Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Machining Tolerances (was Another uncertainties question...)

Yes, I was thinking third term -- but wrote third veep.

The important point was, did Fuchs know of the Trinity success -- that would, I'd think, ramp up Joe's effort, especially if Trinity was light enuf to aeroplane carry.

Interesting you point out Joe needed to know if it worked. My mother back in the early fifties often said that was the only secret. Sort of like the cat, yes?

On Wallace -- more evidence we live in a one party state, and of the inherent evil of capitalism. Note, he did manage to garner 1.5 E6 votes (including my 6th grade teacher's) when he ran against both wings of the capitalist party.



http://www.christers.net/veeps/henry-wallace.html


bc adds to his FBI file.

p.s. didn't Oppie regret a moment after "his" success? Yes, I understand now; the machining might have much changed history.

Mmmm, he started out somewhat a populist, and did destroy the KKK, but I understand your meaning *, a smart cookie tho.

* especially the cold war and later career:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes



Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 00:02 -0800 1/26/08, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

bc remembers Joe knew and didn't express curiosity or surprise at
Potsdam.


Quite so. Stalin knew most of what was happening at Los Alamos, thanks mostly to Klaus Fuchs. And although work on nukes was going on in the USSR, it had all been moved East of the Urals because of the war, and the effort was relatively small.


He'd probably long before had ordered their Manhattan
Project, which makes me think the machining, was irrelevant to history.


Well, if the project had been stalled, and the war had ended before any bombs could have been dropped, as might well have happened, based on what we know now, but didn't then, it is possible that no test would have been done, at least not until the cold war got quite a bit more intense, in which case, it is also possible that Stalin would not have ramped up his nuclear program, as he did as soon as he found out that it could be done.

Stalin was no scientist, and not much on speculation, and there is a reasonable possibility that he wouldn't have been willing to risk much on nuclear weapons without the knowledge that they could work. We'll never know if the Manhattan project would have been able to continue after the war if no bombs had been used during the war. As soon as the war was over, most of the physicists on the project left to head back to their academic careers, many of them, including Feynman, Szilard and Robert Wilson, carrying deep regrets over their involvement in the program.

If the program had continued, it likely would have eventually succeeded, but not on the schedule set during the war, and with many of the more stable of the scientists gone, Teller's influence would have risen even faster than it did, and we might have been diverted to the "super" before getting the fission weapons right, which would have slowed down the whole process even more.


What would've changed history is if FDR's third Veep had been his last;
I think. OTOH, Edgar probably woulda had him assassinated.


I assume you are referring to Henry Wallace. Small point, but he was the second VEEP to FDR, John N. Garner having served the first two terms, then leaving in a huff when FDR declared for a third. As to what might have happened had Wallace continued as VEEP, you may well be right--things would have been different. But that is exactly why the Democratic leadership dumped him in '44. They all knew that FDR would not live through his fourth term and they were scared at where Wallace would have likely taken the party and the country. Be thankful that they chose Truman to succeed him rather than Jimmy Burns, who wanted the job more than maybe anyone in the country. Burns did enough damage as Sec'y of State. Think what he would have done as POTUS.

Hugh