Thoughts on Trinity

There is no better place to test an atomic bomb than "the middle of nowhere." Last weekend, we made the pilgramage to Middle of Nowhere, USA. A couple of hours south of Albuquerque, NM, on what is now White Sands Missle Test Range, they let the public in view the lonely place where J. Robert Oppenhiemer, Leslie Groves and associates culminated the 2 Billion Dollar (WWII Dollars) Manhattan Project.
A project so important that they melted down 300 Million Dollars worth of silver coins in order to make electrical coils for the Uranium refining process.
So secret that they built a secret town to hide away the nation's most talented intellectual capital.
We saw a few bits of Trinitite, the unique glasslike substance that was the result of an atomic explosion fusing the New Mexico sand. Tempted as I was to break the rules and boost it, I left it there.
In 1905, Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. 40 years later, the practical application of some of those ideas made the US the first superpower.
A curious sidenote, a large number of the scientists that did the math for the bomb, came to the US to escape the threats and persecution of the Nazis.
Their own twisted ideas scared off the talent that could have won them the war.