Are There Sci-Fi Movies Similar to Oppenheimer?

Just watched Oppenheimer. It's amazing how they can make the bomb explode at first try, and also dropped them at Nagasaki and Hiroshima at first try. Is it possible that it's easier to make an atomic bomb than assumed by the public?

If we will have a Manhattan Project II. What is the most probable breakthrough that can be produced, a Star gate, or vacuum metastability collapser?

There are many free time in this holiday. Can you give some interesting sci-fi to watch similar to the concept in Oppenheimer where the best minds met together to produce a successful new technology, and at first try without even using previous tests?

Note atomic bombs may be powerful but they are just enough to scratch the surface of the earth. They can't even destroy the earth crusts or mantle. So more powerful weapons may be in concept for military use. For example. It would take hundreds of Nuclear warhead to even scratch a land the size of Texas. But if you can produce a weapon that can disintegrate the crush, mantle and eject the core materials above, then you just need one weapon to destroy a target.

Manhattan Project II doesn't have to be a weapon of mass destruction, but others like opening natural wormholes, or gateways to parallel world, I need about half a dozen movies next week to watch.

Happy holidays!

If you're into reading, you might avail yourself of Robert J. Sawyer's The Oppenheimer Alternative. It is an alternate history story, predicated on an impending Solar cataclysm that will destroy the Earth.

It appears to follow Oppenheimer and his colleagues as they struggle to develop the technology for the A-bomb, but beware - that alternate history will bring about some hairy twists.

Ephant said:

Just watched Oppenheimer. It's amazing how they can make the bomb explode at first try, and also dropped them at Nagasaki and Hiroshima at first try. Is it possible that it's easier to make an atomic bomb than assumed by the public?

Ah ... you think it was EASY to make the bomb? You may want to rethink that. Do you have any idea how many MILLIONS of man-hours were put into it? Los Alamos was not the only facility and America was not the only country involved. At its peak, it employed well over 100,000 (THOUSAND see post #7) people. Every day. For years. At a nominal rate of 2,000 man hours per year and say a minimum of 3 years (it was more) that comes to 200 MILLION manhours. The cost has been estimated at way over 20 BILLION dollars in today's dollars.

Do not try this experiment at home.

phinds said:

it employed well over 100,000 THOUSAND people

Which was about half the US population at that time. It was amazing that they were able to keep the project secret from the rest of the country...

berkeman said:

Which was about half the US population at that time. It was amazing that they were able to keep the project secret from the rest of the country...

Not sure if you're joking** or what but the population in 1943 is listed as 136,739,353 and not all the workers were from the US (although certainly most were)

** if you are if fell flat

OK, I assume your were. But it DID fall flat.

Maybe you meant to leave off the extra THOUSAND multiplier?

Normally I use a small version of this image, but ...

berkeman said:

Maybe you meant to leave off the extra THOUSAND multiplier?

LOL. Want me to clean it up?

berkeman said:

LOL. Want me to clean it up?

Thanks but nah, people need to see how stupid I can be some of the time. Keeps me humble (which is good considering how tall, skinny, smart, youthful, incredibly handsome, and rich I am)

Ephant said:

Just watched Oppenheimer. It's amazing how they can make the bomb explode at first try, and also dropped them at Nagasaki and Hiroshima at first try. Is it possible that it's easier to make an atomic bomb than assumed by the public?

It was not easy to make the Manhattan Project work as well as it did, and it was not luck that the first fission detonations worked as well as they did. Please do not think that way.

The main luck in that situation was that there was a feasible scientific way to create the new technology to end WWII. That opportunity will not always be present in any difficult situation that you pick.

Ephant said:

Is it possible that it's easier to make an atomic bomb than assumed by the public?

If you have the fissile material, yes. This is why the international non-proliferation effort is so much about restricting access to enrichment technology and controlling the flow of highly enriched fissile materials.

The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium implosion design, complex enough that the first was used as a test before the second was used in anger. However, the first test of the Hiroshima gunbarrel uranium design was Hiroshima - there was no doubt that it would work, and any clowns who can get their hands on 75-odd kilograms of highly enriched uranium would likely be able to build something like it that would do incalculable damage.

Building effective fusion bombs is much harder, as is building something small enough and robust enough to be delivered by missile or aircraft.

And to answer the op, Contact comes to mind.

In the early 1940s before Hiroshima. The public didn't have a clue about the atomic bomb. But for the version of physicsforums or the more physics informed public of that day. Did they have a clue about it?

If not, then could something occur similar at present where in the end of the decade, a breakthrough so stunning it completely elude even the most brilliant here?

I'd like a scenario of the movie Event Horizon occurring in the Large Hadron Collider. Or a Doom (have you watched this starring the Rock?) level event taking place. It would instill more excitement in physics. What similar movies have I missed. Everyone watched Contact already.

Ephant said:

could something occur similar at present where in the end of the decade, a breakthrough so stunning it completely elude even the most brilliant here?

HIGHLY unlikely. Social media did not exist in the 1940's.

In the 1940s. Weren't there smaller physics groups where they met physically and discussed stuff just like we do but in the flesh? They had read the newspaper the German has split the atoms. Wasn't it obvious an atomic bomb could be produced by the concept?

Also outside Los Alamos where they employed 10,000 all over the United States. What did they do? designing and fabricating screws or enclosure for the bombs or computing for cross sections due to lack of any computer or did all of them trying to solve the speed of the projectile as it splitted the atoms? But wasn't this what Los Alamos all about. Any details of what the 10,000 outside the area exactly did? With the speed of our computer now. Maybe the manpower can be decreased.

Also for Hiroshima, it was impossible to hide the technology since the witness was the world. But what if the product was not a bomb but something else, wouldn't they continue to hide the secret?

What if Manhattan Project II was occurring at present (for example in Area 51) as they cracked the extension of gravity where General Relativity was only a limiting case for some general gravity theory that takes into account the ordinary vs engineered vacuum. And they had a committee that produced disinformation that must be disseminated to avoid any serious discussions by ridiculing the topic itself. Why is this highly unlikely?Is there happened to have a movie along this theme? The best sci-fi movies are things that can make you think, unlike Transformers where after you leave the cinema, you totally forget about it.

Ephant said:

Also for Hiroshima, it was impossible to hide the technology since the witness was the world. But what if the product was not a bomb but something else, wouldn't they continue to hide the secret?

What if Manhattan Project II was occurring at present (for example in Area 51) as they cracked the extension of gravity where General Relativity was only a limiting case for some general gravity theory that takes into account the ordinary vs engineered vacuum. And they had a committee that produced disinformation that must be disseminated to avoid any serious discussions by ridiculing the topic itself. Why is this highly unlikely?Is there happened to have a movie along this theme? The best sci-fi movies are things that can make you think, unlike Transformers where after you leave the cinema, you totally forget about it.

Lordy. Thread is done.

Please use Google searches for your future research on this topic.