* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Friday, October 3, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

    Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

    Toni Braxton Is Turning Her Biggest Hits Into Lifetime Movies – Yahoo

    Toni Braxton Is Turning Her Biggest Hits Into Lifetime Movies – Yahoo

    Major airline to offer new in-flight entertainment options for passengers – PennLive.com

    Major airline to offer new in-flight entertainment options for passengers – PennLive.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    The Police Made Chart History With This 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago – Yahoo

    How The Police Changed Music Forever with Their Iconic 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago

    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    A Tech Expo Shows What China Can Make, but Not Who’ll Buy It All – The New York Times

    Inside China’s Tech Expo: Cutting-Edge Innovations Face Uncertain Demand

    Steampunk Metal Oval Technology Sense Sunglasses Personality Handmade Chain Multicolor Sunglasses UV400 – The San Joaquin Valley Sun

    Steampunk Metal Oval Sunglasses with Handmade Multicolor Chain – Bold UV400 Protection and Unique Style

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as Chief Technology Officer – Yahoo Finance

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as New Chief Technology Officer

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Four Strategic Signals Technology Leaders Are Tuning In To – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM ARM – Harvard Business Review

    Four Essential Strategic Signals Every Technology Leader Should Watch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

    Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

    Toni Braxton Is Turning Her Biggest Hits Into Lifetime Movies – Yahoo

    Toni Braxton Is Turning Her Biggest Hits Into Lifetime Movies – Yahoo

    Major airline to offer new in-flight entertainment options for passengers – PennLive.com

    Major airline to offer new in-flight entertainment options for passengers – PennLive.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    Penn State-Themed Restaurant and Entertainment Spot Happy Valley Live Set to Open in State College – StateCollege.com

    The Police Made Chart History With This 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago – Yahoo

    How The Police Changed Music Forever with Their Iconic 1979 Hit Nearly 50 Years Ago

    Good Deed Entertainment Acquires Worldwide Rights To Liza Mandelup’s Documentary ‘Caterpillar’ – Deadline

    Good Deed Entertainment Lands Global Rights to Liza Mandelup’s Captivating Documentary ‘Caterpillar

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    Technology Is Becoming More Important Than Humans In CX – No Jitter

    A Tech Expo Shows What China Can Make, but Not Who’ll Buy It All – The New York Times

    Inside China’s Tech Expo: Cutting-Edge Innovations Face Uncertain Demand

    Steampunk Metal Oval Technology Sense Sunglasses Personality Handmade Chain Multicolor Sunglasses UV400 – The San Joaquin Valley Sun

    Steampunk Metal Oval Sunglasses with Handmade Multicolor Chain – Bold UV400 Protection and Unique Style

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as Chief Technology Officer – Yahoo Finance

    STELLA Automotive AI Appoints Fred Seidelman as New Chief Technology Officer

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Saving Energy and Money with Smart Technology – Terms of Service with Clare Duffy – Podcast on CNN Podcasts – CNN

    Four Strategic Signals Technology Leaders Are Tuning In To – SPONSOR CONTENT FROM ARM – Harvard Business Review

    Four Essential Strategic Signals Every Technology Leader Should Watch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

The true history of Einstein’s role in developing the atomic bomb

February 22, 2024
in Science
The true history of Einstein’s role in developing the atomic bomb
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

History & Culture

The legendary physicist urged the U.S. to build the devastating weapon during World War II—and was haunted by the consequences. “I did not see any other way out.”

ByErin Blakemore

Published February 21, 2024

Albert Einstein is perhaps most famous for introducing the world to the equation E=mc2. In essence, he discovered that energy and mass are interchangeable, setting the stage for nuclear power—and atomic weapons.

His part in the drama of nuclear war may have ended there if not for a simple refrigerator.

In the 1920s, while living in Berlin, the physicist collaborated with Hungarian graduate assistant Leo Szilárd to develop and patent an energy-efficient fridge. While their design never went to market, the duo’s work ultimately embroiled Einstein—an avowed pacifist—in the race to create an atomic bomb during World War II.

Einstein would go on to argue vehemently to ban nuclear weapons worldwide in his later life, as he struggled with the deadly consequences of his scientific creation.

(Einstein wasn’t the only scientist who struggled with his role in developing the atomic bomb—meet J. Robert Oppenheimer.)

“His brilliance was also his downfall,” says National Geographic Explorer Ari Beser. “The revolution that came with the splitting of the atom requires a moral one as well.”

Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt

Even after Szilárd and Einstein ended their partnership over appliances, the two scientists stayed in touch.

In 1933, the same year Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Szilárd discovered the nuclear chain reaction—the process that unleashes the energy locked in atoms to create enormous explosions. And by 1939, he had became convinced that German scientists might be using current scientific developments to develop an atomic weapon.

So he approached his one-time colleague—then the world’s most famous scientist—and asked him to warn U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Szilárd visited Einstein in New York with two fellow refugees, Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. When they told him about the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction, Einstein was shocked at the danger posed by his 1905 special theory of relativity.

“He certainly was not thinking about this theory as a weapon,” says Cynthia Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization she founded to preserve and interpret the Manhattan Project and its broader legacy. But “he quickly got the concept.”

(10 things you probably didn’t know about Einstein.)

Together with the other scientists, Einstein drafted a letter to Roosevelt that warned of what might happen if Nazi scientists beat the United States to an atom bomb.

“It appears almost certain that [a nuclear chain reaction] could be achieved in the immediate future,” he wrote, sounding the alarm on “extremely powerful bombs of a new type,” and advising that Roosevelt fund an initiative to research atomic energy.

Roosevelt took the warning seriously. On October 21, 1939, two months after receiving the letter and just days after Germany’s invasion of Poland, the Roosevelt-appointed Advisory Committee on Uranium met for the first time. It was the forerunner of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret government project that eventually invented a working atom bomb.

A troubled legacy

The committee was only given $6,000 in funding, so Einstein continued writing to the president, assisted by Szilárd, who wrote large portions of the letters. One letter even warned that Szilárd would publish key nuclear findings in a scientific journal if the initiative was not better funded.

In this way, Einstein helped spark the Manhattan Project, says Kelley, but “his actual involvement was very marginal.” The FBI file on the outspoken scientist—who openly criticized racism, capitalism, and war—would eventually grow to over 1,800 pages.

“In view of his radical background,” the FBI wrote, “this office would not recommend the employment of Dr. Einstein on matters of a secret nature.” In the end, Einstein never received security clearance to work on the Manhattan Project.

Still, his name is forever connected to the weapon born of his greatest discovery. He was devastated by news of the Hiroshima bombing—and humiliated by a TIME cover from 1946 that showed him in front of a mushroom cloud emblazoned with his famous equation.

(“A ball of blinding light”: A-bomb survivors share their stories.)

Though Einstein worked to warn the world about the perils of nuclear proliferation for the rest of his life, he struggled to make sense of his responsibility.

“He is the father” of the atom bomb, says Beser, who is the grandson of the only U.S. serviceman aboard both planes that carried the atomic bombs to Japan.

Beser uses his storytelling to illustrate the aftermath of nuclear weapons. For instance, he visited Auschwitz with a survivor from Nagasaki, who was astonished at the connections between the bomb, which killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of civilians, and one of history’s other horrors—the Holocaust.

“I was well aware of the dreadful danger for all mankind, if these experiments would succeed,” Einstein wrote of the bomb’s development in a Japanese magazine in 1952. “I did not see any other way out.”

For Beser, Einstein’s dilemma illustrates the contradictions of the human condition: “The splitting of the atom changed everything, except the way we think,” he laments.

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on June 20, 2017. It has been updated.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/nuclear-weapons-atom-bomb-einstein-genius-science

Tags: Einstein’shistory’science
Previous Post

Why this coastal Kent town should be your next food getaway

Next Post

This 2,200-year-old slab bears the world’s first mention of leap year

Bhagwat rings ‘warning bell’ on Himalayas, ecology threats – Times of India

Bhagwat rings ‘warning bell’ on Himalayas, ecology threats – Times of India

October 3, 2025
117-Year-Old Woman’s Diet Could Help Us All Live Longer – ScienceAlert

117-Year-Old Woman’s Diet Could Help Us All Live Longer – ScienceAlert

October 3, 2025
The Best Time to Eat Breakfast, Backed by Science—and Why It Matters More Than You Think – Real Simple

The Ideal Time to Eat Breakfast: Surprising Science-Backed Reasons Why It Matters

October 3, 2025
Lifestyle and stress erode heart health advantage in long-term US immigrants – News-Medical

Lifestyle and stress erode heart health advantage in long-term US immigrants – News-Medical

October 3, 2025
Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions Deploys RIO Security Solutions – TipRanks

Artificial Intelligence Technology Solutions Unveils Game-Changing RIO Security Innovations

October 3, 2025
Top-12 NFL running games: Which teams are helping our RBs score fantasy football points this season? – Yahoo Sports

Top-12 NFL running games: Which teams are helping our RBs score fantasy football points this season? – Yahoo Sports

October 3, 2025
FIRST LOOK: Official match ball of FIFA World Cup ‘26 – Yahoo Sports

Get an Exclusive First Look at the Official Match Ball of FIFA World Cup 2026!

October 3, 2025
Arts economy grows, but funding lags on Long Island – Long Island Business News

Long Island’s Arts Economy Thrives Despite Ongoing Funding Challenges

October 3, 2025
Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

Taylor Swift Releases New Album The Life of a Showgirl : Listen and Read the Full Credits – Yahoo

October 3, 2025
HIV pioneer Dr. William Valenti retires, leaving lasting impact on health community – 13wham.com

HIV Pioneer Dr. William Valenti Retires, Leaving an Enduring Impact on the Health Community

October 3, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (849)
  • Economy (869)
  • Entertainment (21,743)
  • General (17,386)
  • Health (9,912)
  • Lifestyle (882)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (871)
  • Politics (880)
  • Science (16,080)
  • Sports (21,370)
  • Technology (15,852)
  • World (852)

Recent News

Bhagwat rings ‘warning bell’ on Himalayas, ecology threats – Times of India

Bhagwat rings ‘warning bell’ on Himalayas, ecology threats – Times of India

October 3, 2025
117-Year-Old Woman’s Diet Could Help Us All Live Longer – ScienceAlert

117-Year-Old Woman’s Diet Could Help Us All Live Longer – ScienceAlert

October 3, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version