The Computing Effort That Made Trinity Possible
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WINTER 2013 - Volume 60, Number 4 the Air Force Historical Foundation Founded on May 27, 1953 by Gen Carl A
WINTER 2013 - Volume 60, Number 4 WWW.AFHISTORICALFOUNDATION.ORG The Air Force Historical Foundation Founded on May 27, 1953 by Gen Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS and other air power pioneers, the Air Force Historical All members receive our exciting and informative Foundation (AFHF) is a nonprofi t tax exempt organization. Air Power History Journal, either electronically or It is dedicated to the preservation, perpetuation and on paper, covering: all aspects of aerospace history appropriate publication of the history and traditions of American aviation, with emphasis on the U.S. Air Force, its • Chronicles the great campaigns and predecessor organizations, and the men and women whose the great leaders lives and dreams were devoted to fl ight. The Foundation • Eyewitness accounts and historical articles serves all components of the United States Air Force— Active, Reserve and Air National Guard. • In depth resources to museums and activities, to keep members connected to the latest and AFHF strives to make available to the public and greatest events. today’s government planners and decision makers information that is relevant and informative about Preserve the legacy, stay connected: all aspects of air and space power. By doing so, the • Membership helps preserve the legacy of current Foundation hopes to assure the nation profi ts from past and future US air force personnel. experiences as it helps keep the U.S. Air Force the most modern and effective military force in the world. • Provides reliable and accurate accounts of historical events. The Foundation’s four primary activities include a quarterly journal Air Power History, a book program, a • Establish connections between generations. -
01 Freer.Pdf
John Henry Poynting First Prof Physics Birmingham 1880-1914 Rudolf Peierls 1907-1995 Birmingham 1937+ (holes in semiconductors) Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant 1901-2000 Birmingham 1937-1950 Otto Frisch (1904-1979) Bham 1939+ co-discover of 2H, 3H and 3He Role in first demonstration of nuclear fusion Got plans from Lawrence for Birmingham’s cyclotron John Bell 1928-1990 CPT 1951 Birmingham Luders-Pauli Thm Freeman-Dyson Tony Skyrme (1922-1987) Birmingham, 1949-51 Why are light nuclei so important – Understanding cutting edge theory ? [Otsuka et al., PRL 95 (05) 232502] Tensor correlations [Otsuka et al., PRL 97 (06) 162501] Neutron – proton interaction - - - + + + + - 8Be Ab initio type approaches (Greens Function Monte Carlo) 13 11 + 9 4 7 Ex [MeV] [MeV] Ex Ex 5 3 2+ 1 + -1 0 -1 4 9 14 19 24 Pieper and J(J+1) Wiringa, ANL 9 Ab initio no-core solutions for nuclear structure: Be P. Maris, C. Cockrell, M. Caprio and J.P. Vary Total density Proton - Neutron density Shows that one neutron provides a “ring ” cloud around two alpha clusters binding them together Chase Cockrell, ISU PhD student 12 C Chiral EFT on the lattice 32 S 24 Mg 9Be 9B PHYSICAL REVIEW C 86 , 057306 (2012), PHYSICAL REVIEW C 86 , 014312 (2012) 10 Be 12 C 10 C Characterization of 10 Be * Gas inlet LAMP array Window (2.5 um mylar) LAMP 6He LEDA LAMP LEDA Collimator M. Freer, et al. PRL 2006 Test of method- measure 10.36 MeV 4 + resonance In 16 O ( 12 C+ α) LAMP LEDA LAMP LEDA Resonances in 16 O E( 12 C)=16 MeV Singles Coincidence 10 10 4He Energy Energy (MeV) (MeV) 12 C 0 0 8 24 8 24 Angle Angle Gas pressure = 100 Torr LAMP LEDA LAMP 4 Energy ( 12 C) LEDA θcm ( He) 180 0 Energy ( 4He) 12 180 θcm ( C) Resonance analysis Counts 6000 - =121 mm detector 2000 - (E, θw) ddet window Distance/2+20 (mm) θw θlab dreaction 2 |P 4(cos( θcm )| θcm 6He+ 4He at 7.5 MeV – 7Li+ 7Li the 10.15 MeV state in 10 Be N. -
The Making of an Atomic Bomb
(Image: Courtesy of United States Government, public domain.) INTRODUCTORY ESSAY "DESTROYER OF WORLDS": THE MAKING OF AN ATOMIC BOMB At 5:29 a.m. (MST), the world’s first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexican desert, releasing a level of destructive power unknown in the existence of humanity. Emitting as much energy as 21,000 tons of TNT and creating a fireball that measured roughly 2,000 feet in diameter, the first successful test of an atomic bomb, known as the Trinity Test, forever changed the history of the world. The road to Trinity may have begun before the start of World War II, but the war brought the creation of atomic weaponry to fruition. The harnessing of atomic energy may have come as a result of World War II, but it also helped bring the conflict to an end. How did humanity come to construct and wield such a devastating weapon? 1 | THE MANHATTAN PROJECT Models of Fat Man and Little Boy on display at the Bradbury Science Museum. (Image: Courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.) WE WAITED UNTIL THE BLAST HAD PASSED, WALKED OUT OF THE SHELTER AND THEN IT WAS ENTIRELY SOLEMN. WE KNEW THE WORLD WOULD NOT BE THE SAME. A FEW PEOPLE LAUGHED, A FEW PEOPLE CRIED. MOST PEOPLE WERE SILENT. J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER EARLY NUCLEAR RESEARCH GERMAN DISCOVERY OF FISSION Achieving the monumental goal of splitting the nucleus The 1930s saw further development in the field. Hungarian- of an atom, known as nuclear fission, came through the German physicist Leo Szilard conceived the possibility of self- development of scientific discoveries that stretched over several sustaining nuclear fission reactions, or a nuclear chain reaction, centuries. -
6. Knowledge, Information, and Entropy the Book John Von
6. Knowledge, Information, and Entropy The book John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics contains a fascinating and informative article written by Eckehart Kohler entitled “Why von Neumann Rejected Carnap’s Dualism of Information Concept.” The topic is precisely the core issue before us: How is knowledge connected to physics? Kohler illuminates von Neumann’s views on this subject by contrasting them to those of Carnap. Rudolph Carnap was a distinguished philosopher, and member of the Vienna Circle. He was in some sense a dualist. He had studied one of the central problems of philosophy, namely the distinction between analytic statements and synthetic statements. (The former are true or false by virtue of a specified set of rules held in our minds, whereas the latter are true or false by virtue their concordance with physical or empirical facts.) His conclusions had led him to the idea that there are two different domains of truth, one pertaining to logic and mathematics and the other to physics and the natural sciences. This led to the claim that there are “Two Concepts of Probability,” one logical the other physical. That conclusion was in line with the fact that philosophers were then divided between two main schools as to whether probability should be understood in terms of abstract idealizations or physical sequences of outcomes of measurements. Carnap’s bifurcations implied a similar division between two different concepts of information, and of entropy. In 1952 Carnap was working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and about to publish a work on his dualistic theory of information, according to which epistemological concepts like information should be treated separately from physics. -
The Skyrme Model Fundamentals Methods Applications
springer.com Physics : Elementary Particles, Quantum Field Theory Makhankov, V.G., Rybakov, Y.P., Sanyuk, V.I. The Skyrme Model Fundamentals Methods Applications The December 1988 issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics A is dedicated to the memory of Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme. It contains an informative account of his life by Dalitz and Aitchison's reconstruction of a talk by Skyrme on the origin of the Skyrme model. From these pages, we learn that Tony Skyrme was born in England in December 1922. He grew up in that country during a period of increasing economic and political turbulence in Europe and elsewhere. In 1943, after Cambridge, he joined the British war effort in making the atomic bomb. He was associated with military projects throughout the war years and began his career as an academic theoretical physicist only in 1946. During 1946-61, he was associated with Cambridge, Birmingham and Harwell and was engaged in wide-ranging investigations in nuclear physics. It was this research which eventually culminated in his studies of nonlinear field theories and his remarkable proposals for the description of the nucleon as a chiral soliton. In his talk, Skyrme described the reasons behind his extraordinary sug• gestions, which Springer when first made must have seemed bizarre. According to him, ideas of this sort go back many Softcover reprint of the decades and occur in the work of Sir William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin. Skyrme 1st original 1st ed. 1993, XVIII, edition had heard of Kelvin in his youth. 265 p. Order online at springer.com/booksellers Springer Nature Customer Service Center LLC Printed book 233 Spring Street Softcover New York, NY 10013 Printed book USA Softcover T: +1-800-SPRINGER NATURE ISBN 978-3-642-84672-4 (777-4643) or 212-460-1500 [email protected] $ 109,99 Available Discount group Professional Books (2) Product category Monograph Series Springer Series in Nuclear and Particle Physics Other renditions Softcover ISBN 978-3-642-84671-7 Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. -
Monte Carlo Simulation in Statistics with a View to Recent Ideas
(sfi)2 Statistics for Innovation Monte Carlo simulation in statistics, with a view to recent ideas Arnoldo Frigessi [email protected] THE JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS VOLUME 21, NUMBER 6 JUNE, 1953 Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines NICHOLAS METROPOLIS, ARIANNA W. ROSENBLUTH, MARSHALL N. ROSENBLUTH, AND AUGUSTA H. TELLER, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico AND EDWARD TELLER, * Department of Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (Received March 6, 1953) A general method, suitable for fast computing machines, for investigating such properties as equations of state for substances consisting of interacting individual molecules is described. The method consists of a modified Monte Carlo integration over configuration space. Results for the two-dimensional rigid-sphere system have been obtained on the Los Alamos MANIAC and are presented here. These results are compared to the free volume equation of state and to a four-term virial coefficient expansion. The Metropolis algorithm from1953 has been cited as among the top 10 algorithms having the "greatest influence on the development and practice of science and engineering in the 20th century." MANIAC The MANIAC II 1952 Multiplication took a milli- second. (Metropolis choose the name MANIAC in the hope of stopping the rash of ”silly” acronyms for machine names.) Some MCMC milestones 1953 Metropolis Heat bath, dynamic Monte Carlo 1970 Hastings Political Analysis, 10:3 (2002) Society for Political Methodology 1984 Geman & Geman Gibbs -
Are Information, Cognition and the Principle of Existence Intrinsically
Adv. Studies Theor. Phys., Vol. 7, 2013, no. 17, 797 - 818 HIKARI Ltd, www.m-hikari.com http://dx.doi.org/10.12988/astp.2013.3318 Are Information, Cognition and the Principle of Existence Intrinsically Structured in the Quantum Model of Reality? Elio Conte(1,2) and Orlando Todarello(2) (1)School of International Advanced Studies on Applied Theoretical and non Linear Methodologies of Physics, Bari, Italy (2)Department of Neurosciences and Sense Organs University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Bari, Italy Copyright © 2013 Elio Conte and Orlando Todarello. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract The thesis of this paper is that Information, Cognition and a Principle of Existence are intrinsically structured in the quantum model of reality. We reach such evidence by using the Clifford algebra. We analyze quantization in some traditional cases of quantum mechanics and, in particular in quantum harmonic oscillator, orbital angular momentum and hydrogen atom. Keywords: information, quantum cognition, principle of existence, quantum mechanics, quantization, Clifford algebra. Corresponding author: [email protected] Introduction The earliest versions of quantum mechanics were formulated in the first decade of the 20th century following about the same time the basic discoveries of physics as 798 Elio Conte and Orlando Todarello the atomic theory and the corpuscular theory of light that was basically updated by Einstein. Early quantum theory was significantly reformulated in the mid- 1920s by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan, who created matrix mechanics, Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrodinger who introduced wave mechanics, and Wolfgang Pauli and Satyendra Nath Bose who introduced the statistics of subatomic particles. -
Trinity Scientific Firsts
TRINITY SCIENTIFIC FIRSTS THE TRINITY TEST was perhaps the greatest scientifi c experiment ever. Seventy-fi ve years ago, Los Alamos scientists and engineers from the U.S., Britain, and Canada changed the world. July 16, 1945 marks the entry into the Atomic Age. PLUTONIUM: THE BETHE-FEYNMAN FORMULA: Scientists confi rmed the newly discovered 239Pu has attractive nuclear Nobel Laureates Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman developed the physics fi ssion properties for an atomic weapon. They were able to discern which equation used to estimate the yield of a fi ssion weapon, building on earlier production path would be most effective based on nuclear chemistry, and work by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls. The equation elegantly encapsulates separated plutonium from Hanford reactor fuel. essential physics involved in the nuclear explosion process. PRECISION HIGH-EXPLOSIVE IMPLOSION FOUNDATIONAL RADIOCHEMICAL TO CREATE A SUPER-CRITICAL ASSEMBLY: YIELD ANALYSIS: Project Y scientists developed simultaneously-exploding bridgewire detonators Wartime radiochemistry techniques developed and used at Trinity with a pioneering high-explosive lens system to create a symmetrically provide the foundation for subsequent analyses of nuclear detonations, convergent detonation wave to compress the core. both foreign and domestic. ADVANCED IMAGING TECHNIQUES: NEW FRONTIERS IN COMPUTING: Complementary diagnostics were developed to optimize the implosion Human computers and IBM punched-card machines together calculated design, including fl ash x-radiography, the RaLa method, -
A Selected Bibliography of Publications By, and About, J
A Selected Bibliography of Publications by, and about, J. Robert Oppenheimer Nelson H. F. Beebe University of Utah Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB 155 S 1400 E RM 233 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090 USA Tel: +1 801 581 5254 FAX: +1 801 581 4148 E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Internet) WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ 17 March 2021 Version 1.47 Title word cross-reference $1 [Duf46]. $12.95 [Edg91]. $13.50 [Tho03]. $14.00 [Hug07]. $15.95 [Hen81]. $16.00 [RS06]. $16.95 [RS06]. $17.50 [Hen81]. $2.50 [Opp28g]. $20.00 [Hen81, Jor80]. $24.95 [Fra01]. $25.00 [Ger06]. $26.95 [Wol05]. $27.95 [Ger06]. $29.95 [Goo09]. $30.00 [Kev03, Kle07]. $32.50 [Edg91]. $35 [Wol05]. $35.00 [Bed06]. $37.50 [Hug09, Pol07, Dys13]. $39.50 [Edg91]. $39.95 [Bad95]. $8.95 [Edg91]. α [Opp27a, Rut27]. γ [LO34]. -particles [Opp27a]. -rays [Rut27]. -Teilchen [Opp27a]. 0-226-79845-3 [Guy07, Hug09]. 0-8014-8661-0 [Tho03]. 0-8047-1713-3 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1714-1 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1721-4 [Edg91]. 0-8047-1722-2 [Edg91]. 0-9672617-3-2 [Bro06, Hug07]. 1 [Opp57f]. 109 [Con05, Mur05, Nas07, Sap05a, Wol05, Kru07]. 112 [FW07]. 1 2 14.99/$25.00 [Ber04a]. 16 [GHK+96]. 1890-1960 [McG02]. 1911 [Meh75]. 1945 [GHK+96, Gow81, Haw61, Bad95, Gol95a, Hew66, She82, HBP94]. 1945-47 [Hew66]. 1950 [Ano50]. 1954 [Ano01b, GM54, SZC54]. 1960s [Sch08a]. 1963 [Kuh63]. 1967 [Bet67a, Bet97, Pun67, RB67]. 1976 [Sag79a, Sag79b]. 1981 [Ano81]. 20 [Goe88]. 2005 [Dre07]. 20th [Opp65a, Anoxx, Kai02]. -
ROBERT SERBER March 14, 1909–June 1, 1997
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ROBE R T S E R BE R 1 9 0 9 — 1 9 9 7 A Biographical Memoir by ROBE R T P . Cr E A S E Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 2008 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES WASHINGTON, D.C. AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives ROBERT SERBER March 14, 1909–June 1, 1997 BY ROBE RT P . CREASE OBERT SERBER (elected to the NAS in 1952) was one of Rthe leading theorists during the golden age of U.S. physics. He entered graduate school in 190 before such key discoveries as the neutron, positron, and deuteron and prior to the development of the principal tool of nuclear and high-energy physics, the particle accelerator. He retired from the Columbia University Physics Department (as its chairman) in 1978 after completion of the standard model of elementary particle physics, which comprises almost all known particles and forces in a single package, and which has proven hard to surpass. Shy and unostentatious, Serber did not mind being the detached spectator, and did not care when he was occasionally out of step with the mainstream, whether in politics or phys- ics. Nevertheless, others regularly counted on him for advice: he was an insider among insiders. He seemed to carry the entire field of physics in his head, and his particular strength was a synthetic ability. He could integrate all that was known of an area of physics and articulate it back to others clearly and consistently, explaining the connection of each part to the rest. -
The Convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods 3
The Convergence of Markov chain Monte Carlo Methods: From the Metropolis method to Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Michael Betancourt From its inception in the 1950s to the modern frontiers of applied statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo has been one of the most ubiquitous and successful methods in statistical computing. The development of the method in that time has been fueled by not only increasingly difficult problems but also novel techniques adopted from physics. In this article I will review the history of Markov chain Monte Carlo from its inception with the Metropolis method to the contemporary state-of-the-art in Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. Along the way I will focus on the evolving interplay between the statistical and physical perspectives of the method. This particular conceptual emphasis, not to mention the brevity of the article, requires a necessarily incomplete treatment. A complementary, and entertaining, discussion of the method from the statistical perspective is given in Robert and Casella (2011). Similarly, a more thorough but still very readable review of the mathematics behind Markov chain Monte Carlo and its implementations is given in the excellent survey by Neal (1993). I will begin with a discussion of the mathematical relationship between physical and statistical computation before reviewing the historical introduction of Markov chain Monte Carlo and its first implementations. Then I will continue to the subsequent evolution of the method with increasing more sophisticated implementations, ultimately leading to the advent of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. 1. FROM PHYSICS TO STATISTICS AND BACK AGAIN At the dawn of the twentieth-century, physics became increasingly focused on under- arXiv:1706.01520v2 [stat.ME] 10 Jan 2018 standing the equilibrium behavior of thermodynamic systems, especially ensembles of par- ticles. -
Herman Heine Goldstine
Herman Heine Goldstine Born September 13, 1913, Chicago, Ill.; Army representative to the ENIAC Project, who later worked with John von Neumann on the logical design of the JAS computer which became the prototype for many early computers-ILLIAC, JOHNNIAC, MANIAC author of The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, one of the earliest textbooks on the history of computing. Education: BS, mathematics, University of Chicago, 1933; MS, mathematics, University of Chicago, 1934; PhD, mathematics, University of Chicago, 1936. Professional Experience: University of Chicago: research assistant, 1936-1937, instructor, 1937-1939; assistant professor, University of Michigan, 1939-1941; US Army, Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen, Md., 1941-1946; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, 1946-1957; IBM: director, Mathematics Sciences Department, 1958-1965, IBM fellow, 1969. Honors and Awards: IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award, 1980; National Medal of Science, 1985; member, Information Processing Hall of Fame, Infornart, Dallas, Texas, 1985. Herman H. Goldstine began his scientific career as a mathematician and had a life-long interest in the interaction of mathematical ideas and technology. He received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1936 and was an assistant professor at the University of Michigan when he entered the Army in 1941. After participating in the development of the first electronic computer (ENIAC), he left the Army in 1945, and from 1946 to 1957 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), where he collaborated with John von Neumann in a series of scientific papers on subjects related to their work on the Institute computer. In 1958 he joined IBM Corporation as a member of the research planning staff.