The Trinity Test - 70 Years Ago on July 16th

I meant to get this post out 10 days ago because it still stands as the greatest scientific achievement of all time - The Trinity Test of the Manhattan Project.

Below is from Joel Achenbach's article in the Washington Post on July 15th, 2015

"Statues of two men, the founding fathers of Los Alamos, stand in the center of town outside the historic lodge where the scientists used to gather. One depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist tapped to lead the laboratory. The other shows Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, the Army’s commander for the Manhattan Project.

 

Scientists and workmen rig the world's first atomic bomb to hoist it in a 100-foot tower at the Trinity bomb test site in the desert near Alamagordo, N.M. in July 1945. (AP)

 

In 1942, they wanted to find a remote location for a secret laboratory. Oppenheimer loved the New Mexico desert and led Groves to Los Alamos, the site of a boys’ ranch. Los Alamos sits at an elevation of 7,300 feet on a finger mesa extending from mountains that frame an ancient caldera. The site was just 35 miles from Santa Fe but could be reached only by an unpaved, boulder-strewn road that repeatedly threatened to pitch cars and trucks into a chasm below."