Background on Trinity
The Trinity test and the dozens of nuclear tests that followed were the result of the top secret Manhattan Project, the WWII era U.S. government program that focused on the development of the atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the titular protagonist of Christopher Nolan’s new movie, headed the program for the government and thus was a pivotal figure in the development of the first atom bomb. The Trinity was the culmination of months of highly secretive work and took place in the New Mexico desert. The newly published research focuses on “atmospheric tests,” meaning tests that impacted the atmosphere, though the U.S. government has also extensively conducted underground nuclear weapons testing, blowing up an estimated 815 subterranean nukes between 1951 and 1998.
