{"id":8343,"date":"2023-09-13T02:46:44","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T02:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/13\/site-for-the-first-atomic-blast-opens-for-one-day-in-october-heres-how-to-go\/"},"modified":"2023-09-13T02:46:44","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T02:46:44","slug":"site-for-the-first-atomic-blast-opens-for-one-day-in-october-heres-how-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/13\/site-for-the-first-atomic-blast-opens-for-one-day-in-october-heres-how-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Site for the first atomic blast opens for one day in October \u2013 here\u2019s how to go"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one thing standing in line to watch the blockbuster film \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d It\u2019s another thing entirely queueing up in a remote desert to experience the location of the film\u2019s most pivotal scene. <\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re a fan of atomic history and can swing central New Mexico this October, your pilgrimage through the Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man\u2019s Journey) will be so worth the effort. <\/p>\n

Saturday, October 21, presents a rare opportunity to visit not just one but two scientifically significant and movie-famous destinations on the same day \u2013 each occupying opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. <\/p>\n

Trinity Site is the national historic landmark <\/em>that\u2019s <\/em>home to <\/strong>mankind\u2019s first nuclear blast on July 16, 1945, where plutonium gamma rays lit up the night sky. It hosts only two open house events each year. <\/p>\n

And while you\u2019re in the area, an extraordinary bonus is a second, free-of-charge open house aimed specifically at Trinity Site adventurers who are willing to drive another 100 miles to take in a second mind-bending experience. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Very Large Array Radio Observatory (VLA), which was dramatized in the 1997 alien-life movie \u201cContact.\u201d The VLA telescope can spread wider than New York City, able to capture the whispers of distant radio waves as they undulate across our cosmos.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Rare access to Trinity Site<\/h2>\n

Trinity Site opens only two Saturdays a year. Once in April, and lucky for \u201cOppenheimer\u201d enthusiasts, again in October. <\/p>\n

The exact dates are announced in advance each year by the US Army. <\/p>\n

The site is a secure military installation within the forbidding White Sands Missile Range, where live weapons are regularly tested. The terrain is high desert plateau, dotted with creosote brush and not much else. <\/p>\n

In our everyday crush of crowds, traffic and strip malls, the Land of Enchantment\u2019s sheer miles of open landscape and soul-nourishing cobalt vistas inspire. Buzz Aldrin\u2019s impression of the moon\u2019s surface parallels Trinity Site, a \u201cmagnificent desolation.\u201d <\/p>\n

When J. Robert Oppenheimer, <\/strong>the theoretical physicist known as the \u201cfather of the atomic bomb,\u201d <\/strong>led his Manhattan Project team to Trinity, it wasn\u2019t just for the isolation. He had history with New Mexico, attending summer boys\u2019 camps during his youth. Because of the popularity of the movie \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d a surge of visitors is expected on October 21. <\/p>\n

The open house event, hosted by the US Army, is free but limited to the first 5,000 guests, on a first-come, first-served basis. <\/p>\n

How to get there<\/h2>\n

From Albuquerque International Sunport airport, your best bet is a rental car for the two-hour drive south. It\u2019s easy to get disoriented while navigating, so stick to the Army\u2019s directions, as GPS instructions can be wonky. Take screen photos of the route mapped on your phone \u2013 as you may lose cell service \u2013 and have an actual roadmap as backup. <\/p>\n

Aim to arrive at Trinity\u2019s Stallion Gate before 8 a.m., when the gate opens. There will already be a line. Be early, and you\u2019ll still have plenty of time for the day\u2019s second adventure. Army officials will check your ID at the gate, and from there it\u2019s a 17-mile (27-kilometer) drive to a parking lot located a quarter-mile walk from the reason you came \u2013 Ground Zero. <\/p>\n

\n

Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer?<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trinity Site\u2019s atmosphere during an open house is reminiscent of a small-town carnival from a bygone era. Vendors selling souvenir trinkets.\u00a0Kids in strollers. Dogs wagging tails. Porta Potties. That\u2019s until you notice the pop-up tent\u00a0displaying Geiger counters. And another with radioactive Trinitite, the mysterious green-glass rock that rained down from the bomb\u2019s blast. <\/p>\n

Ominous fence signs remind guests that it\u2019s against the law to remove any pieces of Trinitite they spy on the ground because ingested fragments retain enough radioactivity to be dangerous. <\/p>\n

The famed 1918 McDonald adobe ranch house, where the bomb\u2019s critical plutonium core was assembled in the master bedroom, survived the shock wave two miles away mostly intact. Buses shuttle visitors back and forth free of charge from the Trinity parking lot to the McDonald house. <\/p>\n

Venture in farther to stand next to a life-size replica of Fat Man, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. <\/p>\n

Visitors can pose for photos inside Jumbo, the 216-ton steel cylinder scientists contemplated detonating the bomb \u2013 nicknamed the Gadget \u2013 within to contain its plutonium core if the full detonation failed. <\/p>\n

Experiencing Ground Zero<\/h2>\n

The moment arrives to approach Ground Zero, marked simply by a black stone obelisk that\u2019s 12 feet (3.66 meters) high. <\/p>\n

Step back in time to the pre-dawn of July 16, 1945. Glance north, west and south where Oppenheimer\u2019s team hunkered down in three bunkers, five miles away. You stand where the course of humanity shifted. Where the boundaries of physics and possibility stretched. <\/p>\n

Picture the 100-foot-high steel tower that stood where the obelisk stands now. A few feet away only nubs of the tower remain, the bulk annihilated in the blast. <\/p>\n

See in your mind the mattresses hauled in and stacked high to cushion the fall should the chains snap as they winched the heavy Gadget high into the air. And young scientists rotated throughout the night babysitting the bomb as crackles of lightning threatened to strike. <\/p>\n

Oppenheimer wrote the poem \u201cCrossing\u201d two decades before Trinity. His words contained the prophetic passage, \u201c\u2026in the dry hills down by the river, half withered, we had the hot winds against us.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>He could not have imagined the heat to come.<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n

Now close your eyes. <\/p>\n

Ignore what you do see to imagine the history you cannot see. <\/p>\n

The storms over the mountains. New Mexico Gov. John Dempsey is at home asleep, oblivious to when the blast will occur. Finally, the mists of rain clear. The countdown to fission begins. There\u2019s a sense of dread, however remote, that Earth\u2019s atmosphere might ignite in a cataclysmic chain reaction. <\/p>\n

And finally, the detonation. <\/p>\n

Man\u2019s first nuclear genie shatters its bottle, unleashing the ferocity of the atom, with an explosion 10,000 times hotter than our sun. Thirty-seven minutes later, the wounded sky brightens again, to the dawn of man\u2019s first atomic sunrise. <\/p>\n

Reflect on the glaring omission that while the area surrounding Trinity was remote, it was not unpopulated. <\/p>\n

Civilians termed \u201cdownwinders,\u201d subjected to radioactive fallout fluttering down from the sky, were assured that the flash and fury some saw and heard was an ammunition explosion at nearby Alamogordo Air Base. After atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month, they realized the stark truth. <\/p>\n

Jim Eckles, an Army historian who oversaw decades of Trinity open house events, shared the site\u2019s significance: \u201cThe \u2018Oppenheimer\u2019 movie resurrected concerns we\u2019ve lost sight of. That thousands of nuclear warhead missiles are still out there, able to launch. We need clever intelligent people to deal with the sequence that began at Trinity.\u201d <\/p>\n

Journeying on to the fringes of the galaxy<\/h2>\n

After experiencing Trinity\u2019s solemn inner journey, it\u2019s time to regroup and explore outward \u2014 to the hope-filled fringes of the galaxy. <\/p>\n

The world\u2019s most impressive radio telescope \u2013 the Very Large Array \u2013 is also free of charge to October 21 guests. \u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Take Highway 380 back to Interstate 25 and the route to the VLA, 50 miles west of Socorro, is well-marked. <\/p>\n

Along the way, you can stop for lunch at the same watering hole frequented by Oppenheimer\u2019s crew, the Owl Bar & Caf\u00e9 in San Antonio. New Mexico recently designated the sweet scent of roasted green chiles as an official state aroma, and you can savor the taste smothered on their famous Owl burgers. <\/p>\n

\n

This luxury tent camp in Utah has celestial credentials<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Driving west past Socorro, the elevation rises. The VLA sits 7,000 feet high on the Plains of San Agustin, ringed by a fortress of mountains to block the radio interference of civilization, as astronomers search deep into the sky. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople find the first glimpse of antennas on the sweeping desert plain awe inspiring,\u201d said Patricia Henning, director of the VLA. <\/p>\n

Each of the 27 colossal dishes measure 82 feet (25 meters) across and are motorized to swivel and tilt. Railroad-track mounted, they can spread out over miles in their iconic \u201cY\u201d shape. According to Henning, the wider the array stretches its arms, the bigger its eye grows to zoom in.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Most people are familiar with traditional light-collecting telescopes. But the VLA collects radio waves that occur naturally from objects in space, billions of times fainter than broadcast radio waves, and then electronically transforms them into images. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s the most widely used radio telescope in the world, mapping the cosmos from our solar system and Milky Way galaxy to distant gas clouds and plasma ejections from supermassive black holes. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe array studies the universe, so our main driver is not looking for intelligent life,\u201d explained Henning. \u201cSETI \u2013 the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence \u2013 piggybacks astronomy conducted at the VLA and then combs through copies of data looking for techno signatures.\u201d <\/p>\n

What\u2019s a techno-signature? Intelligence. <\/p>\n

As SETI scientists download the music of the universe, analyzing radio waves for signs of a composer behind the notes, you can\u2019t help but wonder: If extraterrestrial life saw Earth\u2019s nuclear glow, what techno-signature assessment would they make of us? <\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t make the October 21 open houses, don\u2019t despair. <\/p>\n

The VLA welcomes visitors most days, excluding major holidays. Admission is $6 for adults. And on April 6, 2024, Trinity Site again opens for a single day. Millions of colorful New Mexico wildflowers will bloom fleetingly, a contrast to Trinity\u2019s mushroom cloud that bloomed only once but whose impact may eternally define 20th-century mankind. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one thing standing in line to watch the blockbuster film \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d It\u2019s another thing entirely queueing up in a remote desert to experience the location of the film\u2019s most pivotal scene. But if you\u2019re a fan of atomic history and can swing central New Mexico this October, your pilgrimage through the Jornada del Muerto <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}