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The discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and its theoretical explanation by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, made an atomic bomb theoretically possible. There were fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop one first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist ...
The first atomic bomb test by the Soviet Union in August 1949 came earlier than Americans expected, and over the next several months, there was an intense debate within the U.S. government, military, and scientific communities over whether to proceed with the development of the far more powerful, nuclear fusion–based hydrogen bomb, then known ...
Britain and France built their own systems in the 1950s, and the number of states with nuclear capabilities has gradually grown larger in the decades since. A nuclear weapon, also known as an atomic bomb, possesses enormous destructive power from nuclear fission, or a combination of fission and fusion reactions.
Best known for its central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb, LANL is one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions. [5] Los Alamos was established in 1943 as Project Y, a top-secret site for designing nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project during World War II.
Little Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the United States as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II.The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history ...
Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project built an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany for a number of reasons, notably the industrial and scientific might of the U.S.
1941 – May – A review committee postulates that the United States will not isolate enough uranium-235 to build an atomic bomb until 1945. [6] 1941 – June – President Roosevelt forms the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Vannevar Bush. 1941 – June 15 – The MAUD Committee approves a report that a uranium bomb could ...
The Soviet atomic bomb project was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II. [1] [2] Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers were secretly developing a "superweapon" [2] since 1939. Flyorov urged Stalin to start a nuclear program in 1942.