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Is in a kind of eastern metaphysical way of it is a act of destruction and creation potentially at the same time, act of war and an act of peace, that this thing, if mishandled, could end humanity, but if properly handled and harnessed, could actually lead to an era of peace and prosperity for the entire world. (playful chatter) conant: by the summer of 45, they had been working on the implosion design for a year, tweaking, devising and struggling with the challenges. wellerstein: for this thing to work, all of those explosives and their detonators and the things powering them and the batteries and everything else has got to work perfectly. and there wasn t a really good way to figure out ....
That he wasn t on. herken: the inaugural issue ofphysics today simply showed a porkpie hat on a cyclotron control. and everybody knew the porkpie hat was oppenheimer. (lively chatter) conant: he becomes a rock star. he is the oracle of american science. and he liked that. he probably felt that he d finally come through it al and he was no longer the outsider. now he was not only at the center of things but that he stood at the very top. (applause) and that, i think, was intoxicating for him. but at the same time, he felt a real responsibility for having ushered this weapon into the world. ....
It was a world-changing moment, and a lot of the scientists realized that. now came the business of what the government would do with their creation. conant: groves hurried back to his washington office and cabled the news that the bomb experiment had been a success and even more powerful than they had anticipated. this information is transmitted to truman, who. entire attitude changes at potsdam. he suddenly feels like he has a win in-in sight. he suddenly starts bossing around stalin. he decides the japanese get no concessions whatsoever. truman had known that this existed since he became president, but to know it actually works and it s even more powerful than we thought, that s a really different position for him to be in. our demand has been, and it remains, ....
Wellerstein: the deck is stacked against him, and it s ugly. they re wiretapping his conversations with his lawyer illegally and giving it to the prosecution so that they know exactly what s gonna happen. they are able to look at classified fbi files. he is not because he doesn t have a clearance, and he can t look at his own fbi file as a result. rhodes: oppenheimer s involvement with jean tatlock, the question of whether his brother had been a communis and still was, those were the things they pulled out of the files. conant: one of the most damning pieces of evidence that was brought out was the fact that, during the war, there had been a conversation at his home in berkeley with haakon chevalier, his old friend, who had mentioned to him that there was a way perhaps that he could leak information about the atomic project he was working on to soviet officials. now, oppenheimer had dismissed it at the time, ....
They fell in love, and by 1940, she was pregnant. (laughs) sherwin: they live ever after. and notice i didn t say happily. (laughs) they are devoted to each other. but it s a difficult marriage because of the complexity of robert s life of their personalities, of the environment in which they live. nolan: she was an academic, and she was a biologist and a botanist, and ultimately, that work was all put to one side for the years at los alamos. i think she was very frustrated by being put in the position of a mother and a wife and nothing else. conant: she did not thrive at los alamos. ....