Nolan and Oppenheimer

"Oppenheimer" poster

【Morning Reading】

Nolan's latest masterpiece, Oppenheimer, is an ambitious biopic that attempts to narrate the career story of Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," in three hours. The highlight of the film is the shock of the successful test launch of the world's first nuclear bomb in the New Mexico desert in July 1945, which shocked all participants in the Manhattan Project. Nolan's precise use of picture and sound language gives the audience a clear impression: the atomic bomb is not just a new type of weapon, it is a radical change in the relationship between human beings and the universe, it may become a scientific monster that devours the earth, or it may become a new tool to ensure world peace.

Nolan's film screenwriter followed "Oppenheimer: The Victory and Tragedy of the "Father of the Atomic Bomb" in the United States" (the original title is "American Prometheus: Oppenheimer's Victory and Tragedy") has been sharpened in 25 years, using Prometheus' experience of stealing fire to compare Oppenheimer's life experience, which is extremely appropriate. As the head of the Manhattan Project for the development of the atomic bomb in the United States, Oppenheimer embraced the naivety of a scientist from the beginning, believing that "it should be good to give mankind the most powerful force that can control the world and use it according to its potential and value." But the tragedy of the fire thief is that once superhuman power is discovered, it is no longer possible for the discoverer alone to control it. The great power game, the arms race, the crisis of the destruction of the earth... are also doomed to the fate of Oppenheimer's tragedy, the physicist's "superhuman robe" (Life magazine) has not yet been warmed, and the McCarthyist political persecution has been buttoned up, making him a symbol of the tragedy of modern nuclear scientists.

McCarthyism and Oppenheimer's witch hunt became Nolan's overly forceful second thread in the film, which somewhat diluted the impact of the atomic bomb and reduced the complexity of Oppenheimer's career to a struggle between a witch hunter who picked bones in an egg and a simple patriotic scientist.

Perhaps adapting the more than seven-hundred-page "Oppenheimer" into a film would have been impossible, and to restore this character with such complex experiences and temperaments, to show the stories of the many scientists in the field of quantum physics and involved in the Manhattan Project (the two are closely linked) - Oppenheimer was their central connector, and to interpret the reflections triggered by the atomic explosion, was not originally a movie can accommodate. If you want to make no trade-offs, you should actually make a trilogy: young Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who brought quantum mechanics to the United States from Europe; Oppenheimer, famous for the Manhattan Project, the father of the atomic bomb and the master of 300 years of physics; Oppenheimer, who has brought the world into the world of nuclear weapons and has the potential to destroy the earth due to the arms race, has fallen into deep thought and tried to participate in nuclear control.

Of course, the film and the original still constitute a clever intertext. If the movie brings a condensed interpretation of Oppenheimer's experience by Nolan and a vote of famous actors, the original book shows us in more detail the era of quantum physics that was dazzling to the point of blinding.

Oppenheimer: The Victory and Tragedy of the "Father of the Atomic Bomb" in the United States

Kay Bird / Martin S. J. Sherwin / by Wang Bing / trans

CITIC Publishing Group August 2023

Los Alamos, a start-up town

Oppenheimer chose Los Alamos, New Mexico, a desert mesa as the site for the Manhattan Project. The uninhabited geography deep in the New Mexico desert meets the requirements of secret weapons development and provides a hidden testing ground. But why Los Alamos, because this is a summer vacation place that Oppenheimer used to visit when he was young, and he himself enjoyed camping and sleeping in this wilderness on horseback. Choosing this place combines his passion for physics with his fascination with the desert heights of New Mexico. And this choice fits well with many of the popular high-tech startup stories of the moment: a passionate and thoughtful founder who gathered a group of brilliant researchers to create a great legend.

The Manhattan Project assembled a young team, and almost no one in the small town on the ground was over 50, with an average age of only 25. If Oppenheimer is employee 01, everyone else has their own number, a true number. For reasons of confidentiality, each person's driver's license has only a number, not a name.

Although the military wanted Los Alamos to become a tightly managed barracks, Osheimer knew that to turn the idea of breaking atoms to produce enormous energy, which had been knocked down by theoretical physics and mathematics, into a weapon that could be used in real combat, scientists and engineers from diverse backgrounds would need to work together across disciplines, and practical solutions to a wide variety of interdisciplinary problems, and that cooperation would require an atmosphere of free discussion. While the military always wanted to prevent most scientists from learning the full picture of scientific research through artificial segmentation of information and reduce the risk of information leakage, Osheimer worked hard to persuade the military to allow all scientists wearing "white badges" to freely discuss their ideas and problems. Because he knows very well that if every scientist only understands the information he needs to know, and lacks a clear global understanding and a lack of collision of ideas, it will be difficult for the Manhattan Project to make a breakthrough in the short term.

In the movie, Oppenheimer, played by Clarian Murphy, and General Groves, played by Matt Damon, have many outstanding rivalry scenes. Gerlows, the military director of the Manhattan Project, was an engineer who was most impressed by Oppenheimer's understanding of interdisciplinary collaboration. The relationship between the two is much like the relationship between entrepreneurs and investors, and the U.S. government eventually invested $2 billion in the Manhattan Project (an astronomical investment in today's dollars), and the number of people involved in the project expanded from a few dozen to thousands, hundreds of scientists and their families moved in, and more than 2,000 military personnel. As a result, the town's fertility rate is particularly high, "80 children are born in the first year, and the second year it is increasing at the rate of 10 children per month," Nolan wrote the data from the book into the words of General Groves. Oppenheimer's youngest daughter was also born here.

A core element of success in high-tech startups is how to attract, manage, and motivate bright minds, and Oppenheimer is clearly unskilled. His presence gives cohesion and a sense of belonging to a group of top scientists, and he is on site every time a project breaks new ground. One scientist commented that the Manhattan Project might have been successful without Oppenheimer, but everyone would certainly be under more pressure, and there would not have been as much enthusiasm and speed.

In addition to participating in every important scientific discussion in the field, and always being able to make a good summary at the end of the discussion to help scientists find the path to breakthrough, Oppenheimer is also the mayor and sheriff of the town. He created a town council where scientists could fully practice autonomy and democracy and discuss life-related issues.

This autonomy certainly does not limit itself to the sphere of life. As the development of the atomic bomb raced the course of World War II – the first desert bombing was in July 1949, when Hitler had committed suicide and Germany had surrendered – scientists began to turn to the ethics of the use of the atomic bomb as a weapon in war, and began to consider the profound implications for future wars and global politics if the atomic bomb was used.

This discussion of ethics and politics began as informal gatherings on questions about "what this terrible weapon will bring to the world," "whether we are doing good or bad," and "whether we should worry about how it will be used." The atomic bombing was successful, and the gathering developed into a formal conference of more than 40 scientists, and the title became "The Atomic Bomb in World Politics." Before the United States decided to use the atomic bomb against Japan in early August, 155 scientists involved in the Manhattan Project signed a petition urging President Truman not to use atomic weapons against Japan without publicly declaring conditions for surrender.

Similar discussions have been present in U.S. high-tech companies, such as this year's discussion on AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) ethics, focusing on what kind of safety fence needs to be added to the use of GPT; Another example is the heated discussion about the use of AI in future weapons during the last AI boom.

This highlights the nature of scientists as a group. Oppenheimer was well aware that scientists joined the Manhattan Project for scientific research, not to make money, and that he paid everyone the same salary as they had before joining the project. But this sense of mission for scientific research also gives them a responsible attitude towards the technology they create. Although Oppenheimer did not directly participate in the scientists' petition, when he clearly recognized the great lethality of the atomic bomb in actual combat, he also clearly realized that it was his responsibility to limit nuclear weapons, prevent an arms race, and avoid the destruction of the earth due to nuclear weapons.

The victory of the "Germans" over the Germans

Oppenheimer entered the historical stage after the European iteration of quantum mechanics. His studies in Europe in the 1920s proved that Europe – and Germany more precisely – was still the center of scientific research, and he was a pilgrim to that centre. His greatest achievement was to bring the latest research in quantum mechanics back to the United States, founding schools at Berkeley and Caltech, and paving the way for Americans to compete with the Germans in nuclear energy.

In essence, the Manhattan Project was a "German" vs. German (one might even say Jew-Jewish rivalry), a first-generation native German immigrant like Oppenheimer and a large group of German or German-speaking Jewish scientists in exile against native German physicists.

Germany was the world's most important center of scientific research until the 2030s, and Jewish scientists played an important role in the fields of physics and mathematics. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews began to be excluded from the academic system, because professors were civil servants, and once they were massively dismissed, these people had to fend for themselves, and most of them chose to immigrate to the United States for their own safety and future development. After World War II, some researchers calculated that Germany did not gradually recover until the 1980s because of the loss of talent caused by anti-Semitism.

Oppenheimer's best friend, the physicist Rabbi, once said of his rival: "Who the German scientists were, we actually knew... We finally concluded that they might be on par with, or some ahead." It is worth gossiping that leading Germany's nuclear weapons project is the German Nobel Prize physicist Heisenberg (in the film by Matthias Schwehoff, who often plays the German villain), with whom Oppenheimer once met and pursued the same girl. The girl lived briefly in New York and was treated with hospitality by Oppenheimer, but eventually chose to return to Germany to marry Heisenberg. Perhaps the biggest slot in Nolan's film is Oppenheimer's handling of the complex relationship between men and women.

The nuclear weapons program is a money-burning project. In contrast to Hitler's constant inability to trust physicists, Oppenheimer received the full support of the U.S. government. There is a scene in the film where Bohr, a famous quantum physicist who has just been smuggled out of Denmark, travels to Los Alamos to share his most recent conversation with Heisenberg. When he learned that Heisenberg's research direction was reactors, Oppenheimer couldn't help but rejoice, he knew that Heisenberg's research direction was wrong, which meant that the Manhattan Project had a better chance of winning.

In 1943, Oppenheimer invited the famous mathematician von Neumann to Las Malamos (it is a pity that Nolan's film did not give von Neumann a chance to show his face). Von Neumann was a Hungarian Jewish scientist in exile in the United States, grew up in Austria-Hungary and spoke German. Oppenheimer asked von Neumann whether the implosion design for the atomic bomb was feasible. Von Neumann's calculations that it was feasible at least theoretically increased Oppenheimer's confidence.

Participating in the Manhattan Project was a group of Jewish scientists from Budapest. These accented foreigners seem to Americans like a group of outliers from Mars, also nicknamed Martians, as if they are from the future to bring wisdom to Earthlings. This group of Hungarian scientists themselves did not think that it was very remarkable, and when it came to their differences, they boasted most of von Neumann, believing that he was the best of them.

Compared to a mathematical genius like von Neumann, or the many Nobel Prize physicists in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer is a younger generation of scholars, so why was he chosen to be in charge?

Indeed, many people at the time worried about how a relatively young scientist who did not win a Nobel Prize could attract and harness a group of Nobel laureates to work with. But Oppenheimer has his own specialties. He is good at expressing complex scientific concepts in simple, ordinary people can understand language, so he is the kind of scientist who has a special span to understand the all-round development of physics. His span allowed him to connect more scientists and become a solid backbone for the Manhattan Project.

In practice, Oppenheimer also showed an amazing talent for managing projects, being able to grasp the core of the problem, being good at people's work, and being able to build the confidence of scientists. At the same time, he has the support of Vanival Bush, founder of DAPRA and author of Science: Endless Frontiers, and others, and can establish relatively solid ties with Washington's inner political circle. In other words, through the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer demonstrated the ability of a statesman. The success of the atomic bomb, he became a household name, appeared on the cover of Time, and was known as the "father of the atomic bomb". His talent for impromptu speech is even more impressive.

If Nolan phenomenon can be sustained

Nolan has a loyal following. With the continuous switching of his film themes, it will also trigger a boom in the audience's research in new fields. "Interstellar" inspired enthusiasm for cosmic science and science fiction themes such as lightspeed travel and wormholes; "Creed" subverts our perception of traditional timelines.

Christopher Nolan

Will Oppenheimer continue this Nolan phenomenon? If the Nolan phenomenon continues, a biopic with a complex theme in the history of science may open up in-depth discussions in two major areas: first, the history of quantum mechanics behind quantum computing; The second is to delve into the heated debate between science and politics of atomic bomb detonation from the perspectives of history, ethics, and power.

To really understand "Oppenheimer" and the movie "Oppenheimer", you really have to work the development of global science in the early 20th century and the development of a single field specific to quantum mechanics.

At the beginning of the 20th century, physics completely turned the world constructed by Newtonian mechanics in just two generations, from both macroscopic and microscopic fields. Einstein's theory of relativity revolutionized our understanding of the universe. A generation of Nordic and German scholars younger than him constructed quantum mechanics and reshaped our understanding of the microscopic world. Physicist Feynman said, "By common sense, quantum mechanics' description of nature is simply ridiculous. But it completely coincides with the experimental results. So I want you to accept nature as it is, she's ridiculous. ”

Einstein never fully understood quantum mechanics. He insisted, "I'm convinced anyway that God doesn't roll dice." Pol, a new generation of scholars, responded, "Don't tell God what to do." The weirdness of the development of physics is precisely this: the latecomer will always overturn the predecessor, even if the predecessor was a "rebel pioneer" a few years ago.

There are too many movie stars in Nolan's movies who make cameo appearances as masters of physics, and many of them only have one or two shots. To know who they really played, it really took hard work.

To fully understand the series of problems of the nuclear age that began the atomic bomb, it is necessary to dig deeper into Oppenheimer and his era. After watching Nolan's Oppenheimer, I believe that most people will be in awe of the power of the atomic bomb and its potential threat to mankind. The rabbi was unsparing in his assessment, arguing that the Manhattan Project "made a weapon of mass destruction the pinnacle of physics in 300 years." ”

After the U.S. military dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer began to think more deeply about atomic energy. He felt guilty about the large number of civilian casualties on the one hand, and regretted his failure to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction. He was more worried that the world would fall into a new arms race, because the Soviet Union would do whatever it took to see the power of the atomic bomb, and the Soviet Union definitely did not lack good physicists.

The film recreates Oppenheimer's audience with US President Harry S. Truman. When he stammered, "I'm worried that my hands are covered in blood," Truman unappetistedly pulled out a handkerchief from his chest pocket, meaning to wipe your hands, I have more blood on my hands than you, and it's not your turn to worry.

To understand Oppenheimer's complexities is to understand his dual role as a scientist and potential politician. In other words, Oppenheimer had an ambitious side, and the Manhattan Project's ability to mobilize so many people and resources to accomplish great projects gave him a taste of power. Obviously, he hopes to use his appearance on the cover of "Time" to become a national celebrity effect, promote the public's understanding of atomic energy, promote the global regulation of atomic energy development, and avoid an arms race in nuclear weapons. But he ignores the dirty side of politics, and on the surface the aura of celebrity allows him to exchange glasses with powerful people, but behind the scenes he has to face politicians stabbing in the back, using explicit rules and unspoken rules to stumble up, and even mired in conspiracy theories, for which he obviously has no experience and does not know how to prepare.

Another famous physicist, Freeman Dyson, said of Oppenheimer's ambitions: "Participating in the creation of genocidal weapons is a Faustian deal... Later, like Faust, he tried to bargain with the devil and ended up killing himself." ”

Oppenheimer spent his last years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The role of the dean is incomparable to that of the Manhattan Project, and it must be very far from the platform of his ambition, but this does not prevent him from creating an "academic hotel" that combines the scientific world with the humanistic world, for the short-stop thinkers to rest, recover, and recharge so that they can continue on their way after resting.

Here, he can also walk with Einstein. In 1950, on the night of his 71st birthday, Einstein told Oppenheimer: "Once a man is tasked with doing something wise, the rest of his life is extraordinary for him." Time described Einstein as a milestone, not a beacon. Oppenheimer as the propagator and Oppenheimer as a film are not milestones.