From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: A nuclear question...
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 03:51:34 GMT

This topic came up only about a month ago in alt.folklore.science,
together with discussion of other stories told about the Trinity test
(the first nuclear bomb test).  I repost here the article that I
posted there then.  The quoted text at the beginning is from articles
then recent in alt.folklore.science.

	#	#	#	#	#	#	#	#

> > Some other UL's I've heard concerning Trinity: The scientists were
> > betting on whether the explosion would destroy the world, or just New
> > Mexico. During the blast, Oppenheimer dropped a handful of shredded paper
> > and, by observing how the shock wave blew them as they fell, accurately
> > calculated the energy released by the explosion.
> 
> I think it was Fermi who did the paper bit.

It was, but it was only intended to give a rough estimate.  The rough
estimate was 10 kilotons (TNT equivalent); more accurate measurements
of the debris later yielded a figure of 18.6 kilotons.

The issue of igniting a nuclear reaction in the atmosphere has been
discussed fairly adequately here, but it was taken seriously for
somewhat longer than you might think from the articles posted.
According to "Lawrence and Oppenheimer" by Nuel Pharr Davis (Simon
& Schuster, 1968), it first arose in the summer of 1942, when Robert
Oppenheimer had an extended series of discussions with several other
physicists at Berkeley.

Some time into the meetings, Edward Teller said that weeks earlier he
had been talking with Enrico Fermi about the temperature reached in a
fission blast, and he had come to realize the possibility of what we
now call a hydrogen bomb, with potentially unlimited explosive power
since any amount of deuterium could be used.  He then did the temperature
calculation on the blackboard, pointing out that it was sufficient to
"ignite" deuterium fusion.

| Oppenheimer stared at the blackboard in wild surprise, and the other
| faces in the room, including Teller's, successively caught the same
| look.  The heat buildup Teller had calculated was enough not only to
| maintain the deuterium reaction but also another between its reaction
| products and nitrogen.  ...  Teller had correctly calculated the
| heat production of a fission bomb; Oppenheimer saw it, with or without
| a deuterium wrapper, setting afire the atmosphere of the entire planet,
| and no one at the conference could prove he was wrong.

Oppenheimer telephoned Arthur Compton, who turned out to be on vacation
at a cottage in Michigan.  He couldn't speak freely on the phone, nor
was he allowed to fly, so he had to visit him by train.  Compton agreed
that the project must be killed unless atmospheric ignition could be
definitely ruled out.  But during his 4 days on the train he had time
to do some calculations of his own, as did the other physicists in the
group.  When the meeting reconvened, Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe agreed
that, while Teller had correctly calculated the heat production, he
had "overlooked certain aspects of heat dissipation".  It was now not
even certain that deuterium fusion would work, but that was for the
future anyway; the atmosphere was safe.

Well, probably.

| On this point Teller, who was there, takes a different view from
| Compton, who was not.  "We made absolutely certain--I was more deeply
| involved in this than anyone else--that no such catastrophe could
| occur", Teller says.  Compton, on the other hand, told Pearl Buck
| that the physicists hemmed and hawed a long time.  Then on his orders,
| they computed a three-in-a-million chance, which he felt was low enough
| to be worth taking.
|
| The discrepancy between the two versions probably arises from the
| fact that certainty is a state of mind based on not having to depend
| on someone else's calculations.  Allison, who was not there either,
| sided with Compton.  "It was by no means certain", he said.  "Earth
| I never had any questions about.  I wasn't quite sure about the
| nitrogen in the air.  I knew the doubts continued still in 1945.
| At the Metallurgical Laboratory we weren't supposed to tell the
| younger people.  They kept making the discovery for themselves and
| coming to warn us."

Elsewhere, maybe in Feyman's memoirs, I believe I have seen the three-in-
a-million probability described the estimated probability that something
was wrong with the calculations that showed that atmospheric ignition
was definitely impossible.

Fermi did indeed call for bets, on the day before the test blast,
"against first the destruction of all human life and second just
that of human life in New Mexico".  It is not recorded that anyone
accepted the bet, but according to Davis, "A good many of the senior
physicists present felt that Fermi was not merely joking."

There was also a genuine betting pool on the yield of the blast;
some 100 senior physicists each put in a dollar.  Isidor Rabi won
with a bet of 18 kilotons (about 90% of the theoretical yield) --
because he had arrived late and all lower bets had been taken.


In another article in this thread, which has already expired here,
someone talks about the test blast being delayed for "several hours"
because of a telephone operator being asleep.  This story *also* involves
Enrico Fermi; it appeared in comp.dcom.telecom, aka the Telecom Digest,
a couple of years ago.  When I dug it up from the Telecom Archives,
I suggested to the moderator that it deserved a bit more prominence,
and he reposted it.  Unfortunately, I then turned to the appropriate
section of Rhodes's book, and the story promptly fell apart.  Here
is the repost from comp.dcom.telecom, followed by the "rebuttal" which
I have just submitted to the newsgroup.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 From: TELECOM Moderator (telecom@eecs.nwu.edu)
 Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
 Subject: A Bad Time to Fall Asleep
 Message-ID: <telecom12.667.6@eecs.nwu.edu>
 Organization: TELECOM Digest
 X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 667, Message 6 of 6
 
 The article below is reprinted from the TELECOM Digest, Volume 10,
 Issue 12, Thursday, January 4, 1990. With the passing of two and a
 half years, there are many readers who did not see it. My thanks to
 Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) for suggesting this be reprinted.  
 
 PAT
  
    Date: Thu, 4 Jan 90 0:31:10 CST
    From: TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu>
    Subject: A Bad Time to Fall Asleep
 
 
 There were simpler times in the history of telephony, and simpler
 problems to deal with.
 
 During the several years I lived in the Hyde Park neighorhood on the
 south side of Chicago during the 1960's, my favorite neighbor was
 Lauri Fermi, widow of Enrico Fermi, known for his work on the Atomic
 Bomb.  Mrs. Fermi and I lived in the same apartment building on East
 56th Street, directly across the street from the Museum of Science and
 Industry, and we chatted and dined together frequently.
 
 In the fall of 1965, on the occassion of the twentieth anniversary of
 the completion and first testing of the bomb, Mrs. Fermi told a
 fascinating story of that summer day, twenty years earlier. Her
 comments were tape-recorded, and are transcribed below:
 
 "The testing was of course kept closely under wraps, you know, the
 government was awfully sensitive about it. All the papers were giving
 reports that a monster-like weapon was in the final testing stages,
 but some of the newspaper accounts were ridiculous. Enrico was given
 his orders only two days earlier as to exactly where we were to be
 stationed in the test zone area. Even the local people in New Mexico
 were told as little as possible; I think the governor and some state
 officials were told, and sworn to secrecy.
 
 "In Alamogordo, we checked into the hotel then drove out to where
 Enrico had been assigned. It was set up that the scientists were
 deployed over about a two hundred square mile area; we were about
 fifteen miles from the target.
 
 "The test was set for 4:30 AM the next morning, so we returned to the
 hotel and went to bed early. We got up at 3 the next morning and drove
 out to the location, since it took about an hour to set up the test
 gear Enrico would use ... I suppose it was about 4:15, when a fierce
 rain storm developed. It lasted only five or ten minutes, but was
 quite a downpour, and Enrico remarked he hoped nothing would go wrong
 with the test because of it.
 
 "Well, the time came and went, everything was quiet, no bomb, nothing.
 About 4:45, Enrico decided we had better return to town and see what
 was what, and we drove back. He wanted to make a phone call and see if
 the test had been cancelled or not, and the only place open in town at
 that time of night was the hotel where we had stayed. There was a
 payphone in the lobby, and Enrico went in the booth, but he didn't get
 anywhere. I heard him flashing the hook and swearing softly, then he
 came out and said he could not get the operator. (Alamogordo had
 manual service at that time, just a small switchboard.)
 
 "We got in the car, and Enrico had me drive while he leaned out the
 window and kept looking overhead at the phone wires. He'd have me turn
 down one street, then turn back up another street, and finally he said
 pull the car over and stop.
 
 "Where we stopped was in front of a house on one of the residential
 streets there, but what looked odd to me was on the side of the house,
 there were hundreds of wires converging, coming in from a dozen
 telephone poles which all seemed to meet in the back yard or on the
 side of the house. And all these wires came down out of the sky you
 might say, and went in the side of the house in a big bundle.
 
 "The front porch light was burning, and when we went up on the front
 porch, the front door was open, but the screen door was latched from
 the inside. A radio was playing music very softly, and the room was
 rather dim with just a single light burning. A switchboard sat on one
 side of the room, and the signal lights on it were flashing off and on
 like Christmas tree lights. Over by the other corner was a sofa, and
 a woman was laying on the sofa, obviously sound asleep. This was right 
 about five o'clock, I guess, or a few minutes after. 
 
 "Enrico banged on the screen door a few times, then kicked it once or
 twice with his foot. All of a sudden, the lady woke up; she looked
 over at us very startled, standing at the door; she looked over at the
 switchboard; looked back at us; jumped up and rushed over to the board
 and sat down, pausing long enough to light a cigarette and she started
 frantically answering all the flashing signals.
 
 "We got back in the car, and drove out to where we had been before. We
 were there about five minutes, and the test was conducted. Everything
 the poets have said about the brilliance and beauty of that first
 explosion was true.... later, we got together with the others who had
 been assigned there and found out that it wasn't the rain that delayed
 things; it was that woman asleep; you see, the main people responsible
 were linked by phones through Alamogordo; they had to coordinate what
 they were doing and sychronize their work. All of them got the same
 thing on the phone we got: no answer from the operator for 45 minutes!
 
 "Really, I can't blame the lady much. The whole summer of 1945 was
 just horrid. When we arrived the day before, the temperature was over
 a hundred; the poor lady probably couldn't sleep at all that day from
 the heat, and still had to go to work that night exhausted. Then the
 rain cooled things off twenty degrees in fifteen minutes; that sofa
 was just too tempting for her; and probably every other night she only
 got two or three calls in the whole eight hour shift....
 
 "No one ever said anything to her or the woman who owned the phone
 exchange there, so I suspect to this day, twenty years later, she
 doesn't realize she was responsible for causing the first atomic bomb
 explosion in the world to be delayed for a little over an hour ... but
 as I think back now, probably someone should have told her ahead of
 time about that very special morning, and sworn her to secrecy until
 the test was completed.
 
 "When I was there in town two weeks ago for the (twentieth
 anniversary) reunion, just from curiosity I went past that house; it
 took me awhile to remember where it was. No wires anywhere like
 before; and I asked someone there if the phone exchange was there. He
 told me the 'telephone lady' had been gone for years; Bell or someone
 had bought it and moved it to a building in the downtown area."
 
 ===================== End of Transcription =======================
 
 And that was Laura Fermi talking about the summer of '45 in the desert
 of New Mexico, in the fall of '65 at a dinner.
 
 
 Patrick Townson
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
 Subject: Re: A Bad Time to Fall Asleep
 
 Our moderator writes:
 >  My thanks to Mark Brader (msb@sq.com) for suggesting this be reprinted.  
 
 You're welcome, Patrick, but I now wish I hadn't.  You see, a couple of
 hours after I sent that suggestion, I looked at the applicable section
 of Richard Rhodes's superb book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Simon
 & Schuster, 1986, ISBN 0-671-44133-7).  It implies, on pretty good
 evidence, that there is something wrong with Mrs. Fermi's story.
 
 Let me summarize the timetable:
 
 >  "The test was set for 4:30 AM the next morning, so we returned to the
 >  hotel and went to bed early. We got up at 3 the next morning and drove
 >  out to the location ...
 
 The chronology that she gives after that is:
 
 4:45... they return to town to telephone, but can't get the operator.
 5:00 or just after... Fermi finds and wakes up the operator.
 They are back at their observation point 5 minutes before the explosion.
 
 >  .... later, we got together with the others who had
 >  been assigned there and found out that it wasn't the rain that delayed
 >  things; it was that woman asleep; you see, the main people responsible
 >  were linked by phones through Alamogordo; they had to coordinate what
 >  they were doing and sychronize their work. All of them got the same
 >  thing on the phone we got: no answer from the operator for 45 minutes!
 
 So this would imply that the operator's nap started at about 4:15, if
 not earlier.
 
 Okay, now to Rhodes.  On page 664 of my copy:
 
 #  [Robert] Oppenheimer, [Gen. Leslie] Groves, [Kenneth] Bainbridge,
 #  [Gen. Thomas] Farrell, [Richard] Tolman and an Army meteorologist met
 #  with [the meteorologist for the test, Jack] Hubbard at McDonald Ranch
 #  at four that afternoon [the day before the test] to consider the
 #  weather.  ...  They decided to wait and see.  They had scheduled
 #  a last weather conference for the next morning at 0200 hours;
 #  they would make up their minds then.  The shot was set for 0400
 #  and they let that time stand.
 
 As a source for at least part of this paragraph, Rhodes cites "The Day
 the Sun Rose Twice" by Ferenc Morton Szasz (Univ. of N.M. Press, 1984).
 
 Now on page 666:
 
 #  Thunderstorms began lashing the Jornada [del Muerto] at about 0200
 #  hours ...  Winds gusted to thirty miles an hour.  Hubbard hung
 #  on at Zero for last-minute readings--only misting drizzle had yet
 #  reached the tower area--and arrived eight minutes late for the
 #  0200 weather conference at Base Camp, to find Oppenheimer waiting
 #  for him outside the weather center there.  Hubbard told him they
 #  would have to scrub 0400 but should be able to shoot between
 #  0500 and 0600.  Oppenheimer looked relieved.
 #
 #  Inside they found an agitated Groves waiting with his advisors.
 #  "What the hell is wrong with the weather?" the general greeted
 #  his forecaster.  ...  Groves demanded to know when the storm would
 #  pass.  Hubbard explained its dynamics: a tropical air mass, night
 #  rain.  Afternoon thunderstorms took their energy from the heating of
 #  the earth and collapsed at sunset; this one, contrariwise, would
 #  collapse at dawn.  Groves growled that he wanted a specific time,
 #  not an explanation.  I'm giving you both, Hubbard rejoined.  ...
 #
 #  Oppenheimer applied himself to soothe his bulky comrade.  Hubbard
 #  was the best man around, he insisted, and they ought to trust his
 #  forecast.  The others at the meeting--Tolman and two army meteor-
 #  ologists, one more than before--agreed.  Groves relented.  "You'd
 #  better be right on this", he threatened Hubbard, "or I will hang
 #  you."  He ordered the meteorologist to sign his forecast and set
 #  the shot for 0530.  Then he went off to roust the governor of New
 #  Mexico out of bed to the telephone to warn him he might have to
 #  declare martial law.
 
 For all of this material, Rhodes again cites Szasz, but he notes that
 Szasz in turn cites Hubbard's *contemporary* personal journal.  This
 is pretty solid evidence, unless Hubbard had some reason to falsify it.
 The signed forecast would be even better evidence: has anyone seen it
 or seen it reproduced somewhere?  According to Rhodes, Hubbard gave it
 to Bainbridge at "about 0508", following which the master switches were
 unlocked and the bomb fired with a 20-minute delay.
 
 There is further evidence that the telephones were not all down during
 the period that Mrs. Fermi mentions.  From page 667 of Rhodes:
 
 #  The meteorologist prepared his final forecast at S-10000 [the command
 #  center, 10000 yards south of Zero].  He called Bainbridge at 0440.
 #  "Hubbard gave me a complete weather report", the Trinity director
 #  recalls, "and a prediction that at 5:30 am the weather would be
 #  possible but not ideal.  ...  I called Oppenheimer and General
 #  Farrell to get their agreement that 5:30 would be T = 0."  Hubbard,
 #  Bainbridge, Oppenheimer and Farrell each had veto power over the shot.
 #  They all agreed.
 
 Rhodes cites a different source for this: "All in our Time" by Jane
 Wilson (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1975).
 
 
 There is a further problem with Mrs. Fermi's story, which is this:
 the Trinity test site is 60 miles from Alamogordo!  From her account
 it seems to be at most a 25-minute drive from the telephone exchange
 to the observing point, which she says is 15 miles from the site.
 (Unfortunately, while Rhodes mentions something about what Fermi did
 during the test, he doesn't mention where he did it.)
 
 I am left with three possible interpretations.  One is that Mrs. Fermi's
 story simply never happened.  A second is that it happened exactly as
 she said, except that after 20 years she got some of the times wrong,
 while Hubbard participated in a cover-up, and Wilson's source was also
 misleading.
 
 And the third, which I think most likely, is that Fermi's drive into
 town did happen, but the operator's nap did not really affect the timing
 of the test.  In this interpretation, not all the telephones for everyone
 went through that operator; perhaps it was only the lines between the
 test site and the hotels where the scientists were staying, say.  (Also,
 maybe the operator was not in Alamogordo but in a smaller town closer to
 the site, such as Tularosa or Carrizozo.)  Maybe what someone really said
 was that they had been afraid that the test would have to be cancelled
 because certain people couldn't be telephoned, and then it was all right.
 
 I dunno.  I'd like to believe the original story.  But the evidence...
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com
	"But even though they probably certainly know that you probably
	 wouldn't, they don't certainly know that although you probably
	 wouldn't there's no probability that you certainly would."
	-- Sir Humphrey Appleby ("Yes, Prime Minister") on nuclear deterrence

Original text in this article is in the public domain.