Physicist Reacts to New Oppenheimer Trailer

It's a story about Oppenheimer that is meant to entertain. Not be a documentary. Let's all keep that in mind because Nolan has never failed to make an awesome movie.

Oppenheimer wasn't so much the 'face' of the bomb, nor was he the 'one who gave it to us'. He DID organize the scientists in a manner that had not been done before. Without his ability to unify the scientists toward a single goal, it may not have come to fruition.

I think, even from just the trailer, it's pretty apparent this movie isn't going to make it seem like Oppenheimer is solely responsible for the Atomic bomb and that it took a team of scientists. The movie is called Oppenheimer because it focuses on the life of Oppenheimer before and after this world changing event.

The film did a great job of making his role clear. He was the planner, the coordinator, the manager. It's very obvious how much of a team effort it was, and I LOVED all the little nods to absolute titanic figures in the history of science.

I literally can not wait for Oppenheimer to come out. SO PUMPED Edit: As of today on July 24 2023 I have seen Oppenheimer in cineplex and it is the greatest movie ever made so far. Please watch it if you haven't

Actually it was the theoretical work of Enrico Fermi that led to the idea of an atomic bomb being plausible. Also the letter from physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner  the Einstein–Szilard letter. They included Einstein thinking his name would get Roosevelt's attention. Oppenheimer was seen as the only scientist all the others would listen to because while he was considered a "maverick," everyone acknowledged he was brilliant. Lastly, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Oppenheimer that went to see Einstein, but Edward Teller.

He was the organizer who kept it together. A lot of brilliant people couldn’t run a lemonade stand.

The movie did well to show that it was not just oppenheimer who made the bomb. This movie is just his in the sense that its about him. Throughout it he was shown to want the other scientists and did not want any of them to leave the project and was asking others for help.

Oppenheimer was the face of the bomb. A great administrator and American, which was important for the US public considering all the science was actually achieved mainly by Germans (as well as a couple hungarians and a certain Italian 😅)

Someone came out of the theaters and said it felt more like he watched a real life horror film. Also, Matt Damon made a promise to take a break from acting, unless he got a call from Nolan. He got a call from Nolan lol

Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer is so insane in a tentatively good way.

Who doesn't love Feynman. What a guy! I have seen most of his old lectures in black & white that are on youtube. It's pretty dense material, despite his amazing pedagogical skills, so I am not sure how much I truly understood about the direction of time, and the Feynman-diagram... XD I don't know enough basics.

I think Christopher did a good job showing it wasn’t just Oppenheimer, especially the end he shakes the other physicists hands and u can also tell the whole movie he cares about his other ppls thoughts.

Some points: A. With respect to the danger of people leaving this trailer thinking that it was only Oppenheimer who developed the bomb, I hear you. But, many people already see it that way. Furthermore, it is exceedingly difficult to bring the required nuance to a 2-3 minute trailer. Richard Rhodes required almost 1,000 pages in his Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" to bring that kind of nuance. At the height of the Manhattan Project, around 130,000 people were employed, many of them in three categories of chemical plants performing the essential task of uranium enrichment through gaseous diffusion, centrifuge, and electromagnetic separation. B. There were two designs developed to achieve critical mass - the gun design (not implosion) using highly enriched-uranium and the spherical implosion design using plutonium [thus, there were two "gadgets" - the gun "gadget" and the implosion "gadget"]. The implosion "gadget" was, by far, the more complicated of the two. "Little Boy" dropped on Hiroshima was the gun-type design and the Trinity test and "Fat Man" were of the implosion-type design. C. The atomic program in Japan was far more advanced than the one in Nazi Germany. Their main problem was the lack of availability of nuclear material. D. Richard Feynman defended his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University in 1942, the title of which was "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics." From 1941-1942, he worked on the atomic bomb project at Princeton, and in 1943-1945 the project in Los Alamos. E. The "gadget" shown in the trailer shows the explosive lens used (i.e., explosive arrangement) so that the implosion produces "a converging wave" ["fitting the shock wave to the shape it needed to squeeze"]. F. It is not clear whether the Oppenheimer/Einstein meeting in the movie will be shown to happen before or after Trinity. G. In 1942, Oppenheimer was, indeed, concerned about the atmosphere igniting. Calculations were conducted and verified by Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, and Hans Bethe. The final position was: "Calculation led to the result that no matter how high the temperature, energy loss would exceed energy production by a reasonable factor. ... The impossibility of igniting the atmosphere was thus assured by science and common sense." Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and C. Marvin prepared a report of their calculations entitled "Ignition of the Atmosphere with Nuclear Bombs" [Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-602, April 1946].

love how what he disliked in the trailer and questions , he will certainly get them answered and love the movie/storyline. plus nolan has actual physicist reading/helping with script

It's a biopic, a biography of Oppenheimer. So the story mainly focuses on him and his part in the Manhattan Project and includes stuff to show his grief/shame in the aftermath of the human toll from the bomb. Also, it does show all the other physicists on the Manhattan Project. *You do meet Heisenberg in the film *they filmed at the actual locations where all this occurred. The first sustained nuclear reaction that actually happened was under the stands of a football field, they filmed the scene in the movie about that under those same stands. *the scenes in Oppenheimer's house in the movie were filmed inside Oppenheimer's actual home. The movie is phenomenal.

So that’s why Feynman was in the car with no goggles during the test! Holyyyyy mind blown

Another lesson learnt : If ALL scientists united and were given resources to experiment, then almost all out problems would be solved.

Correction 10:35 The Gadget was a Plutonium based bomb. Not a Uranium based bomb. That's why they had to test Gadget before they deploy the FATMAN on Nagasaki. Because, Uranium bomb and Plutonium Bomb has a different type of working. Uranium based bomb is detonated through neuclear Fussion & Plutonium based bomb is detonated through neuclear Fission. Just had to make that clear😊

I mean I think the movie might cover Oppenheimer and his contribution. He had a huge contribution being the implosion aspect considering he did black hole research or whatever. I think it would cover his research, recruitment and assignment in the first act, the challenges of implosion theory and resources in the second act. Lastly it might cover the fallout, his separation from that and the red scare. But that’s what I expect, I only covered quantum physics in Pchem so I had a rundown on the history of these juggernauts so I’m extremely excited to watch this.