Manhattanprojektin

The Manhattan Project was a top-secret research and development undertaking by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada during World War II. Its primary goal was to produce the first nuclear weapons. The project officially began in 1942, evolving from earlier, smaller efforts spurred by concerns that Nazi Germany was developing its own atomic bomb.

Key figures in the project included physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who served as the scientific director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and General Leslie Groves, who was the overall military director. The project involved a massive mobilization of scientific, industrial, and military resources across numerous sites in the United States, with the most significant being Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington.

The scientific challenges were immense, focusing on uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Scientists worked to understand nuclear fission and its potential for a chain reaction. After years of intensive research and development, the project culminated in the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb in the Trinity test near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Subsequently, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. The Manhattan Project remains one of the most consequential scientific and military endeavors in history, ushering in the nuclear age.