To follow-up on the Kamala Harris - Tim Walz ticket, some humor. Read Laura Yuen's op-ed, No, Walz isn't old. He's 60 (which is the new 40). To quote.- Joe Biden is old. Now that he’s dropped out of the race, we all can agree Donald Trump is old. Kamala Harris looks youthful. Tim Walz appears oldish, but he’s only about six months older than Harris.
- Our governor, who was announced as Harris’ vice presidential running mate, acknowledges the disparity. The former teacher attributes his graying appearance to having supervised a high school lunchroom for 20 years.
- Retorted Walz: You do not leave that job with a full head of hair. Trust me.
By the way, Brad Pitt is also 60. Photo taken this year, in an article that says he is worth $400 million.
Yuen also had a dig at Trump: The lines on his face come from the worry of protecting Minnesotans during COVID-19, and the glee from being swarmed by schoolkids when he signed a free-lunch bill into law. When I’m the age of Walz, will I roll with the punches with a sense of humor as he seems to be doing? Or will I dye my skin orange and brag about my golf skills?
This is the week 79 years ago that the U.S. dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan. Little Man (bottom) over Hiroshima on 6August1945, killing 140,000 and Fat Man over Nagasaki on 9August1945 killing 70,000. By the end of the war, the death count total for both was more than 300,000.
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will skip the Friday memorial service in Nagasaki because Israel was not invited for their Gaza Strip atrocities. Canada, France, Germany, Italy and UK will also now send lower-ranking envoys. Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said he was concerned that there could be protests in what should be a peaceful and solemn atmosphere, and also did not accept anyone from Russia and Belarus. In contract, Hiroshima did invite the Israeli ambassador to Japan to their ceremony yesterday, but not any Palestinian representatives, drawing 50,000 attendees, including Ambassador Emanuel.
You might have seen the movie Oppenheimer about the Manhattan Project. The story of the Atomic Bomb has been told over and over again, but I just saw a Japanese documentary on the NHK channel, Mystery Man of the A-Bomb (this is the entire 49-minute production) and learned something surprisingly new.
But first, what led to the A-Bomb?
- Last month, my posting of What Have We Wrought? indicated that this all began in 430 BC with Leucippus of Miletus, who originated the atomic philosophy. My story included Aristotle, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and many more, including German scientist Martin Klaproth, who in 1789 discovered Uranium.
- The National World War 2 Museum starts with Klaproth, goes on to Marie Curie and then Ernest Rutherford in 1911 formulating the model of the atom.
Hungarian-German physicist Leo Szilard in 1933 conceived of a nuclear chain reaction.- Jewish German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein moved to the U.S. that year.
- In 1934, Italian Fermi (came to the U.S. in 1938 because his wife was Jewish) unknowingly did split neutrons within uranium.
Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner (who was Jewish and fled to Sweden) and German chemist Otto Hahn (right) were the first to fission uranium. Hahn remained in Germany.- Being Jewish, now at Columbia University, in 1939 Szilard confirmed the work of Hahn, and said: That night, there was very little doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief.
- Szilard and Fermi, (left) also now at Columbia, succeeding in building a nuclear reactor that year.
- So Szilard in July of 1939 contacted Jewish German theoretical scientist Albert Einstein. Together, they drafted a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 2August1939 that extremely powerful bombs and the threat of Germany.
- Read that letter signed by Einstein.
- Some quotes.
The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
- Priorities...priorities....but this information did not get to FDR until October.
- But he quickly recognized the enormity of this potential and on 21October1939 formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium.
Here is where that Mystery Man became prominent, to be later detailed.- In the meantime:
- At the University of California at Berkeley, Ernest Lawrence and Glenn Seaborg found a way to separate the crucial atom, U-235, which was only 0.7% of uranium, and that a new element, plutonium, which could be derived from uranium, was also a potential source of fission. In photo, to the left Oppenheimer, Seaborg in middle and Lawrence to right.
The Columbia University experiment, now headed by Enrico Fermin, was moved to the University of Chicago in February of 1942.
It took a long time from 1939, but the Manhattan Project was created on 13August1942, and called so because the first office was at 270 Broadway in Manhattan. Army General Leslie Groves was appointed head.- On 2December1942, the Chicago pile went critical, creating the world's first self-sustaining chain reaction. A by-product was plutonium.
The equivalent today of about $10 billion dollars was provided to the Manhattan Project on 13August1942.- A research laboratory was developed at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
- Oak Ridge, Tennessee became home to enrich for U-235, providing the fuel for Little Boy over Hiroshima.
- Hanford, Washington was selected for plutonium, or Fat Man over Nagasaki.
- There were other sites to accomplish other mission tasks, like Dayton, Ohio to separate and purify polonium to initiate the bomb, and Wendover Airfield in Utah and Cuba to train the teams to drop the bombs.
- In all, more than 600,000 people worked on the project.
- The cost today would have been $37 billion.
- Watch Oppenheimer for the rest of the story. The real J. Robert Oppenheimer.
While much of my life has focused on energy and resources, a facet of my interest can be linked to World Peace. Read my Huffington Post article on The 10% Solution. Thus, when NHK produced Mystery Man of the A-Bomb, I thought it was worthy of a blog posting.
Few recognize this name. The Mystery Man is Edgar Sengier.
- Was born in Belgium in 1879 and passed away at the age of 83 (my age) in 1963.
- Was a mining engineer and director of a mining company in the Belgian Congo during World War II.
Uranium was discovered in Shikolobwe, Belgian Congo in 1915, and this ore contained 65% uranium, compared to Canadian ores, which only had 0.2%.- He is the one that took enormous risks to give access to uranium for the Manhattan Project.
In May of 1939 he learned about the potential of uranium from English chemist Sir Henry Tizard, who warned him that Sengier held something that may mean a catastrophe to your country and mine if this material were to fall into the hands of Germany.- So he joined a group of French scientists to build a uranium fission bomb.
- But France was overcome by Germany, so he arranged to send half of the uranium ore from Africa, about 1,050 tons, to secretly be sent to a Staten Island warehouse in New York.
Met in September of 1942 with Lt. Col. Kenneth Nichols (to the left is Nichols, and on the right, Groves), who was heading task to find uranium for the Manhattan Project.- While around that time, the scuttlebutt was that Hitler provided more funds for missiles than for another potential game-changer, the Atomic Bomb, in a nutshell, this how the U.S. and not Hitler ended up with a critical stockpile for the Manhattan Project.
- The U.S. Army also built a port in Matadi on the Congo River, sending the remaining 3000 tons to the U.S.
- Sengier (middle) in 1946 was awarded the Medal for Merit from General Groves (to the left).
Here is a 1967 book by Stephane Groueff with more information, The Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb.
The Paris Summer Olympics 1500 meter race was billed as a bar brawl between the two baddest runners, Josh Kerr of the UK, the favorite, and Jakob Ingebrigsten of Norway. Sorry, but 23-year old American Cole Hocker pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Olympics history, and team member Yared Nuguse got the bronze. Ingebrigsen came in fourth.
1. USA: Gold 27 Silver 35 Bronze 32 - Total 94
2. China: Gold 25 Silver 23 Bronze 17 - Total 65
3. Australia: Gold 18 Silver 12 Bronze 11 - Total 41
Full 2024 Olympics medals table
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