Oppenheimer’s most feared man, Werner Heisenberg, He was the first to study the atomic bomb
Today talk about Oppenheimer’s most feared man Werner Heisenberg.
Einstein once wrote a letter to US President Roosevelt, suggesting,
The United States hurried to start the development of the atomic bomb immediately.
And Oppenheimer was executing the Manhattan Project.
There have also been fears that Germany will build the atomic bomb before they do.
So whether it is Einstein or Oppenheimer,
The reason why they are worried, ah,
The main reason is the existence of super scientists like Heisenberg in Germany.
He was not only the chief scientist of the German Nazi nuclear weapons research program,
He is also the founder of quantum mechanics.
So such a powerful genius scientist,
Why did Oppenheimer build the atomic bomb first?
Next, let’s introduce this person, Heisenberg’s full name, called Werner Karl Heisenberg.
Born in Germany in 1901,
His father, ah, was a teacher.
His main research direction is classical languages.
So because of the influence of the father,
From an early age, Heisenberg was interested in some of Plato’s philosophical ideas and European medieval poetry,
So his literary and musical abilities are very useful.
Let’s talk now,
He should be regarded as a standard literary youth.
So because of the influence of these philosophical ideas,
Heisenberg had his own dreams since he was a child,
He hopes he can become a hero.
So he joined the Scout Association in Germany.
And he became the leader of one of the Scouts.
So when he was eighteen,
And he joined the Legion of Freedom.
Later helped the German Nazis to come to power.
But he is not quite the same as the regular army as we understand it.
Members here,
In addition to some volunteers,
There are also enemy traitors, deserters and other personnel ah more mixed .
So strictly speaking,
They should belong to irregular military units,
Or called mercenary regiments or something .
And what about after Heisenberg joined,
He took part in the war against the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
But his task is basically to grab a bicycle.
Or grabbing a typewriter or something like that,
This made him feel like he was far from dreaming of becoming a hero.
It’s too far away.
So Heisenberg a year after joining the Free Legion, ah, ah,
In 1920 he decided to go back to school.
And this choice also completely changed his life.
What about Heisenson, who returned to school,
Immediately targeted by his teacher Arnold Somorphy,
It’s not an ordinary person.
He has mentored and trained seven Nobel Prize winners.
At the same time, many well-known great physicists are also his students.
Heisenberg, on the other hand, was definitely the most talented student he had ever encountered, with particularly complex physics or math problems.
And then what
If you want to solve it,
It probably takes a month or even longer.
And Heisenberg is just a matter of sleeping,
to find the optimal solution.
So soon Somofey felt that he might not be able to make this student.
And then what
He went to meet his good friend in Heisenberg.
Nils Pol was the same name as Einstein at the time.
So after Boll met Heisenberg, ah,
By talking,
I feel that the future of this child is limitless.
And then he said to Heisenberg,
Say you can study the quantum realm,
You should be able to do a lot in this direction.
And Heisenberg did that.
It took him three years.
took erudition .
And then,
And with the funding of the Rosenbergler Foundation,
Began to study quantum theory.
And soon it was 1926.
Heisenberg founded quantum mechanics,
became the father of quantum mechanics,
And he published the uncertainty principle that shocked the world.
Heisenberg’s name resounded throughout the academic community.
And at this time he was only twenty-five years old.
Same
Oppenheimer came to Germany to study.
Introduced by his teacher Max Bonn,
He met Heisenberg.
Many years later,
In Oppenheimer’s memoirs,
Once described Heisenberg like this,
It was a time when the stars were shining,
And Heisenberg is like a rising sun,
Let the other stars become dim in front of him.
And what about Heisenberg, after he created quantum mechanics.
I partnered with Boll to study quantum theory.
At the same time, he also mentored many students.
Like the father of the American hydrogen bomb Taylor, which we talked about in the last issue,
He was one of his many students.
Then Ah Heisenberg began to travel to China, Japan, India, the United States and other countries for lecture tours.
At the same time, he also co-published a paper with his good friend Wolfgang Cannon on the combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics.
This also lays the basic framework for quantum field theory.
Einstein soon learned that this young man thought he was very powerful.
So, with Einstein’s nomination,
Heisenberg won the Nobel Prize in 1932.
And then in the blink of an eye, it was 1933.
Hitler’s good friends in Heisenberg fled Germany because of their Jewish identity,
And Heisenberg was also defined by the Nazis because of these friendships.
For the sake of the white Jews,
Then it began to be investigated and targeted.
Not only that,
Heisenberg was also maliciously attacked by many scholars in the German academic community.
After all, peers are wronged.
Think about it.
Let’s say a few scientists work on something.
After five or six years of hard work, there are no results.
And then suddenly one day you Heisenberg said, hey,
You’ve got it.
Aren’t that people working for nothing in recent years?
So there are very many people who hate ah and envy him.
And finally, after Heisenberg’s mother and his teacher Somerphy got rid of these malicious investigations,
By 1938, nuclear fission was discovered.
At the same time, Heisenberg went to the United States for academic exchanges because of his work.
So friends before Heisenberg,
Most of them came to the United States.
Everyone invited him to stay.
But Heisenberg refused,
He felt like a German,
Shouldn’t leave your country yet.
And then Heisenberg returned to Germany.
He was immediately appointed chief scientist of the Nazi atomic bomb project, and soon Heisenberg gave a popular explanation of the atomic bomb in Germany.
He used a mousetrap to make a very graphic presentation.
And he said, these stoppers are like neutron traps.
Like the nucleus when the cork begins to hit the trap,
It’s going to be a chain reaction one after another.
But the key point in all this is not the neutron.
It’s this hood that traps neutrons.
What if you don’t have this cover?
The cork will fly everywhere with a chain reaction,
It won’t happen either.
And this hood is right, two, three, five, the critical mass is the key to everything.
So, once the critical mass is miscalculated,
You can’t make an atomic bomb.
So the content of Heisenberg’s speech, ah,
It was soon known by Jewish scientists in the United States,
They know very well the strength of Heisenberg.
So ah, a lot of people came to ask Einstein’s opinion.
So what about Einstein, after thinking about it, ah?
I immediately wrote to the then US President Roosevelt, saying,
Germany is developing an atomic bomb,
We’ve got to build it before they.
Otherwise ah ah is dangerous.
soon
Roosevelt approved the emergency plan for the development of the atomic bomb,
And he left the matter to Oppenheimer.
But in fact, ah, Oppenheimer, he himself has no confidence at all.
Because he knew Heisenberg,
He felt that even if he tied scientists all over the world,
Not as fast as Heisenberg’s research.
But what he didn’t know was that
Heisenberg in the process of research,
Gradually began to worry that he was afraid that the Nazis would use this weapon to destroy the world.
So he found Niels Boul.
Expressed his thoughts .
What about Boll has the same concern.
So ah, they wanted to find all the scientists together to create a coalition of anti-bomb physicists to stop the development of nuclear weapons.
But here’s the interesting thing.
Other scientists are suspicious of the purpose of the two of them.
And they think they’re trying to prevent others from studying it in this way.
Let yourself be behind closed doors ah build your own nuclear weapons.
So no one came to join them.
And the Nazis thought that Heisenberg was sabotaging the atomic bomb program,
So I launched another investigation into him.
In desperation,
Heisenberg had to help the Nazis build a nuclear reactor.
And this also made the Nazis continue to believe in him.
So when the Nazis asked Heisenberg how much research funding was needed,
Heisenberg said,
All I need is a small house and a basement.
This request, ah,
Directly confused the German army .
Because the U.S. is investing billions of dollars in research.
Why don’t you want anything?
Although the Germans do not understand,
However, he did as Heisenberg was told.
At the same time, the team of scientists here in the United States,
Under Oppenheimer’s leadership,
Efforts are being made to develop the atomic bomb.
And then in December 1944,
Heisenberg was invited to neutral Switzerland to attend a small physics seminar there.
And the American side knows the news.
They thought it was the perfect opportunity to assassinate Heisenberg.
So he sent a CIA spy to carry out the assassination.
This spy is called Merberg.
He is not only fluent in German,
The upper echelon, who is also a professional baseball player with the Boston Red Sox, told him,
If it is determined that Heisenberg made progress on the atomic bomb,
Just shoot him immediately.
But Berg didn’t kill Heisenberg.
He came back and reported,
Heisenberg gives the impression that
It’s as if he wasn’t involved in the development of the atomic bomb at all.
And after that,
By 1945,
What about the war between the Allies and the Nazis is over.
And what about the Allies, after entering Germany,
There are only two things that I care about the most.
Is Hitler dead or not?
What about the other one?
To what extent was Heisenberg’s atomic bomb developed?
O Allies, soon interrogated,
Heisenberg
And the interrogation was recorded.
And finally, it’s written in the transcript of the interrogation.
Heisenberg said,
He began to think about the development of the atomic bomb in 1939.
But when calculating the critical mass of right-two-three-five,
He miscalculated,
So it hasn’t been developed.
Although everyone thinks this explanation is a bit far-fetched,
But after all, Germany didn’t build an atomic bomb.
So ah, everyone believes so.
Although after the atomic bomb was used by Macau,
When he felt fear and regret,
He should have understood.
Why did Heisenberg miscalculate,
Why he was the first to develop the atomic bomb.
