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National Geographic

DID A SPY LEAD THE U.S. DRIVE
FOR AN ATOMIC BOMB?

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

In today’s newsletter, we question why Oppenheimer was almost removed from the Manhattan Project entirely, learn how artificial intelligence is helping solve neglected women’s health issues, explore a mummification workshop below Earth’s surface ... and zoom in on a microscopic universe.

a portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/PIX INC./TIME & LIFE PICTURES

He was a brilliant physicist—and his driving, inquisitive but collaborative style united scientists and tens of thousands of workers in America’s atomic drive to defeat the Nazis.

But could J. Robert Oppenheimer (above) keep World War II’s biggest secret from Moscow?

Pragmatism overcame suspicion during wartime, and the bomb from Oppenheimer’s team ended the war—but with a massive cost of lives in two Japanese cities that haunted many of the scientists for the rest of their lives. Suspicion, however, arose after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WHAT HAPPENED LATER?

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technicians work at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico

PHOTOGRAPH BY CORBIS HISTORICAL, GETTY IMAGES

Bomb squad: Technicians work at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. The U.S. military tapped Oppenheimer to establish the lab in 1942. Codenamed "Project Y," this remote facility brought together the brightest minds in theoretical physics all with one aim: to create an atomic bomb. Read more.

Related: The sensitive, flawed father of the atomic bomb

STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING

a mammogram scan

PHOTOGRAPH BY AKOS STILLER, THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX

AI may be key to solving the most neglected women's health issues (Above, possible anomalies in a mammogram are highlighted by an AI software)

See the microscopic universe that lives in a single drop of water

What is your 'food clock'? These 4 tips can improve how you eat

New anxiety unlocked: Ticks can 'fly'

In 250 million years, this may be the only continent on Earth

Earth has lost and gained many oceans. Here's where a new one might appear next.

At long last, the American buffalo has come home

Why did these shark hunters bury their dead with extra limbs?

What extreme heat does to the human body

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Taro, the root vegetable

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHE COAT, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Taro bubble tea, anyone? The root vegetable, taro (pictured above), is one of the oldest cultivated food plants of humankind, Nat Geo reports. And its history is sewn with folklore, flavor, and depth around the globe.

HOW DO YOU EAT TARO?

WORLD POPULATION DAY

caregivers tending to babies in a postnatal center in China

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN JIN

What goes up... Fewer people are getting married and having babies in China—and the country’s population is declining. A big reason: Many women have changed their outlook on traditional Chinese values, seeing them as a barrier to freedom and success. Empowering women, their voices, and their possibilities is the U.N.’s theme for this year’s World Population Day. (Above, caregivers tend to babies while the mothers recuperate at a postnatal center in China.)

Related: Will Nigeria’s booming population lead it to prosperity or poverty?

LAST GLIMPSE

Deep in an embalming workshop, or wabet, in the Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara, the 70-day mummification process begins. A priest wearing a mask of jackal-headed Anubis, god of funerary rites, officiates.

ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN FREEMAN

What’s inside a mummification workshop? The mummification process took 70 days—and was a robust cultural and economic trade. Embalming vessels. Priests in god of funerary rites masks (like the one illustrated above). Layers of tombs. And in the underground maze of a mortuary, the deeper a body was buried, the more important that person was in society. See for yourself.

Today’s soundtrack: We’re a Winner, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Behind the song.

Thanks for reading our newsletter! It was edited and curated by Jen Tse, Hannah Farrow, Nancy San Martín, and David Beard. We'd love to hear from you: [email protected]. Keep shining!

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