Long before it was created, the bomb drove people of the highest intellect mad

The book “Thug Squad: The Alsos Mission, or Who Stopped the Nazis from Creating the Atomic Bomb” by Sam Keen, an American writer and journalist, author of best-selling books on the history of science, is being published in Russia, the most famous of which is called “The Disappearing Spoon, or Amazing Stories from the Life of a Periodical periodic table In his new work, Keane talks about how the American nuclear program began - and about the role that Nazi Germany played in its launch, which achieved considerable success in the study of the atom at the beginning of World War II.

Meduza publishes an excerpt from this book maud ray kent While Samuel Goudsmit was worried about his parents in Holland, the rest of the scientific world was worried about the fate of another missing person - the Dane Niels Bohr.

After the Wehrmacht captured Copenhagen in April 1940, all contact with Bohr was cut off, and many of his friends and colleagues feared that the physicist was dead It turned out that everything was fine with Bor - he was scared, but safe and sound.

To reassure everyone, he arranged through various underground channels for Lise Meitner, still in exile in Sweden, to send a telegram to England It read: “Recently I saw Niels and Margrethe [Bohr's wife].

Both are fine, but upset about what is happening Please inform Cockcroft and Maud Ray Kent.

" The telegram elicited three consecutive reactions First, relief: Bor is alive.

But relief quickly turned to confusion The Cockcroft mentioned was John Cockcroft, a Cambridge physicist and future Nobel laureate.

It was natural for Bohr to turn to him But who the hell is Maud Ray Kent? Someone finally inquired about it from Cockcroft, and then confusion turned to panic.

Cockcroft liked to solve ciphered British-style crosswords and other word puzzles, and looking closely at the name, he realized that the letters were an anagram: "Maud Ray Kent" (Maud Ray Kent) meant "radium taken" (radium taken) In other words, the Nazis seized radium from Bohr's institute, no doubt for their atomic bomb project.

This news greatly damaged the morale of British scientists There were already rumors in the intelligence services about Germany's interest in nuclear weapons, and Bohr's anagram added to the tension.

In response, the British government created an advisory council on nuclear weapons, which became known as the MOU Committee (The name was inspired by the name in Bohr's report, although someone later came up with a suitable spelling for it - "Military applications of uranium detonation.

" ) The Committee made its main contribution to the war in July 1941, when it released a secret report showing how frighteningly real the creation of the atomic bomb was He estimates that as little as 11.

35 kilograms of enriched uranium could explode with a lethal force equal to that of 1,600 tons of TNT (In fact, the power of the atom was rather underestimated here: the complete fission of 11.

35 kilograms of uranium-235 would release energy equal to the energy of the explosion of 174,800 tons of TNT ) Moreover, the report suggested that such a weapon could well appear in two years - that is, if the Germans put pressure on the gas, Hitler will get a bomb in the middle of 1943.

The report caused confusion in scientific circles Prior to this, many prominent physicists, recognizing the serious potential of atomic weapons, always expressed doubt that their appearance was really possible.

They proved that some hitherto unaccounted for factor, or some new law of nature, would undoubtedly make such a weapon impossible, is a classic example of how hope rules logic The MOU report buried this hope.

Committee member physicist James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron in 1932, said that when he finally realized the true threat of atomic weapons, he had to start swallowing pills to sleep at night, and he could never sleep without them again The MOU Committee recommended that the UK launch an urgent program to build an atomic bomb.

At the same time, given the need for large-scale investment in industry, the committee recognized that the limited capacity of the British economy would not allow such a project to be carried out alone Therefore, the UK should cooperate with the United States, which have rich natural resources and are outside the range of German bombers.

To this end, the MOU sent copies of the report to Lyman Briggs, a leading nuclear scientist in the US, who collaborated with the committee on a semi-official basis He was asked to circulate the report to US officials and report on the results.

A whole week passed without a word from Briggs The second week has passed.

A month and a half has passed Finally, one of the members of the MOU, who visited the US at the end of August, decided to find out what was the reason for the delay.

According to him, to his amazement and indignation, he, "visiting Briggs in Washington, learned that this laconic and unremarkable man had put the documents in a safe and did not show them to anyone " In other words, a terrified Briggs read the report and, like a five-year-old covering his ears during a thunderstorm, I decided to lock up this terrible document and pretend that it does not exist.

Even long before its creation, the bomb drove people of the highest intellect crazy But even without Briggs' help, British and American physicists eventually met and agreed to work together to build the atomic bomb.

And just in time, because by that time Germany had already been working on nuclear weapons for two years .