The details on their presentation are quite funi.e., the little slides and drawings.
Russia tested its first nuke just four years later.
Nuclear science was a closely guarded and well-kept secret.
A physicist labors to build a DIY nuclear weapon in a cartoon from a newly declassified Cold War era document.Credit: National Security Archive
The detonation of the first atomic bomb took an incredible amount of time, resources, and secrecy.
Every subsequent countrys development was a little easier.
The plan was for the experiment to end after a year, but they gave them three.
Credit: National Security Archive
This turned out to be correct.
During the course of the experiment, China detonated its first nuclear weapon.
India and Pakistan followed a decade later.
The documents noted that it was remarkable what three dedicated physicists with time and knowledge could accomplish.
Wellerstein was happy to read the documents but wondered why so much of the new one was still classified.
How many pathways are there to the same results?
How much does an open source approach privilege one pathway or another?
This kind of thing is missing because of the redactions, unfortunately.
Which, again, feels fairly silly given the entire point of the exercise.
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