atomic bomb

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Site Where World's First A-Bomb Went Off Is About to Get Busy

Officials prep for record turnout at New Mexico test site, open twice a year, thanks to 'Oppenheimer'

(Newser) - Thousands of visitors are expected to descend Saturday on the southern New Mexico site where the world's first atomic bomb was detonated, with officials preparing for a record turnout amid ongoing fanfare surrounding Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film Oppenheimer. Trinity Site, a designated National Historic Landmark, is usually closed...

The 'Barbenheimer' Memes Were Fun—Until They Weren't

Warner Bros. apologizes for atomic bomb-themed mashups for 'Barbie,' 'Oppenheimer' movies

(Newser) - The "biggest movie weekend in years" last month was thanks to the phenomenon known as "Barbenheimer"—the opening of both Barbie and Oppenheimer, two completely different films that sparked a slew of memes referencing their unlikely odd bond. Some of those memes, however, have irked the netizens...

Unwanted US Atom Bombs Become Parts for New Ones

Some experts call stockpile in warehouses dangerous and provocative to other nations

(Newser) - In warehouses and bunkers throughout the nation, parts pulled from disassembled atomic bombs are stored, ready to be recycled into new weapons. Atomic bombs aren't thrown away when they're pulled from service, the New York Times reports; they're pulled apart and sent to the equivalent of a...

Iran's Nuke Chief Makes 'Rare' Claim on Atomic Bomb

Country has capability to build bomb, though it doesn't plan to right now, says Mohammad Eslami

(Newser) - Iran could build an atomic bomb if it really wanted to—it just doesn't plan to, at least at the moment. So said Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, on Monday, according to the Fars news agency, echoing similar remarks made last month by a...

In Nagasaki, a Minute of Silence at 11:02am

The city marks the 75th anniversary of an atomic bomb being dropped on it

(Newser) - The Japanese city of Nagasaki on Sunday marked its 75th anniversary of the US atomic bombing, with the mayor and dwindling survivors urging world leaders including their own to do more for a nuclear weapons ban, reports the AP . At 11:02am, the moment the B-29 bomber Bockscar dropped a...

Some Carried 'Own Eyeballs in Their Hands' in Hiroshima

The world, media reflect on the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb

(Newser) - Its code name was "Little Boy," but its impact was anything but small. Thursday marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. By the end of that year, 140,000 deaths—mostly of civilians—were tied to the...

Court Rules 84 People Are Atomic Bomb Victims

They were exposed to radioactive 'black rain' after the attack on Hiroshima

(Newser) - A Japanese court on Wednesday for the first time recognized people exposed to radioactive “black rain" that fell after the 1945 US atomic attack on Hiroshima as atomic bomb survivors, ordering the city and the prefecture to provide the same government medical benefits as given to other survivors. The...

Newly Uncovered Atomic Spy May Have Been Key for Soviets

Newly released files suggested Los Alamos mole turned over important advances

(Newser) - Given the secrecy around the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, American scientists and historians have never been sure how the Soviet Union managed to join the atomic age as early as it did. Four years after the US set off the first atomic bomb, the Soviets detonated a similar one....

Collapse of Contaminated Site Could Be Bad News

As if Detroit needed more bad news

(Newser) - Living downriver from the Detroit Dock? You might want to buy drinking water for a while. That's because part of the historic site—long tainted with uranium and other scary chemicals—fell into the Detroit River on Nov. 26, the Detroit Free Press reports. A load of big aggregate...

'He Handed Them the Formula for the A-Bomb'

Oscar Seborer was part of a family of spies

(Newser) - Three Soviet spies were at Los Alamos during World War II, stealing atomic secrets—that we know. Now the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence reports on Oscar Seborer, a fourth, previously unknown figure who may have "handed" Soviets the A-bomb formula before defecting to the USSR. Born in New...

K-Pop Band Member Accused of Wearing Controversial T-Shirt

BTS' Jimin allegedly wore shirt celebrating mushroom cloud over Japanese city in WWII

(Newser) - A popular South Korean boy band was set to appear on one of Japan's biggest TV stations this week, but that appearance has been canceled due to a clothing choice one of its members may have made. Per the Guardian and CNN , K-pop group BTS was scheduled to be...

How a Truck Driver Figured Out Complete Atomic Bomb Specs

NPR looks at John Coster-Mullen

(Newser) - That a man who worked as a trucker made a 1,300-mile drive is perhaps unremarkable. But John Coster-Mullen's destination, and motivation for heading there, were unusual. As NPR reports, Coster-Mullen in 1993 decided he could capitalize on the looming 50th anniversary of the atomic bombs that fell on...

We May Have Underestimated N. Korea's Latest Nuke Test

It might have had force of 17 atomic bombs, per 38 North assessment

(Newser) - In the immediate aftermath of North Korea's sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3, experts described the blast as six or seven times as powerful as the one that destroyed Hiroshima. That measure might not even come close. According to research site 38 North , the resulting 6.1 magnitude earthquake...

On Hiroshima's Anniversary, Specter of N. Korea

72 years since US dropped first atomic bomb

(Newser) - Hiroshima's appeal of "never again" on the anniversary Sunday of the world's first atomic bomb attack has gained urgency as North Korea moves ever closer to nuclear weapons, reports the AP . "Nuclear weapons just are unacceptable for mankind," says Toshiki Fujimori, who was just a...

Now Blowing Up YouTube: Secret Nuclear Test Footage

The films are being preserved by a weapons physicist before they decay

(Newser) - The US government has about 10,000 films of the 221 atmospheric nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1962, covering the destructive power from all sorts of angles and distances, Business Insider reports. But until recently those films were literally rotting away in top-secret storage. Gregg Spriggs, a weapons physicist...

Kodak Was Baffled by Damaged Film. The Truth Lay Far, Far Away

Company agreed to keep the problem quiet

(Newser) - In the summer of 1945, Eastman Kodak began fielding complaints from businesses who bought its X-ray film—it was spotted and unusable. A perplexed company physicist named Julian Webb began digging into the problem, and a feature at Popular Mechanics recounts how he ultimately traced it to an unexpected source:...

Kerry Visits 'Gut-Wrenching' Hiroshima Memorial

He lays wreath at A-bomb site

(Newser) - A gut-wrenched John Kerry said the horrible history of what took place in Hiroshima should teach humanity to avoid conflict and strive to eradicate nuclear weapons as he became the first US secretary of state to tread upon the ground of the world's first atomic bombing. Kerry's emotional...

A Sophomoric Prank Lurks on the Periodic Table

Check out the abbreviation for plutonium

(Newser) - There’s nothing funny about plutonium. After all, it’s the stuff that makes nuclear weapons go boom. Nonetheless, the man credited with discovering the element named for the dwarf planet Pluto did manage to use the occasion to sneak a little levity onto the periodic table of elements, National ...

70 Years Ago Today, 70K People Died in Nagasaki

Somber Mass marks devastating bomb that helped end WWII

(Newser) - Just after dawn today, the faithful filed into Urakami Cathedral in the Japanese city of Nagasaki for a Mass tinged with sadness. Seventy years ago, a US-dropped atomic bomb detonated about 550 yards from the church, killing two priests who were hearing confessions and about 30 other people inside—three...

New Mexico Residents: US Covered Up Atomic Test

Tularosa residents want government to acknowledge what happened in 1945

(Newser) - An unknown blast shook the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, unsettling the historic Hispanic village of Tularosa. Residents there didn't learn that scientists from the then-secret city of Los Alamos had successfully detonated the first atomic bomb at the nearby Trinity Site until after the US announced...

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