Trinity Detonated: The Atomic Age Dawns in New Mexico
J. Robert Oppenheimer named the test site "Trinity," possibly after John Donne's Holy Sonnets, and watched the first nuclear detonation from a bunker ten miles away on July 16, 1945. The 20-kiloton plutonium implosion device, nicknamed "The Gadget," vaporized its steel tower and turned the desert sand into a new mineral called trinitite. The flash was visible from 200 miles away. Oppenheimer later said he recalled the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." The test proved the implosion design worked, directly enabling the bombing of Nagasaki three weeks later. Humanity had crossed a threshold it could never uncross.
July 16, 1945
81 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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