As February slid into March and April the biologists eased into the rhythm of maintaining and measuring their research populations. Ennui set in. The lab notebook read “routine care of fish” or “routine care of test animals.”58 These lackadaisical accounts masked important developments. On 13 March, the last of the A-lot fry that had been… Lire la suite Chinook
INTERVIEWER 1: Today is Wednesday, February 15, 1995. And we’re talking with Charles Wyckoff about his work with Harold Edgerton. By way of introduction, could you tell us about how you came to MIT, and got into Doc’s lab. And tell us your story from the beginning. WYCKOFF: OK, there is a beginning. I went… Lire la suite Wyckoff
Tatarewicz: We’re looking at the Bikini Diary. Katz: It starts the 13th of September, 1945, and goes through 21 November, 1946. Tatarewicz: These are five bound approximately folio sized volumes, with clippings, some letters and carbons, and handwritten notes. Katz: It’s the only record of what we did. I kept this diary because I was… Lire la suite Big outfit
Goddard’s dream finally became a reality on November 20, 1925, when he set up a test over Rochester, New York. His crew consisted of the pilot, two lieutenants from the Army Ordnance Corps, his research partner « Doc » Burke, and himself. Armed with a super-size powder bomb, fourteen feet long and eight inches in diameter, packed with eighty pounds of explosive, the crew took off. They dropped the bomb around 11 o’clock at night over the city. Twenty seconds later it exploded with a tremendous blast and brilliant light which was so fast it took the place of a shutter in the camera. The results took awhile to process, since they had to land the plane in darkness, get to their hotel – difficult because of the mass panic the explosion had caused. Later that day, the newspapers proudly displayed the world’s first photograph ever taken at night from an airplane.
The purpose the Crossroads operation was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on a fleet of 95 target ships. Assembled in Bikini Lagoon, the fleet was hit with the two (ABLE and BAKER) detonations of plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapons. Both test incorporated animals to test the effects of exposure to the bomb and the resulting radiation. The ABLE test included a greater number and variety of animals for testing. Hundreds of animals including goats, pigs, guinea pigs, mice and rats, had been placed on 22 target ships in stations normally occupied by soldiers, and were held in place by small frames and cages. Because ABLE was off its mark, producing a smaller explosion, and the spread out nature of the ships, the immediate blast killed about 10% of the animals.
A radioactive surgeonfish makes its own x-ray. The bright area is a meal of fresh algae. The rest of the body has absorbed and distributed enough plutonium to make the scales radioactive. The fish was alive and apparently healthy when captured.
A la douceur de l’aquarelle et la simplicité du papier, le plasticien russe Pavel Pepperstein – il est aussi romancier et rappeur – associe le sérieux et la gravité des préoccupations écologiques actuelles. Sa série Bikini 47 est ainsi une évocation sans détour des essais nucléaires américains dans le Pacifique, Bikini étant le nom d’un atoll des îles Marshall utilisé à des fins militaires.
Surnommé « la Tombe », un grand dôme en béton abrite la décharge nucléaire des îles Marshall, où des essais ont été effectués pendant la guerre froide. Le gouvernement américain craint que la structure ne soit vulnérable à l’élévation du niveau de la mer. Le ministère de l’Énergie doit rédiger un rapport dans un délai de six mois.
Les cratères laissés par les tests nucléaires de l’atoll de Bikini sont contaminés par la radioactivité et pourtant des coraux y prospèrent sans problème. Des biologistes marins veulent percer le secret de cette résistance en espérant y trouver de nouvelles armes contre le cancer. Inscrit au patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco, cet atoll est tristement célèbre… Lire la suite Coraux