News about Werner Heisenberg

PATRICK MARMION: Why didn't the Germans build the bomb first? Could they have tried harder? These are some of the intriguing questions posed by Katherine Moar in her engaging, drawing-room drama set in the dying days of World War II . First seen last year, at the nearby boutique Jermyn Street Theatre, the play is based on transcripts of six leading German nuclear scientists who were gathered and held by British Major T.H. Rittner at Farm Hall in Cambridgeshire.

The time was 5.29 a.m. on July 16, 1945. The world was going to change for the first time on a sun-scorched plain in New Mexico's state, called Jornada del Muerto, or the Trail of the Dead. The scientists of the Manhattan Project held their breath as the seconds ticked down seconds seconds counted down before the nuclear detonation. Then, as the countdown reached zero, came the explosion - a huge ball of burning orange bursting from the desert floor with soaring speed. The man in charge lay face down on the ground, shielding his eyes from the searing glare. He stepped up and marveled at what he had created when it was safe. The entire sky was lit with color: red, yellow, and purple. The man murmured a verse from the Hindu scriptures: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the atmosphere, it would be like the splendour of the mighty one." Another verse flashed through his mind, and its message was even more ominous: "Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds."