Re:A Man from the Future – John von Neumann’s nuclear vision
by Animats on Sunday December 26, 2021 @03:13AM
(#29690648)
Well, not really. The atomic bomb didn't really require quantum mechanics to build. Certainly not the gun bomb. That's two hunks of enriched uranium forced together. Implosion was tougher, but mostly a hydrodynamics problem. H-bombs required much more theory.
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Re:A Man from the Future – John von Neumann’s nuclear vision
by IAmYourDensity on Sunday December 26, 2021 @08:55AM
(#29692363)
Yes, you probably don't need QM to design a gun bomb, but to build one you do need 64kg of enriched U-235 and for that you need a Manhattan Project and for that you need Einstein to write a letter to the President and for that you need Bohr & Wheeler to write "The Mechanism of Nuclear Fission" in 1939 and confidently explain that it could work and for that you need QM.
Re:A Man from the Future – John von Neumann’s nuclear vision
by daniel-cussen on Sunday December 26, 2021 @11:09AM
(#29693538)
And they could only produce a single gun bomb. The other one had to be Plutonium, meaning it had to have a neutron trigger, IIRC that involved Bohr. It took two bombs to end the war.