Ghost Bomb
Ghost Bomb is a science fiction horror film loosely based on the demon core: a plutonium sphere involved in two criticality accidents at the Los Alamos Laboratory on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each resulting in a fatality.
In the News
Bloodmoney Nights is a science fiction historical drama novel by Philip K. Dick.
The Day the Bomb Cried is an unfinished and unreleased 1972 Swedish-French war film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis.
Pulp Fission is a black comedy war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.
History (nonfiction)
The demon core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimeters (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb.
The core was prepared for shipment as part of the third nuclear weapon to be used in Japan, but when Japan surrendered, the core was retained at Los Alamos for testing and potential later use.
It was involved in two criticality accidents at the Los Alamos Laboratory on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each resulting in a fatality. Both experiments were designed to demonstrate how close the core was to criticality with a tamper, but in each case, the core was accidentally placed into a critical configuration. Physicists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin suffered acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and died soon after, while others present in the lab were also exposed.
The core was melted down in summer 1946 and the material recycled for use in other cores.
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Harry Daghlian (nonfiction)
- Demon core (nonfiction)
- Gnomon Chronicles (nonfiction)
- Louis Slotin (nonfiction)
- The Day the Bomb Cried
External links
- Demon core @ Wikipedia
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