The Bomb: Sending Arecibo’s Message of Breathing Caesar’s Last Breath - a New Mexican’s Musings and Family History Lesson
Sending Arecibo’s Message of Breathing Caesar’s Last Breath - a New Mexican’s Musings and Family History Lesson Fermi’s Theory devised on July 16, 1945 Trinity Site, NM Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist, simplified the problem of the order of magnitude estimation in physics at the 1945 Trinity test site, less than a hundred miles from my family’s farms in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. Before and following the Gadget’s test, Fermi correctly predicted and calculated the power of the first atom bomb using shredded paper. While observers at the test site beheld the searing golden, violet, gray and blue explosion of light - ten times brighter than the midday sun - Fermi scrutinized strips of paper he had placed at the periphery of the blast and then measured the distance they traveled when the air pressure from the explosion reached them. His estimation corresponded exactly to the measurements produced by precise instrume...