The Road to Trinity: Seventy-five years ago, Los Alamos scientists detonated the world’s first nuclear explosion
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
With a brilliant hot flash and a loud boom, the giant mushroom cloud with its fiery core filled the predawn sky above the New Mexico desert. The nuclear age had begun. It was 75 years ago on July 16, 1945, that Los Alamos scientists changed the world with the successful detonation of “the Gadget” – the device created to test the Fat Man implosion-type plutonium weapon before it was taken into combat. However, the road to Trinity, as the test was named by J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is thought to have been inspired by a line in a John Donne poem, was a difficult one.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- 89233218CNA000001
- OSTI ID:
- 1635508
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--20-24683
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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