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Visiting the Trinity Site featured in 'Oppenheimer' is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons

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Monday, July 24, 2023
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After watching the film, I was inspired to write about my visit to the actual Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated.

Key Points: 
  • After watching the film, I was inspired to write about my visit to the actual Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated.
  • As part of my research on nuclear weapons and civil defence, I visited the Trinity Site in 2015.

Arriving at the site

    • The Trinity Site is open to the public for only a few hours twice a year, by permission of the U.S. Army.
    • The predicted popularity of Oppenheimer’s release will possibly overcrowd the next open house on Oct. 21.
    • When I visited the site, I first had to make my way to a very remote area of the New Mexico desert.
    • Arrival had to be well before sunrise to have any chance of being in the small group of persons granted entry.

Visiting the site

    • The main attraction at the Trinity Site is a simple obelisk made of volcanic rocks marking Ground Zero.
    • There are very few elements of interpretive information like what one would see at a museum.
    • It served to occupy the attention of most visitors, who perhaps anticipated more to see and do.

Vaporized tower

    • It was a fragment of the tower, and proof of physicist Albert Einstein’s theory that mass is just a concentrated form of energy.
    • Einstein’s famous equation E=mc² explains the energy released in an atomic bomb, but did not explain how to build one.
    • The tower that held the bomb last existed at 5:28 a.m. on July 16, 1945.
    • The test vaporized the experimental structure, leaving behind a crater about 1.4 metres deep and 80 metres wide.

Entertainment from horror

    • Other films go beyond this summer’s blockbuster to depict the full horror of what Oppenheimer created.
    • Jon Else’s 1981 documentary, The Day After Trinity, shows the real history behind Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
    • The 1983 made-for-TV movie, The Day After, dared to show the uncomfortable images of nuclear Armageddon to American audiences.

'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds': who was atom bomb pioneer Robert Oppenheimer?

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Tuesday, July 18, 2023
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Robert Oppenheimer is often placed next to Albert Einstein as the 20th century’s most famous physicist. He will forever be the “father of the atomic bomb” after the first nuclear weapon was successfully tested on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexican desert. The event brought to his mind words from a Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.Who was Robert Oppenheimer?Two years later, he completed his PhD in physics at one of the world’s leading institutions for theoretical physics, the University of Göttingen, Germany.

Key Points: 


Robert Oppenheimer is often placed next to Albert Einstein as the 20th century’s most famous physicist. He will forever be the “father of the atomic bomb” after the first nuclear weapon was successfully tested on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexican desert. The event brought to his mind words from a Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.

Who was Robert Oppenheimer?

    • Two years later, he completed his PhD in physics at one of the world’s leading institutions for theoretical physics, the University of Göttingen, Germany.
    • Throughout his life, Oppenheimer would be judged either as an aloof prodigy or an anxious narcissist.
    • Before the outbreak of the second world war, Oppenheimer worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology.
    • His partner, Kitty Puening, was a left-leaning radical and their social circle included Communist Party members and activists.

The second world war

    • His ideas about chain reaction in an atomic bomb gained recognition among the US defence community.
    • His ability to master the large-scale workforce and channel their energy towards the needs of the project earned him respect.
    • He proved to be more than just an administrator by being involved in the interdisciplinary team across theoretical and experimental stages of the weapons development.

The nuclear test

    • On July 16, 1945 the nuclear test, code named Trinity, took place.
    • Shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Oppenheimer confronted the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, demanding that nuclear weapons were banned.
    • Truman’s rebuttal did not prevent Oppenheimer from advocating for the establishment of controls on the nuclear arms race.

Arms control

    • But his chief concern was the unavoidable arms race.
    • He advocated for the establishment of an international body that would control the development of nuclear energy and its usage.
    • Oppenheimer urged strongly for international arms control.
    • The investigation that followed in 1954 exposed Oppenheimer’s past communist ties and culminated in his security clearance being revoked.

McCarthyism and academic freedom

    • In the era of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunts, his fellow scientists considered Oppenheimer as a martyr of the cause of academic freedom.
    • He toured internationally with talks about the role of academic freedom unrestrained by political considerations.