Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere?

At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun. As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who had built the bomb reacted in different ways. Some were jubilant, others more somber. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, famously recalled a line from the Hindu scripture (ba-ga-vad gee-ta) Baghavad Gita: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”; while Kenneth Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test, was more blunt, stating: “Now we’re all sons of bitches.” Elsewhere around the test site, money frantically changed hands as scientists settled a series of private bets. Some had wagered that the test would be a dud, or that it would reach just a fraction of its predicted yield. But others, including Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, had wagered on a more disturbing outcome: that the intense heat of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, setting off an unstoppable chain reaction that would wipe out all life on earth. This apocalyptic bet has since become an infamous part of nuclear lore, but does it have any basis in reality? Could the Trinity test - or any nuclear weapon, for that matter - actually have set earth’s atmosphere ablaze? Well, let’s dive into it, shall we? Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

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