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Images that changed the world: Trinity nuclear test


At a glance, if the picture were in, say, black and white, you might mistake the central object at the bottom of the photo as a tree in full bloom. But, make no mistake, this is not a tree, far from it, it is the antithesis of what a tree stands for – it is an image of frightening violence, created, in part, to fight off evil.

On July 16th 1945, in the Jornada del Muerto desert in New Mexico, The United States of America conducted the first test of a nuclear bomb. It was called Trinity and Jack Aeby, an American mechanical engineer, captured the only well exposed colour photograph of this historic moment. For the first time ever, humanity now possessed the means to be able to destroy itself completely.

The picture is typical of the visual most commonly associated with an explosion, the power of the blast characterised by fiery orange, yellow and a scorching white hue. Beyond the physical form of the explosion, there is a pad of orange hue, like someone has blotted around the blast, all against a black backdrop (it exploded at 05:29 local time). It was so bright that residents in a distant neighbouring community would tell tales of how the sun rose twice that day.

Witnessing this monumental moment along with other notable scientists and military officers, Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist at the heart of the Manhattan Project – the US’s secret programme to create the first atomic bomb – is said to have quoted the following passage from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

It's a commanding photograph, distinct in that the characteristic shape of an atomic bomb, the mushroom, has not yet taken form. Instead, Aeby has caught the narrative early on, when the explosion had begun its onward physical ascent into the skies and its force outwards in all directions.

However, that is not the only reason why the image is striking. It’s what happened afterwards.

Less than a month later, the US dropped the "little boy" atomic bomb on Hiroshima (August 6th) and then another nicknamed "fat man" on Nagasaki (August 9th). The destruction of both cities was absolute and it ended the war.

Most of the dead were civilians.

President Harry S. Truman, who gave the order for both bombs to be dropped, said: "I realise the tragic significance of the atomic bomb... It is an awful responsibility which has come to us... We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that he may guide us to use it in his ways and for his purposes."

It is the only time that nuclear bombs have been dropped in warfare. Where trinity showed what was possible theoretically, the following bombs showed what was possible in reality. The photograph of the blast from the first ever testing of an atomic bomb is an image of philosophical enquiry that will be long debated. It humbled those involved in creating it, men who saw it as not, as Oppenheimer described, as a "destroyer of worlds", but as an instrument that could be used to preserve worlds.

The irony of this is all too palpable as is what the image represents. It looks like one solitary tree, yet no trees would stand in its wake.

That the Nazis were already attempting to purify uranium-235 before the Second World War broke out adds a further weight to the image. In their hands, who knows what damage could have been done.

 

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