[aprssig] OT APRS: A Date in History...
aa3jy at winlink.org
aa3jy at winlink.org
Sat Jul 16 10:12:07 EDT 2005
At 5:29:45 (Mountain War Time) on July 16, 1945, in a white blaze that stretched
from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico to the still-dark
skies, "The Gadget" ushered in the Atomic Age. The light of the
explosion then turned orange as the atomic fireball began shooting upwards at
360 feet per second, reddening and pulsing as it cooled. The characteristic
mushroom cloud of radioactive vapor materialized at 30,000 feet. Beneath the
cloud, all that remained of the soil at the blast site were fragments of jade
green radioactive glass created by the heat of the reaction.
The brilliant light from the detonation pierced the early morning skies with
such intensity that residents from a faraway neighboring community would swear
that the sun came up twice that day. Even more astonishing is that a blind girl
saw the flash 120 miles away.
Upon witnessing the explosion, its creators had mixed reactions. Isidor Rabi
felt that the equilibrium in nature had been upset -- as if humankind had become
a threat to the world it inhabited. J. Robert Oppenheimer, though ecstatic about
the success of the project, quoted a remembered fragment from the Bhagavad Gita.
"I am become Death," he said, "the destroyer of worlds." Ken
Bainbridge, the test director, told Oppenheimer, "Now we're all sons of
bitches."
Clay AA3JY
Kimberton,Pa.
(Former Minuteman Missile Combat Crew Commander @ F01 Mud Butte, SD.)
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