Enlarge / Philippe Tlokinski stars as Stanislaw Ulam in the new film Adventures of a Mathematician . (credit: Samuel Goldwyn Films) On November 1, 1952, the US detonated the first thermonuclear weapon , dubbed “Ivy Mike , ” off the Enewetak Atoll in what is now the Marshall Islands. Most of us consider the late physicist […]
Enlarge / This is likely one of 664 uranium cubes from the failed nuclear reactor that German scientists tried to build in Haigerloch during World War II. (credit: John T. Consoli/University of Maryland) For decades, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been home to an unusual artifact from World War II: a small cube […]
Enlarge / A “Restricted Data” classification stamp on a document from the US Atomic Energy Commission in the early 1950s. The document pertains to the classification of opacity calculations that were part of the work on the hydrogen bomb. The document is no longer classified and is available in the US National Archives. (credit: Alexander […]