Leo Szilard: 1. Moonshine

The Bomb

BBC

History

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A little-known scientist discovers something that will change the course of human history.

After befriending some of the world’s greatest physicists in 1920s Berlin, Albert Einstein among them, Leo Szilard is forced to flee when the Nazis come to power. In London, he discovers the destructive possibilities of harnessing nuclear power; setting the course for the world’s first atomic bomb.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's not often that you can pinpoint the moment in history when the whole world changes.
0:13.0	A moment when everything collides.
0:16.0	Science, politics, war, and human life. Oh 905, 31,600 feet.
0:28.0	Airspeed 200 miles per hour.
0:31.0	10 minutes to the AP. There are invisible particles that power our universe.
0:37.0	They're all around us and part of us.
0:41.0	0912, radio operator reports three planes have been spotted on the approach.
0:47.0	Adams.
0:49.0	I'm not a scientist, but I've always imagined them as a miniature version of our solar system.
0:55.0	The nucleus, like the sun, with electrons orbiting around like planets.
1:10.6	Within that nucleus, protons and neutrons are packed tightly together in an unimaginably small space, bound by the strongest known force in existence.
1:18.0	To meddle with that force is to question the fundamentals of our world as we know it.
1:25.0	To break it is to tear the very fabric of the universe.
1:29.0	The atom contains the power of infinite potential and destruction.
1:37.0	09-15 and 15 seconds.
1:41.0	Bay doors open and little boy drops clear of its restraining hook.
1:46.4	Bombs away.
1:50.5	On the morning of August 6th, 1945, it takes just 43 seconds for the deadliest bomb the world has ever known to find its target.
2:00.0	Hiroshima, Japan, Population 350,000. Oh, 0.1 second.1 second.
2:35.0	second. The fireball has expanded to 100 feet in diameter combined with the temperature of
2:39.9	500,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
2:42.0	One second. 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
	...

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