Drama on 3 - Copenhagen

[DracoM]

IthangU.

[Gordon]

This had a re-run last night - I had not heard it first time around about a year ago. Above posts tell it all really, excellent and a meaty science subject for once. A few minor niggles about overdoing the science allusions - I could hear the uncertainty ones coming long before they arrived - and perhaps could have been a bit shorter but all in all a very fine piece. I have just read a bio of Oppenheimer so this play at this time was very apposite.

I'm not sure if I believe that Heisenberg did delay the German work on nuclear fission. Whether anything would have been different had it not been for the war is anyone's guess. It is clear from that Oppenheimer bio that the US was not up with the science and had to be persuaded about it in part by Brits and ex-pat Jewish Germans. Oppenheimer wanted to tell the German scientists about it so that the work could be controlled by them and not politicians - vain hope I think but then Heisenberg caims that is what he did. Eventually the way to a nuclear weapon would have been found somewhere, Pandora's box was open, the science was inevitable and sooner or later the resources would have been applied to building it. The likelihood is that Germany would have done it assisted perhaps by all those Jewish scientists that built it at Los Alamos. Then again....

Anyone wanting to rehear it go here over the next week but you'll need a couple of hours - and clear head!!

[amateur51]

This had a re-run last night - I had not heard it first time around about a year ago. Above posts tell it all really, excellent and a meaty science subject for once. A few minor niggles about overdoing the science allusions - I could hear the uncertainty ones coming long before they arrived - and perhaps could have been a bit shorter but all in all a very fine piece. I have just read a bio of Oppenheimer so this play at this time was very apposite.

I'm not sure if I believe that Heisenberg did delay the German work on nuclear fission. Whether anything would have been different had it not been for the war is anyone's guess. It is clear from that Oppenheimer bio that the US was not up with the science and had to be persuaded about it in part by Brits and ex-pat Jewish Germans. Oppenheiner wanted to tell the German scientists about it so that the work could be controlled by them and not politicians - vain hope I think but then Heisenberg caims that is what he did. Eventually the way to a nuclear weapon would have been found somewhere, Pandora's box was open, the science was inevitable and sooner or later the resources would have been applied to building it. The likelihood is that Germany would have done it assisted perhaps by all those Jewish scientists that built it at Los Alamos. Then again....

Anyone wanting to rehear it go [ULR="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwj"]here[/URL] over the next week but you'll need a couple of hours - and clear head!!

BBC announcer Frank Phillips reading the news of the first atomic bomb drop - note the 'at last':

http://www.radiorewind.co.uk/sounds/50yrs102.mp3

[aeolium]

I'm not sure if I believe that Heisenberg did delay the German work on nuclear fission. Whether anything would have been different had it not been for the war is anyone's guess.

I'm not sure of the nature of the evidence to corroborate Heisenberg's account. There were three possible instincts that might have impelled him to press forward in the research: firstly, a lingering attachment to his native country engaged in a total war against enemies who might obtain the extremely destructive weapons; secondly, the instinct of self-preservation for him and his family when his own Jewish background had already exposed him to attack; and lastly - perhaps the strongest - purely scientific curiosity to discover the solution to a problem (will any scientist not open Pandora's Box if it is offered?)

The play I think explores these dilemmas and perhaps unresolvable uncertainties in an exemplary way, never forgetting the bond of scientific exploration that joined the two men.