Saturday Science Lecture with Michael Nowak on Black Holes, Bombs, & Beyond
Prior to his work at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer conducted important theoretical studies of matter collapsing to form a black hole and on the structure of neutron stars. I will discuss Oppenheimer’s contribution to black hole physics, which he made primarily prior to his time leading the Manhattan Project. One aspect that these astrophysics problems shared with the later bomb research is that they involve complex systems that are extremely challenging to describe with analytic models. The Manhattan Project began at the dawn of the computer age, and computational physics research became a mainstay of Los Alamos research in terms of developing computational algorithms and in their application to both bomb development and astrophysical research. I will highlight some of the post-war computational astrophysics research conducted by Los Alamos scientists who worked in two worlds: the classified world of bomb research, and the public world of astrophysics research. As it turns out, the skills required to predict a bomb yield come in handy when trying to understand the mechanisms of supernovae explosions.