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The Man Who Gave us the Power To Destroy Ourselves (Oppenheimer) — Transcript

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0:00J. Robert Oppenheimer
0:01might be the most important physicist
0:03to have ever lived.
0:05He never won a Nobel Prize,
0:07but he changed the world more than most Nobel Prize winners.
0:11Under his leadership,
0:12the best physicists of the 20th century
0:15built the atomic bomb
0:17forever changing the course of history.
0:20- If there is another world war,
0:22this civilization may go under.
0:26- [Derek] He has affected every war waged
0:28and every peace settled since the end of World War ii.
0:32He also created a way for humanity to destroy itself.
0:37- Now I am become death,
0:39the destroyer of worlds.
0:42- [Derek] This video is about how to build an atomic bomb,
0:45the life of Oppenheimer,
0:46and why serious scientists were worried about the explosion
0:50setting fire to the atmosphere,
0:52ending all life on earth.
0:56Part of this video is brought to you by Wren.
1:01When J. Robert Oppenheimer was 21,
1:04he placed an apple laced with toxic chemicals
1:07on the desk of his physics tutor.
1:09The tutor, Patrick Blackett,
1:11was an experimentalist and he had hounded Robert
1:14to do more of what he thought
1:15Robert wasn't very good at, experimental work.
1:18Oppenheimer had already been spending his days in a corner
1:21of JJ Thompson's basement laboratory,
1:24attempting to make thin films of beryllium,
1:26which were used to study electrons.
1:28But Oppenheimer was clumsy and not good at this work.
1:33He was soon avoiding his duties in the lab,
1:36spending his time listening to lectures
1:38and reading physics journals.
1:39It was 1925 and the 21 year old Oppenheimer was becoming
1:43fascinated by the new field of quantum mechanics.
1:47Despite being surrounded by brilliant physicists
1:50like Rutherford and Chadwick,
1:52Oppenheimer was deeply unhappy.
1:55He wrote, "I'm having a pretty bad time.
1:58The lab work is a terrible bore,
2:00and I'm so bad at it that it's impossible to feel
2:03that I'm learning anything."
2:04A friend walked in on him,
2:06lying on the floor of his room,
2:07which he called "A miserable hole",
2:10groaning and rolling from side to side in emotional anguish.
2:13It was in this state that Robert
2:16attempted to poison Blackett.
2:19The specifics are lost to history.
2:21There are conflicting reports if Oppenheimer used cyanide
2:23or something he found in the lab,
2:26which would've just made Blackett sick.
2:28This story sounds unbelievable,
2:30but Oppenheimer himself confirmed it.
2:33Luckily, Blackett did not eat the apple,
2:36but the attempted poisoning became known
2:39to the Cambridge University authorities.
2:41Robert's parents were visiting their son
2:43from the US at the time,
2:44and Julius Oppenheimer successfully lobbied Cambridge
2:48not to press criminal charges. Due to his family's wealth,
2:51Robert wasn't even expelled from Cambridge
2:53on the condition that he had periodic counseling sessions
2:56with a psychiatrist in London.
2:59(train horn blaring)
3:01In the summer of 1926,
3:02Robert traveled to the University of Göttingen.
3:05The chairman of the department was Max Born,
3:08who just two years earlier had coined the term,
3:11"Quantum Mechanics".
3:13Born was reportedly a thoughtful and gentle teacher
3:16and had nurtured the work of Werner Heisenberg,
3:18Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Fermi,
3:21and Eugene Wigner,
3:22basically the who's who of quantum mechanics.
3:24The class that Oppenheimer was in was also extraordinary,
3:28including luminaries like Paul Dirac and John Von Neumann,
3:32where the academic culture at Cambridge focused on
3:34experimental physics.
3:36Göttingen was all about theoretical physics,
3:38and under Max Born's mentorship,
3:41Oppenheimer thrived.
3:42His mental health improved,
3:44and he found a community of people who were
3:46as obsessed with physics as he was.
3:49On November 14th, 1926,
3:52Robert wrote to Frank, his younger brother,
3:54"You would like Göttingen.
3:56I find the work hard, thank God,
3:58and almost pleasant."
4:00Robert was thriving and his talent was being recognized.
4:04Born later wrote,
4:05"He was a man of great talent and he was conscious
4:08of his superiority in a way which was embarrassing
4:11and led to trouble."
4:13When Oppenheimer was 23,
4:14he graduated with his PhD in physics.
4:17He wrote his thesis in German on the quantum theory
4:20of continuous spectra.
4:22All in all,
4:23he published more than a dozen papers
4:24in the two years he was at Göttingen.
4:26Many of them expanded upon the work of Werner Heisenberg,
4:30who was just three years older than Oppenheimer.
4:33The two eventually met in 1927,
4:36the same year Heisenberg published his groundbreaking paper
4:39on the Quantum uncertainty principle.
4:41By all accounts,
4:42the pair got along well.
4:44There was no way to know that just 15 years later,
4:47they would be deadly rivals attempting to build
4:50the first nuclear bomb.
4:52Oppenheimer for the USA
4:54and Heisenberg for Nazi Germany.
4:57At the time,
4:58it was thought that getting significant amounts of energy
5:01out of radioactive atoms was impossible.
5:04Ever since the discovery of radioactivity
5:07by Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie,
5:09and Pierre Curie in the late 1890s,
5:11it was known that radioactivity was a passive process.
5:15Unstable atoms would just decay at random,
5:17unpredictable times,
5:19and surely there was no way to control that.
5:23In 1933, Ernest Rutherford,
5:26Oppenheimer's old boss from Cambridge wrote that,
5:28"Anyone who expects a source of power
5:30from the transformations of these atoms
5:32is talking moonshine."
5:34That same year,
5:35Albert Einstein said,
5:36"That there is not the slightest indication
5:38that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.
5:40It would mean that the atom
5:42would have to be shattered at will."
5:46So how would you break an atomic nucleus?
5:49Well, you could take a proton
5:51and accelerate it through a large electric field
5:53and then smash it into a nucleus.
5:56This is exactly what John Cockcroft
5:58and Ernest Walton did in 1932.
6:00They accelerated protons into lithium nuclei,
6:04breaking them apart.
6:05The pair would later win a Nobel Prize for this work,
6:08but a proton is positively charged,
6:11so it's repelled by all nuclei,
6:14which are also positively charged.
6:16So to give them a hope of overcoming this barrier,
6:19Cockcroft and Walton had to use 250,000 volts
6:23to accelerate the protons.
6:25Even then, only about one in a billion protons
6:28actually hit and split a lithium nucleus,
6:31so this would not be an effective way to get energy.
6:36But there is another way.
6:39In 1932, the neutron was discovered
6:42this subatomic particle that's about 0.1%
6:46heavier than a proton,
6:47and it has no electric charge,
6:49so a neutron would not be repelled from a nucleus.
6:53And in 1933,
6:55Leo Szilard was thinking about how you could use neutrons
6:58to split nuclei.
7:00"It suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element
7:03which is split by neutrons and which would emit two neutrons
7:07when it absorbed one neutron,
7:09such an element if assembled sufficiently large mass,
7:12could sustain a nuclear chain reaction."
7:16But the thing is,
7:17nobody knew if there was an element
7:19that had a kind of nucleus that would do that.
7:24On the 29th of January, 1939,
7:26Louise Alvarez, a promising young physicist,
7:28was getting a haircut while reading
7:30"The San Francisco Chronicle",
7:32and suddenly he got outta the chair
7:34halfway through the haircut and ran to Oppenheimer's office.
7:38Alvarez read an article about how two German chemists,
7:41Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann
7:43had successfully split an atom of uranium
7:46by bombarding it with neutrons.
7:48Oppenheimer was not impressed.
7:50"That's impossible."
7:52He reportedly told the Young Alvarez
7:54proceeding to mathematically prove on his blackboard
7:56why fission could never be achieved.
8:00But the next day,
8:02Alvarez had repeated the experiment
8:04and invited Oppenheimer to see it.
8:06Alvarez later recalled that,
8:08"In less than 15 minutes,
8:09he not only agreed that the reaction was authentic,
8:12but also speculated that in the process,
8:14extra neutrons would boil off.
8:17That could be used to split more uranium atoms
8:19and thereby generate power or make bombs."
8:23When a single atom of uranium-235 splits apart,
8:27it loses a little bit of mass,
8:29which is released as energy.
8:31Following Einstein's mass energy equivalence.
8:33That is a tiny amount of energy,
8:36about 20 times less than the amount required
8:39to raise a grain of sand,
8:40the thickness of a piece of paper.
8:43But atoms are also tiny.
8:45In a one kilogram lump of uranium,
8:47there are about a trillion, trillion atoms,
8:50so the energy quickly adds up.
8:53Soon, almost everyone was convinced in August of 1939,
8:57Einstein, who just six years earlier
9:00believed that nuclear bombs were impossible,
9:02signed his name to a letter
9:03addressed to President Franklin Roosevelt.
9:05The letter actually written by Szilard warned Roosevelt
9:09of the possibility of nuclear weapons.
9:11It also pointed out that Germany had access to uranium
9:14from the mines in Czechoslovakia,
9:16which was recently taken over by the Nazis.
9:19Roosevelt began an informal uranium committee
9:22to discuss this topic,
9:24but then for two years, nothing happened.
9:28In 1941, Roosevelt upgraded the informal
9:31uranium committee to the S-1 committee,
9:34which would report directly to the White House.
9:37The explicit goal was to develop an atomic bomb,
9:40and in May, 1942,
9:42Oppenheimer was hired onto the committee
9:45to be the coordinator of rapid rupture.
9:48So why was he selected?
9:51(dramatic music)
9:54Well, after completing his PhD,
9:56Oppenheimer became a physics professor,
9:58first at UC Berkeley, and then at Caltech,
10:01the brilliance he had shown
10:03under Max Born's tutelage didn't fade.
10:05Indeed, it blossomed into a remarkable
10:07but strange physics career.
10:10In the 15 years after finishing his PhD,
10:13Oppenheimer made important contributions to everything from
10:16nuclear physics to quantum field theory,
10:18and even astrophysics.
10:20He had a number of Nobel Prize winning ideas.
10:22One of his students, Willis Lamb,
10:24became a Nobel laureate,
10:26but Oppenheimer himself was nominated three times,
10:29but never actually won the Nobel Prize.
10:33When asked why he thought that Oppenheimer
10:35never won the Nobel Prize,
10:36Murray Gell-Mann said that,
10:38"He didn't have Sitzfleisch"
10:41A German word that translates to sitting flesh.
10:44The ability to sit down in a chair for a long time
10:47and do the hard work.
10:48"He never wrote a long paper or did a long calculation.
10:52He didn't have the patience for that."
10:54Wolfgang Pauli also said,
10:56"His ideas are very good,
10:58but his calculations are always wrong."
11:03But Oppenheimer was amazing with people.
11:06He was a natural and charismatic leader,
11:09and this combination,
11:10his charisma and his ability to generate great ideas
11:13would serve him well in the next phase of his life.
11:16(upbeat music)
11:21On the 18th of September, 1942,
11:23general Leslie Groves was put in charge
11:26of the Manhattan Project.
11:27- I was responsible for the development of the atomic bomb.
11:31- [Derek] On day one, he ordered 1200 tons of uranium ore.
11:36The next day,
11:37he ordered to buy the Oak Ridge site
11:39where the ore would be refined.
11:41The next month in a surprising move,
11:43he chose Oppenheimer to be the science director
11:45of the soon to be established Los Alamos laboratory.
11:49Oppenheimer had just been selected to be the chief architect
11:52of the atomic bomb.
11:55The military establishment had concerns.
11:58Oppenheimer did not have a Nobel Prize,
12:01so would the scientists hired for the project,
12:03respect his opinion,
12:04and follow his leadership?
12:06Oppenheimer also had no prior administrative experience
12:09over a large project like this.
12:11Furthermore, he was a theoretical physicist,
12:14who according to Isidor Rabi,
12:16"Was a very impractical fellow.
12:18He didn't know anything about equipment."
12:21And then there was the problem
12:22of Oppenheimer's political stance.
12:24He had links to the Communist Party,
12:26including his wife, Catherine,
12:28who was a member of that party.
12:31But Groves was impressed by Oppenheimer.
12:34He valued his overwhelming ambition.
12:36He also knew that Oppenheimer's ability to understand
12:39problems not just in physics,
12:40but chemistry, engineering,
12:41and metallurgy would be invaluable.
12:44Groves thought that Oppenheimer was a "Real genius."
12:48Saying that why Oppenheimer knows about everything.
12:51"He can talk to you about anything you bring up.
12:54Well, not exactly.
12:55He doesn't know anything about sports."
12:57The two men couldn't have been more different.
13:00Oppenheimer weighed half as much as Groves
13:02despite both of them being nearly six feet tall.
13:05Ideologically, Oppenheimer was a communist.
13:08Groves, a staunch conservative,
13:11but Groves was convinced that Oppenheimer
13:13would be the person that would build the atomic bomb
13:15before the Nazis,
13:16and that was all that mattered.
13:19Isador Rabi later commented that,
13:21hiring Oppenheimer for this role was
13:24"A real stroke of genius
13:25on the part of General Groves,
13:26who was not generally considered to be a genius."
13:29The Manhattan Project needed a location.
13:32Somewhere isolated to keep the project secret
13:34safe from enemy attack.
13:36And while no one wanted to admit it,
13:38somewhere that was sparsely populated,
13:40just in case there was an accident,
13:44Oppenheimer proposed Los Alamos, New Mexico.
13:47He had fallen in love with the harsh desert in the mountains
13:49of New Mexico when he was in his twenties.
13:51In 1929, Oppenheimer wrote to a friend.
13:54"My two great loves are physics and New Mexico.
13:57It's a pity they can't be combined."
14:00But Oppenheimer had severely underestimated the logistical
14:03challenge ahead.
14:04(gentle music)
14:07In 1943, Oppenheimer estimated
14:10that he'd need about six scientists
14:13supported by a handful of engineers
14:15and technicians to make a bomb.
14:20He was off by two orders of magnitude.
14:24764 scientists would end up
14:26working for the Manhattan Project.
14:27302 of which would work at the Los Alamos site.
14:33Over 600,000 people in total were involved
14:36with the making of the atomic bomb.
14:40By this point, making the atom bomb didn't seem impossible.
14:43It seemed likely.
14:47On the 2nd of December, 1942,
14:49a team of physicists at the University of Chicago
14:52led by Enrico Fermi created the world's
14:55first artificial nuclear reactor Pile-1.
14:58It consisted of 45 tons of uranium and uranium oxide
15:02and 330 tons of graphite blocks.
15:05Horrifyingly enough.
15:06It was located under the stands of the football field.
15:10It generated about half a watt of power,
15:14and if you can make a nuclear power plant,
15:16you can make a bomb.
15:18The only real difference between the two
15:20is how many neutrons hit the next atom,
15:22causing it to split and release more neutrons.
15:25If on average that number is one,
15:27there will be a stable self-sustaining chain reaction,
15:30but it won't grow.
15:31If it's less than one,
15:33the reaction will die down,
15:35and if it's more than one,
15:36the reaction will grow.
15:38This is known as the multiplication factor, K.
15:42Nuclear reactions are similar to pandemics in this way.
15:48The simplest way to make a nuclear bomb
15:50is to get enough fissile material close together
15:53that it creates a runaway chain reaction.
15:55That amount is known as the critical mass.
15:58With uranium-235,
16:00you need about 52 kilograms.
16:02Forming a sphere with a diameter of 17 centimeters.
16:06If you use plutonium-239,
16:08the critical mass is much smaller,
16:10only around 10 kilograms,
16:12which would create a sphere only 10 centimeters wide.
16:16For the first few years,
16:17the scientists worked on a bomb with a gun type design.
16:20Inside a gun type bomb,
16:22you have two slabs of uranium-235,
16:24both of which are below the critical mass.
16:27Then using a conventional explosive like cordite,
16:31you rapidly fire one towards the other.
16:34So the combined mass is higher than the critical mass.
16:38When the uranium bullet is about 25 centimeters away,
16:41the nuclear chain reaction begins
16:44resulting in an atomic explosion.
16:47Despite the simple design,
16:49it is not very efficient.
16:51Only a small percentage of the uranium undergoes fission,
16:53so the total yield of the bomb is much smaller.
16:57You also run into some unexpected problems,
17:00like how do you make sure the uranium
17:01slides smoothly through the barrel?
17:04Well, you use oil to lubricate the barrel,
17:08but all the synthetic oils the scientists tried
17:10would dry up.
17:12In the end,
17:12the only oil they could find that would work
17:15was the oil from sperm whales.
17:20Only about 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium is U235,
17:25the fissile fuel for nuclear bombs.
17:28When U235 absorbs a neutron,
17:31it briefly becomes U236,
17:33and then it rips itself roughly in half
17:36and releases on average 2.4 neutrons per fission.
17:40But when you get uranium outta the ground,
17:42most of it is U238,
17:44which doesn't undergo fission.
17:46So to make a nuclear bomb,
17:48the scientists use gigantic mass spectrometers
17:51to separate out and concentrate the U235,
17:55and the resulting substance was uranium
17:57with a much higher concentration of U235.
18:01In other words, it was enriched.
18:04There was another option though.
18:06In early 1941,
18:08a new element was discovered or rather synthesized.
18:12When a neutron is absorbed by a nucleus of uranium-238,
18:15it turns into uranium-239.
18:18U239 is unstable,
18:20so it decays into Neptunium,
18:22which then becomes plutonium.
18:25There are three things that matter for this story.
18:28First is that plutonium-239
18:30is a great fuel for a nuclear bomb.
18:32It has a critical mass of only about 10 kilograms.
18:35Second, it is cheaper to make than to separate uranium-235
18:39and third, it reacts too quickly
18:42to be used in a gun type device.
18:44It would fizzle,
18:44meaning only a tiny fraction of the fuel
18:46would undergo fission.
18:49But there is a way to make a bomb using plutonium.
18:51Critical mass changes depending on the density
18:54of the material.
18:56Under normal pressure conditions,
18:57six kilograms of plutonium-239 won't explode.
19:02But if you compress it,
19:03the atoms get closer together and the chance of a stay
19:07neutron hitting the nucleus increases.
19:09So the higher the density, the lower the critical mass.
19:13So if you set off conventional explosives
19:16around a ball of plutonium,
19:18you can get it compressed enough
19:20to start a nuclear chain reaction.
19:22And this was the whole idea behind
19:25the implosion bomb design.
19:29There are a couple ways to cheat lowering the critical mass.
19:33For one thing,
19:34you surround the sphere with a material that reflects
19:36neutrons decreasing the amount of nuclear fuel
19:38you need to start a chain reaction.
19:41You can also have a neutron source,
19:43something that kick starts the chain reaction.
19:45For the first implosion bomb,
19:48scientists created a device called the urchin,
19:50which was a tiny pellet weighing just seven grams,
19:54and it would sit at the heart of the bomb.
19:57It was made of beryllium and polonium
19:59separated by a layer of nickel and gold.
20:02The idea was that when the explosives detonated,
20:05the shockwave would mix the beryllium and polonium together,
20:09and then the alpha particles from polonium
20:11would cause the beryllium to release a flood of neutrons,
20:15which would set off the nuclear chain reaction.
20:19At least that was the hope.
20:21An atomic bomb had never been made before.
20:23Oppenheimer and the rest of the scientists at Los Alamos
20:26needed to act quickly.
20:27It was already 1945,
20:29and Truman wanted to test the weapon
20:32before the start of the Potsdam conference.
20:34That's where Truman, Churchill,
20:36and Stalin would come together to plan the post-war piece.
20:40The conference began on the 17th of July.
20:43The earliest date that everything could be ready
20:46for the bomb was just one day earlier.
20:49So that is when the test was scheduled.
20:52It was Codenamed Trinity.
20:57The night before Oppenheimer was nervous.
21:00There were so many things that could go wrong.
21:03The last test firing of the explosives
21:06without the actual plutonium core was a failure.
21:10To calm himself,
21:11he recited a stanza from the Bhagavad Gita,
21:14the sacred Hindu poem.
21:16He had actually translated the Gita from the original
21:19Sanskrit in himself.
21:21In battle, in forest,
21:23at the precipice in the mountains,
21:25on the dark great sea,
21:28in the midst of javelins
21:29and arrows in sleep,
21:31in confusion, in the depths of shame,
21:34the good deeds a man has done before defend him.
21:41Perhaps more terrifying than the idea of the bomb
21:43not working was that it would work too well.
21:50Around 1942, Oppenheimer discussed with Arthur Compton
21:54a terrible possibility that a nuclear test
21:58could end the world.
21:59The worry was that the nuclear bomb
22:02would create temperatures so hot that fusion would occur.
22:08A tiny fraction of the atmosphere,
22:10just one part in 2 million is hydrogen gas.
22:14But the worry was that at high enough temperatures
22:16and pressures that hydrogen could fuse to together
22:20releasing energy,
22:21this energy would fuse more hydrogen.
22:23It could also break apart the hydrogen
22:26from water vapor causing that to fuse as well.
22:30That would release even more energy
22:31causing yet more fusion until the entirety
22:35of the Earth's atmosphere would become a giant fusion bomb.
22:40Recalling his conversations with Oppenheimer in 1959,
22:43Compton said, "Nor was this all that Oppenheimer feared.
22:47The nitrogen in the air is also unstable,
22:50though in less degree.
22:51Might not it, too, be set off by an
22:54atomic explosion in the atmosphere."
22:57Most of the scientists quickly realized
22:59how unlikely this scenario was,
23:01and they continued on with the project,
23:03so no one took the idea too seriously.
23:06But the thought of starting a fusion reaction with a fission
23:09weapon would become very important after the war.
23:13(dramatic music)
23:17The Trinity test was scheduled for 4:00 AM
23:20but it was delayed due to a storm.
23:23So at 5:29 and 21 seconds, the gadget,
23:27the world's first nuclear bomb detonated,
23:30the high explosive squeezed the core of plutonium inwards.
23:34The shockwave mixed the beryllium and polonium
23:37releasing a flood of neutrons.
23:40The urchin worked.
23:41It jump started the nuclear reaction,
23:44and now there was no way to stop it.
23:47Just six kilograms of plutonium created an explosion
23:51that was equivalent to nearly 25,000 tons of TNT.
23:55The New Mexico mountains were illuminated
23:57brighter than in daytime.
23:59The shockwave was felt from over 160 kilometers away.
24:04The mushroom cloud rose to 12 kilometers into the sky.
24:09It was so hot that the desert sand melted
24:12into a glassy mineral, now known as trinitite.
24:15Fortunately, the blast did not set fire to the atmosphere.
24:24On August 6th, 1945,
24:25the Boeing B29 Flying Fortress dropped little boy,
24:29a gun type nuclear bomb with 64 kilograms
24:33of enriched uranium.
24:34The nitro cellulose ignited pushing the slugs
24:37of uranium-235 together,
24:39tipping it over its critical mass.
24:41The blast from the explosion equivalent
24:44to 15,000 tons of TNT,
24:48killed nearly 70,000 people.
24:51Another 70,000 would die from burns and radiation poisoning
24:55in the following months.
24:57Three days later,
24:58an implosion type bomb, like the gadget,
25:01was dropped on Nagasaki
25:02killing an estimated 80,000 more people.
25:07More than 95% of the 225,000 people killed
25:12in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians.
25:15Most were women and children.
25:21In 1965, recalling the moments after the Trinity test,
25:25Oppenheimer said that he thought of another verse
25:28from the Ghita.
25:29- He knew the world would not be the same.
25:34Few people laughed,
25:38few people cried.
25:41Most people were silent.
25:45I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture,
25:49the (speaking foreign language).
25:54The Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince
26:00that he should do his duty
26:03and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says,
26:12'Now I am become death the destroyer of worlds.'
26:19I suppose we all thought that one way or another.
26:23- [Derek] After the war,
26:24Oppenheimer was a national hero.
26:26His portrait was on the cover of Time Magazine,
26:29and he became a household name.
26:32In 1947, he became the director
26:34of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton.
26:37He also became the chairman
26:39of the General Advisory Committee,
26:41where he became an advisor on nuclear weapons
26:43related issues.
26:45He used his position to argue for arms control.
26:50(dramatic music)
26:51In August, 1949,
26:52the Soviet Union tested their first atomic weapon,
27:00and the US military quickly decided
27:02that the best course of action
27:04was to develop a more powerful bomb.
27:06The hydrogen bomb,
27:08known as "The Super",
27:10Oppenheimer was against the development
27:13of The Super on ethical grounds
27:15and the worry that it would start an arms race.
27:18But Truman's administration pushed through,
27:21and three years later, Ivy Mike,
27:23the first hydrogen bomb was tested in the Marshall Islands.
27:27It had a yield of 10.4 megatons of TNT.
27:31That's 400 times more powerful than the Trinity test.
27:40A hydrogen bomb is actually three bombs in one,
27:44a conventional bomb, a fission bomb,
27:46and a fusion bomb.
27:48The conventional explosives trigger a fission reaction,
27:50which increases the temperature and pressure
27:53enough to fuse deuterium and tritium together,
27:56releasing a huge amount of energy.
28:00In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the Tsar Bomba,
28:04the most powerful explosion ever detonated.
28:07It was another five times more powerful than Ivy Mike
28:11around 2000 times more powerful than Trinity.
28:17This kind of arms race
28:17was exactly what Oppenheimer had feared,
28:21in part, due to his opposition to the hydrogen bomb.
28:23And due to his calls to avert a nuclear arms race,
28:26Oppenheimer was essentially put on trial
28:28to revoke his security clearance.
28:30He had been surveilled while he was working
28:32for the Manhattan Project,
28:33but that surveillance didn't stop after he left.
28:36Many of the wiretaps were illegal and warrantless.
28:40Oppenheimer was questioned about his ties
28:42to the Communist Party,
28:43including his affair with Gene Tatlock,
28:45a Communist party member
28:47while he was leading the Los Alamos lab.
28:49He was essentially accused of treason and espionage.
28:54In December, 1953,
28:56Oppenheimer had his security clearance suspended.
28:59His face now grim and in black and white
29:02was once again on the cover of time.
29:05His security hearings were international news.
29:09In 1964, German playwright Heinar Kipphardt
29:13wrote a play about Oppenheimer's life.
29:16Oppenheimer was sent a copy of this script,
29:19and he hated it so much that he threatened to sue.
29:22He especially despised the final scene where the character
29:25of Oppenheimer realizes the evil of his work.
29:29And I quote,
29:30"We have been doing the work of the devil."
29:33To Oppenheimer, it was always more complicated than that.
29:37- I think that it probably was assumed,
29:40it certainly was always assumed at Los Alamos
29:42that if the war were not over and not clearly
29:52to be brought to a conclusion by the diplomatic means
29:58this weapon would play a part.
30:01At the time, the alternative,
30:06the campaign of invasion was certainly much more terrible
30:10for everyone concerned.
30:13I think that Hiroshima was far more costly in life
30:21and suffering inhumane than it needed to have been,
30:27to have been an effective argument for ending the war.
30:33This is easy to say after the fact.
30:36- In 1965, he was asked about the recent proposal of talks
30:39with the Soviet Union to halt the proliferation
30:42of nuclear weapons,
30:43and his response was,
30:44"It should have been done the day after Trinity.
30:48Later that same year, he was diagnosed with throat cancer.
30:51He was a lifelong smoker,
30:53and he died on the 18th of February, 1967 aged 62.
31:05Advances in science and technology have given humans
31:07tremendous power to make the world better or worse,
31:12and nuclear war isn't the only thing we have to worry about.
31:15Human caused climate change poses a serious threat to
31:18ecosystems and the most vulnerable people around the world.
31:22As I record this, we are in the midst of a heat wave,
31:25and my folks up in Canada are suffering
31:27in the smoke from wildfires.
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