Today In History: Told You the Atmosphere Wouldn’t Ignite*!
Irradiated by Stingray
Today in 1945, at 5:29AM mountain time (the same time this post went up, if scheduled publishing went correctly), the scientists and engineers of The Manhattan Project did something the world had never seen. 35 miles outside of Socorro, NM, five tons of conventional explosives crushed a comparatively small sphere of the not-perfectly-understood element Plutonium into a super-critical ball of Fuck Tojo. Predictions for the size of the blast ranged from the project optimists stating that nothing would happen and the whole thing would be a bust, to the slightly nervous possibility that the atmosphere would take part in the chain reaction, incinerating the entire planet (which, technically, would still have ended the war).
Originally, The Gadget (as the prototype of the implosion-core atomic bomb was known) was to be tested a few miles outside of Los Alamos itself. There remains to this day a giant concrete bowl at the planned firing site, designed not so much to survive the temperatures greater than those found in the sun, but to collect the exceedingly precious plutonium should the device fail. Fortunately for the town, a site somewhat farther away was selected. Even at the remote Trinity Site, failure remained a concern, and an immense steel canister, weighing in at 240 tons and known as Jumbo was constructed. When I visited the Trinty Site as a kid on one of the two days per year they open to the public, I remain convinced that calling the cask Jumbo is a bit like a man struck by lightning saying he feels a bit under the weather – accurate, but it doesn’t quite do the situation justice.
Sixty three years ago, in less time than it takes you to blink, nearly 25 acres of dirt, rock, lizards, sagebrush, and cactus was transformed into a ten foot thick layer of glass. The world had never seen this material in its entire history to date – we made it. This green, clicking-hot material was dubbed Trinitite. We repeated this party trick twice more within the year, and since then the notion of using these weapons against human targets has been so inconceivable that we have remained without open conflict on the global scale since.
Today I am proud to count myself a life-long resident of Los Alamos, New Mexico: birthplace of the reality of peace through superior firepower.
*According to wikipedia, the winner of the betting pools at Trinity Site for the actual yield was one Dr. I. I. Rabi, with a prediction of 18 kilotons, off by about 2kt.
July 16th, 2008 at 7:27 am
I am SO pleased that you didn’t state that the first A-bomb explosion occurred at Alamogordo.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:04 am
They were fairly sure the atmosphere thing wouldn’t happen, right? I mean, it wasn’t a total stab in the dark, they’d done math and models and stuff, right?
From the wiki: “The scientists working on Trinity set up a betting pool for the results of the test, with predictions ranging from total dud to incineration of the planet.”
Seems silly to bet on “incineration of the planet,” it’s not like you could collect if you’re right.
July 16th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“I am SO pleased that you didn’t state that the first A-bomb explosion occurred at Alamogordo.”
Well, of course–after all, that new glass wasn’t called Alamogorditite.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Holly: Yeah, they had a pretty good idea. Just think of the guys betting on “Yeah, we’re boned” as the ones with a similar outlook to mine – find the worst that can happen, and then if it doesn’t you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
As an interesting side fact, some of the Project workers who brought their families sent their children to stay in other states for this test.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
The date I recall is August 6 for quite obvious reasons. Trinity is barely ever mentioned on mainstream media.
Stingray, where can I find more info on Trinitite – especially how much of it was produced? The “sheet of glass” is one of those figures of speech that I have grown fed up with, so I’d like to set some facts straight.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Fabio: The usual numbers given for the Trinity test glass production are a crater 1100 feet in diameter, and 10 feet thick. These are the numbers wikipedia uses, however other accounts include the “splash-zone” around the main crater for airborn trinitite precipitating down, which was not a trivial source of the material by any means.
Thanks to the glass rain, precise numbers are less than forthcoming. I imagine the Nevada tests would have more accurate production values, as they were mostly underground tests and much more closely monitored, but strangely information on specifics of these tests is less than readily availible.
So for the “sheet of glass” catchphrase, I would accept a volume of (pi*550′*550′)*10′ = 9,503,317 cubic feet of trinitite*. I would expect just as the way spheres and such work that this layer would not be a uniform 10′, especially at the outer edges of the crater, but calculating the volume there gets into integrals and such and is a bit overkill for the moment. How many tons of trinitite that 9.5 million cubic feet tipped the scale at is also something I don’t know. The density of trinitite was variable, depending on what other elements it contained (copper from The Gadget’s wiring, iron from the support tower, etc).
Another complicating factor is that the crater was covered up almost immediately. At the site now, there are a few small greenhouse-like structures set up to protect sections of ground with “original” concentrations of trinitite (which can be found scattered around the site in the open still, but in much much lower concentrations). The catch is these “original” concentrations were preserved only after national security was taken into account. Anybody flying over and noticing a glistening green crater might’ve started asking questions, so they came in with bulldozers pretty quickly, which obviously did not do wonderful things in the way of preserving the site integrity from a historical point of view.
For further reading, though focused less exclusively on trinitite obviously, “The Day The Sun Rose Twice” is an excellent (though not perfect) look at the whole shebang.
*(Thanks for asking this- it made me double check some math and I found an error in the main post)
July 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I had my chance to walk right up to “Jumbo” while hunting oryx at the White Sands test range. Talk about a two-fer! Somebody thought it was a great idea to introduce Saharan oryx into the arid environment at White Sands. Guess what happens when you fail to calculate the lack of predation necessary to keep the beastie population in check? The military now allows hunters on premesis to cull the herd. Sting, you gotta do it. It’s as close to an African safari as you’ll ever get. The meat is good, too, nice and lean with a better flavor than elk. While I saw perhaps three dozen oryx over the weekend, I did not see a trace of trinitite.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Stingray,
It’s the 10 ft. thickness that seems a lot to me – all the specimen in pictures are way thinner.
Maybe these come from the splash zone, while the layer is much thicker inside the crater where the molten stuff accumulated.
I’m just curious, you know.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Mmmm. Trinitite. Mmmm. Stays crunchy, even in milk!!
July 17th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The trinitite was all cleaned up, and put into 55 gallon drums.
Not by government order, but by a BLM worker who was offended by its presence there. He cleaned up every last bit of it with a shovel and a D-8 … and died of leukemia for his efforts.
No one had a clue what had happened to the trinitite until a friend of his mentioned what he had done, and later led officials to where he had left the barrels.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I’m just sad that I don’t live in K-town anymore.
“Moon-A-Hippy Day” is coming up in only a couple weeks, and Oak Ridge is such a long drive from Indy…
July 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Er, “hippie, goddammit.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Kristopher: That’s actually the first I’ve heard of that. Do you have anymore info about the sap what did it?
Tam: Aww, no hippie-mooning in Indy? I’ll moon ‘em *twice* as hard this year then for you.
July 18th, 2008 at 8:54 am
I’ll see if I can dig it up again. I discovered the story on a personal web page while researching Project Pluto.
I sent the link to a friend who happened to be a ANG bird colonel, who forwarded it to the NRC … who contacted the author, and retrieved the barrels.
Not sure if I can find it again, but I will look.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:06 am
It looks like the AEC did clean the thickest chunks of trinitite out of the crater itself, and then filled it in with dirt.
Oh well … that internet posting will turn up eventually.
July 18th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Found it:
http://www.mine-engineer.com/mining/trinity.htm
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:14 pm
“35 miles outside of Socorro, NM, five tons of conventional explosives crushed a comparatively small sphere of the not-perfectly-understood element Plutonium into a super-critical ball of Fuck Tojo.”
Heh. Poor Tojo.
War between the U.S. and Japan was pretty much a given after the Meiji Restoration. War Plan Orange was first drawn up almost 50 years before it was used…
March 27th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Heh. My first semester at Tech, they ran a scavenger hunt for 49′ers. One of the items on the list was Jumbo. It was worth rather a lot of points.