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Jun 25, 2023

Where are the ‘violet hues’ and ‘bath of heat’? Australian scientists review what Oppenheimer gets wrong

One nuclear expert says the film is unrealistic because it portrays quantum mechanics as ‘hard’ Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but

One nuclear expert says the film is unrealistic because it portrays quantum mechanics as ‘hard’

Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but not always accurate.

Its portrayal of the first atomic bomb detonation, for example, lacked the “violet hues” and heat wave of the real thing.

“Some characters even made comments like ‘quantum mechanics is hard’, which I disagree with – it’s only hard if someone hasn’t explained it properly,” says Dr Kirrily Rule, an instrument scientist who works with the thermal triple-axis spectrometer Taipan at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).

Rule gives Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Manhattan project four stars, saying it’s exciting and suspenseful but the science is “brushed over”.

“As a physicist watching the movie, I think they could have been much clearer on the science involved … I believe Nolan used such high-level jargon as a confusing element to the film intentionally.

“It made the audience feel separated from these scientific giants. As a scientist and teacher, I think this is a poor way to represent science – it just continues to give people the impression that ‘science is too hard’.”

The Irish actor Cillian Murphy plays J Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory, which produced the bomb. It portrays his pride, his remorse and his downfall.

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Dr Ceri Brenner (four stars), leader of Ansto’s Centre for Accelerator Science, says the one thing missing for her is an element of the 1945 detonation in New Mexico, which was codenamed Trinity.

“[When] the device went off, we got the flash of light and the silence, but I didn’t notice anyone reacting to the immediate experience of heat that accompanied the visual of the flash,” she says.

“The energy emitted from fission is radiative and carried long distances via electromagnetic radiation, which travels at the speed of light, compared to conductive or convective heat that propagates more like the sound wave boom that arrived shortly after.

“I saw a documentary where someone described it as being similar to opening an oven door and feeling the immediate bath of heat emerging.”

Dr Mark Ho (four stars), a nuclear analyst, says he would have liked to have seen the atomic explosion “more faithfully portrayed in violet hues”.

Major General Thomas Farrell, deputy to Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in the film), has described the detonation as “birth of a new age – the age of atomic energy”.

“The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun,” he said, according to the Conversation.

“It was golden, violet, grey and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined.”

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Dr Helen Maynard-Casely (five stars), an instrument scientist working with Ansto’s high-intensity powder diffractometer, Wombat, says the development of the first nuclear reactor is comparable to the space race between Russia and the US.

The project’s lasting legacy for morality, global politics and technology is undeniable, she says, but: “It would be nice to imagine a world where the first thought on splitting a uranium atom would have been, ‘Ooo this would be good for energy,’ rather than, ‘This could make a bomb.’”

Dr Joseph Bevitt (four stars), an instrument scientist on Ansto’s radiograph, tomography and imaging station Dingo, says he wanted more of the “epic and intense” movie.

“At the end of the three hours, I asked, ‘Is that it?’ I craved more,” he says.

“The significance of the Chicago pile reactor, built under stadium seating, was glossed over. The first criticality of the X-10 reactor at Oak Ridge National Lab, the contributions of Enrico Fermi, and so much more, were omitted.

“The ramifications of the atomic bombings for humanity were suggested, but I needed closure.

“The formation of the ‘Atoms for Peace’ program, the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the positive real-life impacts that atomic research and neutron science have on everyday health and technological advancement followed those events.”

The so-called “Barbenheimer effect” smashed Australian box office records at the weekend, with Oppenheimer making $9.36m, the fourth-highest opening weekend for a 2023 film. The Barbie movie made $21.5m.

This article was amended on 28 July 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the sound wave boom resulting from the 1945 Trinity detonation travelled at the speed of light.