Waitedalongtime wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 6:33 am

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 4th, 2023, 9:50 pm

Crysist wrote: ↑

June 4th, 2023, 8:21 pm

Well, one exciting thing about following a film's production is kind of similar. You only see bits and pieces from very public filming locations. Not the soundstage work, the lesser-known locations, the effects work, all the post work -- even if you think you've seen too much there's still a lot more to it. I think we could be pleasantly surprised. For example, maybe we'll see more of Lawrence's work. I feel like all the "separation processes" are another thing that's hard to avoid in telling this, but I haven't read the book so I'm not sure the amount of emphasis is placed in it.

It's so... orderly. They all seemed so ready just at the right moment. And yet another massive effort. For all Strauss is likely to be portrayed as an antagonist, and even with the anti-Communist sentiments in various members of congress propelling terrible decisions, being wary of Russia in this particular way proved useful.

Also, regarding all this history, I was considering making a dedicated trailer analysis thread. There's a lot of cool details shown so far in the trailers, but most of the topics seem to fizzle out and instead they're just trading the high bitrate trailers and guessing cast. I think there's a lot of small details that attentive history aficionados must really like seeing in the trailers! Even though my own "analysis" so far has been limited to silly visual stuff:

"wow, they reconstructed the guardpost in the correct shape! even the replica Los Alamos has is entirely wrong!"

"is that field supposed to be Stagg field? it looks nothing like it!! my life is not complete without the gothic stands"

"why is the raised platform around the Chicago Pile shaped that way? that looks different from all the drawings/models/photos! plus the pile doesn't have as many bricks!!"

"the number of pieces of tape on the gadget as it's being lifted up is wrong! they forgot half of them! why?!"

"hey I read all those details about the sunscreen and the welder's glasses for the test, cool!!"

"the switches at the base of the tower!!" (someone else mentioned this to me because he played the Infocom text adventure game Trinity and remembered it)

lol

I'd absolutely be onboard with such a thread should you choose to make one. My historical interests focus more on the big picture narrative and the sequence of events, so although I've noticed a couple things in the trailers (the security gate being too close to Los Alamos, CP-1 looking weird), I'd be very curious to see what you and others find. What you list may be "silly visual stuff," but it's the kind of stuff that's always interesting to find and compare with real history, and the more nitpicky, the better, haha (like, I think the stand-in for Stagg Field was filmed at Berkeley).

Personally, I don't think Nolan will spend more than a couple minutes, if any, on the separation/enrichment processes. As much as I'd love for him to show the reactors at Hanford and the racetracks at Oak Ridge, if the focus is on Oppenheimer then I doubt they'll appear (to the best of my recollection, he wasn't involved in the separation business besides endorsing Abelson's method of liquid thermal diffusion). And frankly, despite Strauss' role in pushing forward the detection programs, everything else that Strauss did pretty firmly and rightly secures his role as the film's villain. He was a very unlikeable person who pursued a personal grudge against Oppenheimer to an infuriating and illegal extent, as the book covers in detail. Of course it wasn't just Strauss - Oppenheimer had many enemies in the Air Force, AEC, and among other scientists like Teller and Lawrence - but, more than anyone else, Strauss was the architect of his downfall.

It's gonna be interesting seeing the balance between Oppy as this flawed character who is arguably the architect of his own downfall (as I commented in another thread, chain smoking gave him throat cancer) and also making him this persecuted and sympathetic character. No wonder Nolan called him the most "contradictory" (think that's the word he used) character he's ever tackled. Strauss indeed seems like the "villain" but it's interesting that he apparently did what he did illegally. So he broke laws and rules during this trial process?

LMFTNT wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 8:15 am

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 11:57 am

Waitedalongtime wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 6:33 am

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 4th, 2023, 9:50 pm

I'd absolutely be onboard with such a thread should you choose to make one. My historical interests focus more on the big picture narrative and the sequence of events, so although I've noticed a couple things in the trailers (the security gate being too close to Los Alamos, CP-1 looking weird), I'd be very curious to see what you and others find. What you list may be "silly visual stuff," but it's the kind of stuff that's always interesting to find and compare with real history, and the more nitpicky, the better, haha (like, I think the stand-in for Stagg Field was filmed at Berkeley).

Personally, I don't think Nolan will spend more than a couple minutes, if any, on the separation/enrichment processes. As much as I'd love for him to show the reactors at Hanford and the racetracks at Oak Ridge, if the focus is on Oppenheimer then I doubt they'll appear (to the best of my recollection, he wasn't involved in the separation business besides endorsing Abelson's method of liquid thermal diffusion). And frankly, despite Strauss' role in pushing forward the detection programs, everything else that Strauss did pretty firmly and rightly secures his role as the film's villain. He was a very unlikeable person who pursued a personal grudge against Oppenheimer to an infuriating and illegal extent, as the book covers in detail. Of course it wasn't just Strauss - Oppenheimer had many enemies in the Air Force, AEC, and among other scientists like Teller and Lawrence - but, more than anyone else, Strauss was the architect of his downfall.

It's gonna be interesting seeing the balance between Oppy as this flawed character who is arguably the architect of his own downfall (as I commented in another thread, chain smoking gave him throat cancer) and also making him this persecuted and sympathetic character. No wonder Nolan called him the most "contradictory" (think that's the word he used) character he's ever tackled. Strauss indeed seems like the "villain" but it's interesting that he apparently did what he did illegally. So he broke laws and rules during this trial process?

Somewhat long post, so I put it all in a spoiler tag.

Sure, I mean, Strauss had Oppenheimer's home, office, and lawyer's office illegally wiretapped by the FBI so that he knew exactly what their legal strategy was ahead of time. He made sure the AEC's lawyers got a security clearance to be able to view classified documents in their case against Oppenheimer, and blocked all attempts for Oppenheimer's lawyers to get clearances of their own. The members of the Gray Board - the judges in this "trial"; there was no equivalent of a jury - were handpicked by Strauss, and were allowed to pore over Oppenheimer's FBI file for a solid week, with the AEC's lawyer acting as their tour guide. Strauss wanted Oppenheimer's downfall to be complete, so that he wouldn't be able to influence policy as an outsider, to such an extent, that he had an attempt by McCarthy to investigate Oppenheimer blocked; from what I can tell, McCarthy was seen as kind of a joke, who would be focused more on grabbing headlines than utterly ruining Oppenheimer. In at least one case, a witness was blackmailed by Strauss and the FBI into testifying against Oppenheimer, and another witness was shown a transcript of Oppenheimer's testimony before testifying himself. Then, after the hearings, despite the fact that witnesses were told that their testimony would remain confidential, Strauss had all the transcripts published, hoping they would make Oppenheimer look bad publicly. To quote American Prometheus, "In Strauss' view, neither Oppenheimer nor his lawyer had any of the 'rights' afforded to a defendant in a court of law; this was an AEC Personnel Security Board Hearing, not a civil trial, and Strauss was going to be the arbiter of the rules" (p. 490). It's also interesting to note that when the Department of Energy overruled the AEC's verdict on Oppenheimer last year, they did not explicitly vindicate him, but in effect said that the verdict was unsound because the AEC broke its own rules.

And yeah, you make a very good point about Oppenheimer; Strauss was ultimately responsible for his downfall, but Oppenheimer was his own worst enemy. I remember that a nuclear historian I follow online was (is?) skeptical about this film because it's difficult to make the real Oppenheimer into a likeable figure. Sure, he said unpopular things his enemies didn't like - he opposed the hydrogen bomb, and was in favor of using tactical nuclear weapons against the Soviets - but he had a kind of gift for making enemies in the first place. His insecurities manifested as arrogance, and he could make people feel like complete idiots; before and after the war, he had a habit of engaging in "casual cruelty" (that may be Oppenheimer's phrase, but I can't find the source at the moment). He helped to destroy the lives of some of his former students by name-dropping them as communists before the HUAC, five years before his own security hearings (Bird and Sherwin are sympathetic, but it's nevertheless a rotten thing to do). Strauss certainly disagreed with Oppenheimer's policy recommendations but, in my opinion, Strauss' personal grudge began in 1949 when Oppenheimer publicly humiliated him before the JCAE, mocking his fear of exporting radioisotopes to other nations. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Nolan achieves this balance, as you said, between the Oppenheimer who was quite unlikeable and could do irrational things and the Oppenheimer who was insecure and sympathetic.

Waitedalongtime wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 1:26 pm

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 11:57 am

Waitedalongtime wrote: ↑

June 5th, 2023, 6:33 am

It's gonna be interesting seeing the balance between Oppy as this flawed character who is arguably the architect of his own downfall (as I commented in another thread, chain smoking gave him throat cancer) and also making him this persecuted and sympathetic character. No wonder Nolan called him the most "contradictory" (think that's the word he used) character he's ever tackled. Strauss indeed seems like the "villain" but it's interesting that he apparently did what he did illegally. So he broke laws and rules during this trial process?

Somewhat long post, so I put it all in a spoiler tag.

Sure, I mean, Strauss had Oppenheimer's home, office, and lawyer's office illegally wiretapped by the FBI so that he knew exactly what their legal strategy was ahead of time. He made sure the AEC's lawyers got a security clearance to be able to view classified documents in their case against Oppenheimer, and blocked all attempts for Oppenheimer's lawyers to get clearances of their own. The members of the Gray Board - the judges in this "trial"; there was no equivalent of a jury - were handpicked by Strauss, and were allowed to pore over Oppenheimer's FBI file for a solid week, with the AEC's lawyer acting as their tour guide. Strauss wanted Oppenheimer's downfall to be complete, so that he wouldn't be able to influence policy as an outsider, to such an extent, that he had an attempt by McCarthy to investigate Oppenheimer blocked; from what I can tell, McCarthy was seen as kind of a joke, who would be focused more on grabbing headlines than utterly ruining Oppenheimer. In at least one case, a witness was blackmailed by Strauss and the FBI into testifying against Oppenheimer, and another witness was shown a transcript of Oppenheimer's testimony before testifying himself. Then, after the hearings, despite the fact that witnesses were told that their testimony would remain confidential, Strauss had all the transcripts published, hoping they would make Oppenheimer look bad publicly. To quote American Prometheus, "In Strauss' view, neither Oppenheimer nor his lawyer had any of the 'rights' afforded to a defendant in a court of law; this was an AEC Personnel Security Board Hearing, not a civil trial, and Strauss was going to be the arbiter of the rules" (p. 490). It's also interesting to note that when the Department of Energy overruled the AEC's verdict on Oppenheimer last year, they did not explicitly vindicate him, but in effect said that the verdict was unsound because the AEC broke its own rules.

And yeah, you make a very good point about Oppenheimer; Strauss was ultimately responsible for his downfall, but Oppenheimer was his own worst enemy. I remember that a nuclear historian I follow online was (is?) skeptical about this film because it's difficult to make the real Oppenheimer into a likeable figure. Sure, he said unpopular things his enemies didn't like - he opposed the hydrogen bomb, and was in favor of using tactical nuclear weapons against the Soviets - but he had a kind of gift for making enemies in the first place. His insecurities manifested as arrogance, and he could make people feel like complete idiots; before and after the war, he had a habit of engaging in "casual cruelty" (that may be Oppenheimer's phrase, but I can't find the source at the moment). He helped to destroy the lives of some of his former students by name-dropping them as communists before the HUAC, five years before his own security hearings (Bird and Sherwin are sympathetic, but it's nevertheless a rotten thing to do). Strauss certainly disagreed with Oppenheimer's policy recommendations but, in my opinion, Strauss' personal grudge began in 1949 when Oppenheimer publicly humiliated him before the JCAE, mocking his fear of exporting radioisotopes to other nations. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Nolan achieves this balance, as you said, between the Oppenheimer who was quite unlikeable and could do irrational things and the Oppenheimer who was insecure and sympathetic.

All interesting to read about, Strauss certainly sounds like a piece of work, I also wonder how much of this will make it into the film. I'm sure it'll have to streamline so in the process not everything will make it in, maybe in the process certain characters will come off better or worse morally than they did in reality. As long as it works for the film then that'll be what's most important and that moral balance with the main is the most important thing to get right since it's the crux of the movie beyond just the general events. The latest trailer even hints at this via it's that shot of Oppenheimer with that look and the fade into the firey explosion.

Ace wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2023, 10:32 am

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2023, 2:06 pm

Ace wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2023, 10:32 am

...

Okay, yeah, if there was any doubt before that Branagh was playing Bohr, that brief clip comes straight out of page 270 of American Prometheus:

"[Groves and Bohr] arrived in Los Alamos late on the evening of December 30, 1943, and immediately went to a small reception in Bohr's honor hosted by Oppenheimer. Groves complained later that 'within five minutes after his [Bohr's] arrival he was saying everything he promised not to say.' Bohr's first question to Oppenheimer was, 'Is it really big enough?' In other words, would the new weapon be so powerful as to make future wars inconceivable? Oppenheimer immediately understood the import of the question. For more than a year, he had concentrated his energies entirely on the administrative details related to setting up and running the new lab; but over the next few days and weeks, Bohr sharply focused Oppie's mind on the bomb's postwar consequences. 'That is why I went to America,' Bohr later said. 'They didn't need my help in making the atom bomb.'"

Of course, Nolan made explicit what Bohr was talking about instead of leaving it at just "is it big enough" but otherwise it hews pretty close. Seeing what I believe is Skarsgård's Bethe in the background makes me wonder how much Nolan will delve into the 1941 conversation between Heisenberg and Bohr, since Bethe was the one who famously looked at the drawing Heisenberg supposedly passed to Bohr and pronounced it to be a drawing of a reactor ("supposedly" because that drawing is a matter of some controversy). But given how tangential that conversation is to Oppenheimer's story, I'm curious if Nolan would include it at all, or if he would be trying to cram all the famous parts of the nuclear story into his film. However, I'm speculating beyond what we've seen in the trailers, so I'll just leave it at that.

Regarding the last screenshot, do we know who Damon's Groves is yelling at? My mind immediately goes to Ed Condon's (i.e., Haaskivi) dressing-down before his resignation, but I'm not that good at identifying actors from behind.

Crysist wrote: ↑

June 22nd, 2023, 12:33 am

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2023, 2:06 pm

Ace wrote: ↑

June 19th, 2023, 10:32 am

...

Okay, yeah, if there was any doubt before that Branagh was playing Bohr, that brief clip comes straight out of page 270 of American Prometheus:

"[Groves and Bohr] arrived in Los Alamos late on the evening of December 30, 1943, and immediately went to a small reception in Bohr's honor hosted by Oppenheimer. Groves complained later that 'within five minutes after his [Bohr's] arrival he was saying everything he promised not to say.' Bohr's first question to Oppenheimer was, 'Is it really big enough?' In other words, would the new weapon be so powerful as to make future wars inconceivable? Oppenheimer immediately understood the import of the question. For more than a year, he had concentrated his energies entirely on the administrative details related to setting up and running the new lab; but over the next few days and weeks, Bohr sharply focused Oppie's mind on the bomb's postwar consequences. 'That is why I went to America,' Bohr later said. 'They didn't need my help in making the atom bomb.'"

Of course, Nolan made explicit what Bohr was talking about instead of leaving it at just "is it big enough" but otherwise it hews pretty close. Seeing what I believe is Skarsgård's Bethe in the background makes me wonder how much Nolan will delve into the 1941 conversation between Heisenberg and Bohr, since Bethe was the one who famously looked at the drawing Heisenberg supposedly passed to Bohr and pronounced it to be a drawing of a reactor ("supposedly" because that drawing is a matter of some controversy). But given how tangential that conversation is to Oppenheimer's story, I'm curious if Nolan would include it at all, or if he would be trying to cram all the famous parts of the nuclear story into his film. However, I'm speculating beyond what we've seen in the trailers, so I'll just leave it at that.

Regarding the last screenshot, do we know who Damon's Groves is yelling at? My mind immediately goes to Ed Condon's (i.e., Haaskivi) dressing-down before his resignation, but I'm not that good at identifying actors from behind.

I do like the emphasis of Bohr's implied question with Cillian asking "To end the war?" and Bohr responding "To end all war". Not that the original lacks anything, but it could help show the excitement for what their work would bring. Did Bohr have a notably more ambitious view on the ramifications of their work? And, with his quote from the other trailer "You gave them the power to destroy themselves," did he have a more hardline stance against nuclear proliferation in the years after, even compared to Oppenheimer?

Given the runtime, and compared to all the "original" scenes, I wonder how much of these bits that are directly from the book we'll get. Where those who read AP or know the history very well will go *LeoPointing.gif*

I think you're right, based on the glasses.

physicshistoryguy wrote: ↑

June 22nd, 2023, 3:51 am

Crysist wrote: ↑

June 22nd, 2023, 12:33 am

...

So Bohr is... complicated in this regard, and it's damn near impossible to explain his position without him seeming naïve, when everyone who knew him insisted he wasn't, but I'll try my best. This will undoubtedly be long, so I'm throwing it all into a spoiler tag.

Bohr was a leading figure in the quantum revolution, but he also had a philosophical background, and was inspired to try and turn quantum concepts into a philosophy that he could then apply to everyday life. The relevant concept here is complementarity, the idea that a thing can have contradictory attributes that are nevertheless both relevant for a full description of that original thing. Emilio Segre described it best, I think, when he said that, "Two magnitudes are complementary when the measurement of one of them prevents the accurate simultaneous measurement of the other. Similarly, two concepts are complementary when one imposes limitations on the other" (as quoted in Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb). For example, an electron is a particle in some situations, but an electron is a wave in others. These two viewpoints are utterly irreconcilable and yet they are both true, according to Bohr; a measurement of an electron's particle behavior will render its wave behavior undetectable, and vice versa, but you can't understand an electron unless you take both behaviors into account. Bohr really loved paradoxes and contradictions, as he saw them as ways of getting closer to the truth (he's famously quoted as saying things like, "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."), so it's no wonder he liked complementarity as a concept. (Incidentally, I don't really like complementarity, since I think it unnecessarily complicates this stuff, and neither did the textbook I used, which sarcastically lampooned this "cosmic principle" which "makes electrons sound like unpredictable adolescents, who sometimes behave like adults, and sometimes, for no particular reason, like children." But the question of whether this is good physics, or even good philosophy, is best left as an exercise for the reader, and anyway that question is ultimately irrelevant to how Bohr used complementarity in the context of nuclear weapons.)

So when Bohr comes to Los Alamos and hears about the atomic bomb, he immediately throws his philosophy at it and decides the bomb exhibits complementarity. How? The atomic bomb, said Bohr, is the ultimate weapon; on the one hand, it is so powerfully destructive that it could utterly destroy humanity if used, but on the other, it is so powerfully destructive that no nation would dare use it and thus would render all war obsolete. The bomb was the key to either omnicide or world peace, contradiction incarnate, and perfect for Bohr's notion of complementarity. So to answer your question about if he was ambitious regarding the ramifications of the bomb: very much so. Bohr was arguably the first to really think seriously about how the world would work in the post-war, after the (supposed) race with the Nazis was won. He thought that introducing the bomb left only two options: 1) a protracted nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union that ultimately ended in Armageddon, or 2) an "open world" where the fear of nuclear holocaust would necessarily drive nations to a state of permanent negotiated peace, and "open" in the sense that an international entity that transcended nations would make sure that no nation was building an atomic arsenal in secrecy.

Now if these are the only two options you see, then obviously Option #2 seems better; dealing with your other question, rather than being against nuclear proliferation per se, Bohr went to both Roosevelt and Churchill trying to convince them to let the Soviet Union in on the Manhattan Project, or else the suspicious Soviets would start an arms race and, oh dear, there's Option #1, oops (Bohr was rebuffed, for the record, and I think Churchill tried to have him imprisoned). And Oppenheimer was very much influenced by Bohr's discussions of the complementarity of the bomb and the open world that was necessary to save humanity, and that influence can be seen in a lot of things Oppenheimer did through his life of government service (suggesting that Truman tell the Soviets about the bomb before its use, his role in the immediate post-war plan for international control of nuclear weapons, and his call for candor and more openness about nuclear weapons during the Cold War).

Anyways, both clips of Bohr that we've seen show his complementary viewpoints on the bomb, that it could either destroy humanity ("You are the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves, and the world is not prepared.") or ensure world peace ("Is it big enough... to end all war?"): ideas which may be contradictory, but that he held as true simultaneously (argh, this ended up longer than I thought, and is probably half irrelevant... but too late to edit it now!).

Yeah, one of the things I'm most excited in seeing is how Nolan decides to adapt decades of history into a three hour film. There are certain bits of history that will have to be depicted essentially word-for-word from the book, but there's going to be a lot of compression involved. There will be a lot of *LeoPointing.gif* but probably with more excitement and frantic hand gestures and such (I'll have to warn those sitting next to me in the theater at some point next month... ).