From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 22:29:01 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> > I tried looking up the oft-repeated story about the Manhattan Project and
> > the maybe-we'll-ignite-the-atmosphere possibility said to have been
> > raised. I can't find a reputable reference...
>
> Richard Rhode's excellent Pulitzer Prize winner, The Making of the
> Atomic Bomb, p. 418. Great story! Can you imagine doing the
> calculations at the last minute, then announcing to those gathered
> "These calculations show that it is highly unlikely that this blast
> will ignite the atmosphere, thus destroying humanity and indeed
> all land-based life on this planet..."
Sadly, I don't own this book - so what *is* the story? Who did the
calculations, is the number "three in one million" real, was it before or
after the first test, and who demonstrated that igniting the atmosphere
was physically impossible afterwards?
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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