Einstein and the nuclear bomb

When i read about and researched the Nuclear bomb and its capabilities chills ran down my spine. i am truly in awe at the destructive power of this weapon. I would say with reasonable certainty that it is on of the top three most important scientific developments of the 20th century and maybe altered the course of civilization more than anything else from that century. but what i want to focus on for a moment, because i do not have to much time is the important role Einstein played in the development of the Nuclear bomb.
The following video gives a brief overview of some of the big players in the research of the bomb. This is a connection to a previous blog post entitled The theory of relativity and modernism. Essentially einstein came up with his general theory of relativity. a part of said theory is the relationship between mater and energy as described by the equation E=mc^2. this is a very famous equation. probably the most famous in the world. basically this equation explains how much energy is in matter and vice versa. so when you take just a small amount of uranium and split the atoms then the resulting energy (or explosion) is, well, nuclear. what is happening is the uranium is turning from matter into pure energy.




the part of the story that i did not know before was that einstein was concerned about the germans getting nuclear power before the United States and so he wrote a personal letter to the President. The president reacted by gathering the top scientist to begin serious about making the bomb. The result: the first nuclear bomb was tested in the new mexico, and then used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War two forever changing the nature of warfare.