Trinity

Sixty-three years ago today, the US tested the first atomic weapon. The device was a plutonium bomb, very much like the one that would be dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9 of the same year. This isn't one of those round-number anniversaries that usually prompts people to think about where we've come from and what this means for us now, but it does raise for me a few questions about nuclear technologies. Does their pedigree, having begun as weapons of mass destruction, make them ethically unsuitable for practical or peaceful purposes? Does the danger of their potential use or misuse outweigh their benefits? Who should get to decide who uses nuclear material for what purposes?
I've posted here the admittedly dry account of the Trinity explosion by physicist Luiz Alvarez, who was observing the test from a B-29. While not hugely interesting in and of itself, it illustrates how easy it can be to get information directly from the original source. A good source also allows us to understand its own bias.
Politics is perennially guilty of putting human-made "truths" ahead of objective facts. Likewise, many people and groups seem to work to recast history in their own image, selectively highlighting and suppressing events, memories, and outcomes in an attempt to legitimize their present situation and aims. People repeat these half-truths, these convenient omissions, Convincing Numerical Factoids, glimmering generalities, and the flat-out lies until they become their own truth. In most cases, we don't know where they came from and we don't care, because they support the conclusion that we started with. Instead of wandering like so many sheep, shouldn't we get as much information as possible directly from the source? Shouldn't we question the objectivity and authority our sources?

Image source: National Archives and Records Administration; ARC Identifier 594933