In the early hours of July 16, 1945, some 56 km southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, a man stood waiting, watching a seemingly innocuous artificial tower from a distance. Suddenly, the tower vanished in a billowing cloud of smoke and light—so much so that the surrounding mountains appeared brighter than they did during daytime.
It was, after all, the aftermath of the first nuclear weapons test detonation, nicknamed “Trinity.” The man was Robert J. Oppenheimer, the director of the laboratory who oversaw the test and who would forever change the landscape of war.
