Manhattan Project Conference in Los Alamos with J. Robert Oppenheimer (third in the second row, from left to Dir.) And Edward Teller (first in the front row)
An almost insignificant scene of Cristopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” movie tells the story of one of the most curious rivalries in the history of physics.
Did you see the movie “”? If so, it may or may not remember, in the middle of a complicated plot, a character called Edward Teller. In fact, the curious physics should know him as a “hydrogen pump father.”
He was a controversial individual, with many ideas (). Teller was a Hungarian physicist who moved to the US in the 1930s and worked with J. Robert Oppenheimer in the construction of the atomic bomb in the famous Manhattan Project.
In Christopher Nolan’s film, where much of the action takes place on the Alamosin New Mexico, where the studies of the atomic bomb coordinated by OPPENHEIMER were carried out, there are several scenes that show the divergence between the two physicists.
Designed to work on the calculations of an implosion pump, Teller was “obsessed” with the potential of a “super” thermonuclear bomb, which would eventually become hydrogen bombremembers a. Oppenheimer was so frustrated by Teller’s lack of cooperation in his project that he even told a friend: “God protects us from the external enemy and the internal Hungarians.”
Convinced that Oppenheimer was working to block the development of the H (which eventually developed in Los Alamos, even without the support of Oppenheimer), Teller told the FBI that “it would do anything possible” so that governmentwork would work. of oppenheimer ended.
Later, in 1954, nearly 10 years since the end of World War II, marked by the explosion of atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagazaki, Oppenheimer was the target of a security audience About the consequences of your work (it is about this episode that the final part of the movie is leaning).
This hearing ended with the loss of the “father of the atomic bomb” security authorization and ended the role of OPPENHEIMER in government and politics, considering it a threat to national security and breaking his position as a counselor in Washington’s power circles.
At the time, at the behest of a longtime enemy of Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss, who had always suspected the director of the Los Alamos project for believing in his calls to communism, Teller witnessed against the creator of the atomic bomb.
In the movie, you can see, at the end of the audience, the Bomb creator H address OPPENHEIMER and say “lament.”
Almost a decade later, in 1963 (less than two weeks after the murder of John F. Kennedy), Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, visited the White House, recalls a. At that time, the physique was no longer renegade socially, and his work was recognized throughout the country as a public service.
President Lyndon B. Johnson attributed, on this occasion, OPPENHEIMER Enrico Fermi Prize of the atomic Energy Commission. In the room was Edward Teller, considered by many to be a traitor of the Manhattan project.
They write Kai Bird her Martin J. She’s my me American Prometheus, work that served as the basis of Nolan’s film, “everyone watched with a growing tension confrontation between the two men. With his wife Kitty next to him, closed, Oppenheimer smiled and squeezed Teller’s hand. ”
The episode is almost narrated by Albert Einstein, in a two -scenes overlap: the White House and one in which Oppenheimer talks to the father of relativity theory. “Now it’s your turn to deal with the consequences of your feat,” Einstein says to the physicist. “
And that’s when we see the handshake between Oppenheimer and Teller. But there is a detail in the brief scene: the physicist woman, Kitty, refuses to forgive the Hungarian, and does not squeeze her hand.
Faced with the rejection, Teller was disgusted. According to the investigation carried out by the authors of the work, the “father of the hydrogen bomb” was so sad and With a sense of guilt so great that he went home to cry.
Edward Teller is a symbol of atomic pump rejection and all the obstacles that Oppenheimer found in Los Alamos. But despite its controversial character, it was an important physicist, and it turned out to be one of the first scientists ever to warn of climate change.
Before he died, he continued to claim that he would have the same spoken against the physicist and said to the magazine : “Oppenheimer was a good friend, a great and wise man who saw the world in a foolish way. Unfortunately, the story proved it was like this. ”
CAROLINA BASTOS PEREIRA, ZAP //
