Frederick Reines – The singing UCI Nobel Laureate who nearly bombed Nevada

https://www.physics.uci.edu/node/14126

by perihelions • 2 years ago

51 17 2 years ago

physics.uci.edu

throwanem• 2 years ago

In fairness, nuking a chunk of Nevada was what the early 1950s called "Tuesday".

ghaff• 2 years ago

There was some book I read--thought it was We Swam the Grand Canyon but can't find the scene--when the author was camped over by Lake Mead somewhere and was awoken by the flash and sound of an atomic test. There's a pretty neat Atomic Test Museum in Vegas.

jcrawfordor• 2 years ago

Over nine hundred nuclear weapons, many of larger size, were detonated in Nevada from the early 1950s to 1992. The way the article presents that aspect is odd and suggests an author surprisingly unaware of the history of Nevada and the weapons program.

I actually find it somewhat surprising the weapon-stimulated experiment was never attempted, as these kinds of experiments were conducted secondarily to a weapons test fairly routinely. A large portion of Nevada tests supported secondary research by other government agencies, universities, and private industry. A prominent example was a set of buildings to test earthquake-hardening methods, taking advantage of the consistent earthquakes incidentally produced by nuclear tests. I believe the client on that project was the University of California, but that's from memory and sources are hard to come by on older NNSS programs.

One of the more famous commercial tests was by the Mosler safe company to demonstrate that their vaults could survive a nuclear attack, although this wasn't totally an independent project as Mosler had a close relationship with the military and the survivability of their vaults had implications on nuclear deterrence, their being used to store parts of the weapons stockpile.

perihelions• 2 years ago

- "Mosler had a close relationship with the military and the survivability of their vaults had implications on nuclear deterrence"

/tangent That's the brand of safe Los Alamos used to store nuclear secrets during the Manhattan Project, which Richard Feynman practiced safe-cracking on,

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/cs588/safecracker.pdf (excerpt from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!")

defrost2• 2 years ago

For context:

    The United States conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests (by official count) between 1945 and 1992, including 216 atmospheric, underwater, and space tests.

a good number of these were within USofA, in Nevada, and several drifted fallout across US population centres.

"Nearly bombed Nevada" is a small claim next to "actually bombed Nevada" .. or "detonated an atmospheric bomb and used it as a backdrop for a showgirl" (1953)

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/05/18/friday-image-the-...

fredsmith219• 2 years ago

I love the fact that the details of the photo were provided by a Russian. Are their archives of our nuclear tests better than ours?

defrost2• 2 years ago

That'd be an "Ask Alex" (nuclear weapons historian and blog author).

Hard to say, as an Australian I've managed in the past to provide some fresh details about tests back to US sources, it's certainly possible for outsiders to have a niche special subject.

It's easy to imagine Russian sleepers in the US tasked with cataloging anything and everything nuclear related .. and a whole lot more as a smoke screen. That'd make for a hoarder scale archive of newspaper clippings and a family versed in playing Trivial Pursuit on dates and descriptions.

Then again it may just be an expatriate Siberian obsessed with warm weather and bare legs.

thaumasiotes• 2 years ago

Are their archives of our nuclear tests better than ours?

Their archives don't have to be better for them to be more willing to publicize the information.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos• 2 years ago

Nobel laureates do a lot of bombing upholding the truest legacy of Alfred.

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

For context: Alfred Nobel, who created the Nobel Prize, is the inventor of dynamite (earth shattering kaboom!) which ultimately funded the Prize.

ojbyrne• 2 years ago

If you’re ever in Vegas it’s worth visiting the National Atomic Museum: https://www.atomicmuseum.vegas/

dreamcompiler• 2 years ago

There are also atomic museums in Albuquerque [0] and Los Alamos [1]. All three are pretty great, and each has a slightly different focus. Las Vegas is focused on testing and Los Alamos on history. Albuquerque is the biggest and it covers everything and has nice outdoor static displays.

[0] https://www.nuclearmuseum.org/

[1] https://about.lanl.gov/bradbury/

UncleEntity• 2 years ago

I find it interesting that his justification for working with South Africa was "science transcended politics" when I can only imagine it was common knowledge during that time that "science doesn't transcend human rights" as the international community established through the trials of the Nazi scientists who experimented on human subjects.

I've had people argue with me on this very site that the results from the Nazi experiments should be allowed to be used for reasons.

Not that I'm accusing anyone of anything but I think he would have shared the same opinion regarding the treatment of the Jewish people and the general consensus that came out of it post-WWII.

rl3• 2 years ago

The neutrino-research community has mushroomed over the decades, ...

I couldn't help but chuckle.

olliej• 2 years ago

I thought the US bombed Nevada a lot?

arethuza• 2 years ago

Also the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_nuclear_testing_in_the...

Frederick Reines – The singing UCI Nobel Laureate who nearly bombed Nevada

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