Friday fact: Some A-bomb scientists feared exploding even one might destroy earth's atmosphere

Chanced upon a trailer for the upcoming film "Oppenheimer," in which this possibility is discussed.

Here's a scene from the trailer in which General Leslie Groves and Dr. Oppenheimer discuss the possibility that even just testing an atomic bomb would set off a nuclear chain reaction that would annihilate the earth's atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95jkwo5oqi

Evidently some form of this conversation actually did take place, not only between Oppenheimer and Groves, but also between the atomic scientists working at Los Alamos themselves.

According to this article:

http://factmyth.com/factoids/scientists-thought-the-first-atom-bomb-tested-might-destroy-the-world/#:~:text=when%20the%20plutonium%20bomb%20to%20be%20dropped%20on,first%20tests%20were%20done%2c%20not%20everyone%20was%20convinced.

the scientists even had a "betting pool" going on among themselves as to whether detonation of the test bomb would indeed destroy the world.

(No explanation given as to how the bet winners would have collected their winnings, if the bomb had done just that).

But a reason I'm posting this OT topic is to point out that, while it was a chilling situation that existed back in 1945, in A-bomb testing days, something similar has as well happened more recently, and could well happen again in the future. So we can't just forget about it.

The more recent occurrence of this kind of situation was in 2003, when scientists at CERN in Europe proposed creating superminiature black holes, to be studied in subatomic experiments.

Remember that? That and along with it the fear, or more like dread, among some, that if the scientists did indeed create even a small black hole, that it might somehow get out of control, start gobbling up all the matter of the earth, trees, rocks, dirt, oceans, and us, and there would now be only a black hole orbiting the sun where the earth used to be?

There was even talk at the time of some national legislatures passing laws to outlaw such experiments, "just to be safe!"

Of course the ominous black hole threat, like the A-bomb atmosphere killer, turned out to be a non-issue, fortunately.

But which leads to the question: what might be the next scary and controversial experiment, which the physicists will guarantee us will be perfectly safe, and we have nothing to worry about?

Maybe something to do with matter-antimatter, or the like? ("Well OF COURSE the force field will keep the matter and antimatter apart from each other!").

(BTW, a little research reveals that, according to one web estimate

1 ounce matter + 1 ounce antimatter = 1.22 megaton H-bomb

Interesting).

A-bombs? Mini black holes? Doomsday? Maybe we've just been lucky so far. We're still here.

Or, maybe the scientists really do know what they're doing.

Let's just hope that is and continues to be the case.

The one that worries me is AI. I just finished reading an article in the Phoenix paper about the AI being put in children's toy dolls (made in China, of course). The toy can learn all sorts of stuff from the child (and his parents) and talk back and do who knows what with the information. Just like the old Twilight Zone episode with Telly Savalas and the talking doll.

Prior to CERN's Large Hadron Collider becoming operational, there were a few people who theorized that there was a chance that it could destroy the world either by creating a black hole that consumes the earth or by the creation of strangelets that will destroy all matter in the universe.

When I was in Vietnam in 1972, rumors were flying thick and fast that Nixon was going to drop an A-Bomb on Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital after the Easter Offensive where 30,000 troops crossed the DMZ from North to South Vietnam. I mentioned that a long time ago on this forum, and one of our moderators, Tudpock, wrote that when Nixon's papers were declassified 20 years ago, he WAS seriously considered dropping the atom bomb on North Vietnam. For anyone interested, I recommend Max Hastings' tome, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975.