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Popp 2016: "Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected" is obviously unknown to the author
by amai 10y ago
Popp 2016: "Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected" is obviously unknown to the author of this article:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.201601794/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bewi.201601794/ab...
"It is shown that until the end of the war the German physicists did not know that an atomic bomb can only be made with fast neutrons, except Heisenberg, who, however, discovered it rather late, did not communicate it clearly and did not study any bomb physics. The physically correct interpretation of the documents reveals that the German physicists worked unsuccessfully on a reactor, which would have been a prerequisite for a plutonium bomb. But they did not know how to build a bomb because they never worked on a realistic bomb theory."
- mannykannot 10y agoI don't know whether Thomas Powers is acquainted with this particular paper, but the paper itself makes it clear that Mr. Powers is well acquainted with many of the documents that form the basis of the paper. Popp's paper and Powers' article are about two different, albeit related, issues: Popp's purpose is to show that the German scientists' grasp of bomb-making has often been exaggerated (though not particularly so by Powers, who has been criticized by Walker for the opposite), while Powers' article considers whether Heisenberg's recently-published letters to his wife shed any more light on his purpose and motives. While knowing what he knew (and thought he knew) of bomb-making helps in analyzing his words and actions, physics alone cannot resolve the matter.