with a chain made from aluminum and boron , which

7268-552: Was actually developed by Los Alamos). Many of Teller's colleagues were irritated that he seemed to enjoy taking full credit for something he had only a part in, and in response, with encouragement from Enrico Fermi, Teller authored an article titled "The Work of Many People", which appeared in Science magazine in February 1955, emphasizing that he was not alone in the weapon's development. He would later write in his memoirs that he had told

7360-562: Was also very important for his scientific and philosophical development. It was Placzek who arranged a summer stay in Rome with Enrico Fermi in 1932, thus orienting Teller's scientific career in nuclear physics. Also in 1930, Teller moved to the University of Göttingen , then one of the world's great centers of physics due to the presence of Max Born and James Franck , but after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Germany became unsafe for Jewish people, and he left through

7452-679: Was an early member of the Manhattan Project , which developed the first atomic bomb . He made a serious push to develop the first fusion -based weapons, but ultimately fusion bombs only appeared after World War II . He co-founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and was its director or associate director. After his controversial negative testimony in the Oppenheimer security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos Laboratory superior, J. Robert Oppenheimer ,

7544-516: Was because he was already working on the " Greenhouse " tests for the spring of 1951, in which the effect of X-rays from a fission bomb on a mixture of deuterium and tritium was going to be investigated. Priscilla Johnson McMillan in her book The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race , writes that Teller "concealed the role" of Ulam, and that only "radiation implosion"

7636-470: Was blamed at Los Alamos for leading the laboratory, and indeed the whole country, into an adventurous programme on the basis of calculations, which he himself must have known to have been very incomplete. During the Manhattan Project, Teller advocated the development of a bomb using uranium hydride, which many of his fellow theorists said would be unlikely to work. At Livermore, Teller continued work on

7728-523: Was developed for testing the Teller-Ulam design became known as a "Sausage" design: The entire "Mike" device (including cryogenic equipment) weighed 82 short tons (74 metric tons). It was housed in a large corrugated-aluminum building, called the shot cab, which was 88 ft (27 m) long, 46 ft (14 m) wide, and 61 ft (19 m) high, with a 300 ft (91 m) signal tower. Television and radio signals were used to communicate with

7820-559: Was invited to be part of Robert Oppenheimer 's summer planning seminar at the University of California, Berkeley , on the origins of the Manhattan Project , the U.S. effort to develop the first nuclear weapons . A few weeks earlier, Teller had been meeting with his friend and colleague Enrico Fermi about the prospects of atomic warfare , and Fermi had nonchalantly suggested that perhaps a weapon based on nuclear fission could be used to set off an even larger nuclear fusion reaction. Even though he initially explained to Fermi why he thought

7912-454: Was new ideas in physics that were radically changing the frontier of chemistry. Mark was an expert in polymer chemistry , a field which is essential to understanding biochemistry, and Mark taught him about the leading breakthroughs in quantum physics made by Louis de Broglie , among others. It was his exposure to Mark's lectures that initially motivated Teller to switch to physics. After informing his father of his intent to switch, his father

8004-616: Was prepared and scheduled to be tested in operation Castle Yankee , as a backup in case the non-cryogenic "Shrimp" fusion device (tested in Castle Bravo ) failed to work; that test was canceled when the Bravo device was tested successfully, making the cryogenic designs obsolete. 11°40′0″N 162°11′13″E  /  11.66667°N 162.18694°E  / 11.66667; 162.18694 Edward Teller Edward Teller ( Hungarian : Teller Ede ; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003)

8096-505: Was proposed it was immediately seen by the scientists working on the project as the answer which had been so long sought. Those who previously had doubted whether a fission-fusion bomb would be feasible at all were converted into believing that it was only a matter of time before both the US and the USSR had developed multi-megaton weapons. Even Oppenheimer, who was originally opposed to the project, called

8188-524: Was pulled out to arm the bomb. The boron-coated chain also absorbed the neutrons needed to drive the nuclear reaction. The primary designer of the Super Oralloy Bomb, physicist Ted Taylor , later became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament . With an explosive yield of 500 kilotons, Ivy King is the second largest known fission-only device ever tested after the Orange Herald nuclear device,

8280-616: Was replaced by Rudolf Peierls from the British Mission , who in turn brought in Klaus Fuchs , who was later revealed to be a Soviet spy . Teller's Super group became part of Fermi's F Division when he joined the Los Alamos Laboratory in September 1944. It included Stanislaw Ulam , Jane Roberg, Geoffrey Chew , Harold and Mary Argo, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer . Teller made valuable contributions to bomb research, especially in

8372-416: Was right. We did not know enough about the political situation to have a valid opinion. Third, what we should have done but failed to do was to work out the technical changes required for demonstrating the bomb [very high] over Tokyo and submit that information to President Truman. Unknown to Teller at the time, four of his colleagues were solicited by the then secret May to June 1945 Interim Committee . It

8464-403: Was so concerned that he traveled to visit him and speak with his professors at the school. While a degree in chemical engineering was a sure path to a well-paying job at chemical companies, there was not such a clear-cut route for a career with a degree in physics. He was not privy to the discussions his father had with his professors, but the result was that he got his father's permission to become

#250749