Join the World Science Festival Mailing List
The Long Shadow Of The Manhattan Project Part I: The Atom Bomb And Science
The price tag of the first nuclear weapon was a mere four years, 130,000 people, and $26 billion (in 2014 dollars). But what did the U.S. buy with those resources, other than the Fat Man and the Little Boy? A transformed world. Since the Manhattan Project folded in 1947, only a few other projects can arguably have said to truly match the scale and success of America’s drive to make a nuclear weapon. The Apollo program and the decoding of the human genome are two worth consideration—and both have a heritage that can be traced back to the Project itself. Was the Manhattan Project the greatest ad hoc scientific collaboration of all time? And more importantly, could we follow the Project’s model to tackle daunting modern super-problems like climate change?
Read More