In the early hours of July 16 1945, a manmade sun burst over New Mexico, turning night into day and bathing the desert in an unearthly light. Six miles away in a bunker, American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer watched as the secret project he had led for three years culminated in the first atomic explosion. Within a month, two more explosions would destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 people. The world would never be the same again.

In this talk, particle physicist Dr Harry Cliff explores the fascinating and terrifying science of the atom bomb, and its father, J. Robert Oppenheimer. He will uncover the story of how nuclear science, born as a subject of curiosity in small university laboratories, ultimately led to the most destructive weapons ever made. Along the way he’ll explore the enormous challenges faced by the physicists working on the Manhattan Project and the deadly legacy it left for humankind.

Come down early to grab a good seat!

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Harry Cliff is a particle physicist based at the University of Cambridge and carries out research with the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. He was a curator at the Science Museum, London for seven years. His 2015 TED talk “Have We Reached the End of Physics?” has been viewed more than 3 million times.

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