![]() ![]() Congress directs the National Park Service and the Department of Energy to determine the significance, suitability, and feasibility of including signature facilities remaining from the Manhattan Project in a national historical park. This was also the beginning of the Department of Energy’s National Laboratory System. Scientific and technological advances made in the pursuit of an atomic weapon contributed to progress in many areas: environmental and materials science, biology, nuclear medicine, nuclear energy, supercomputing, precision machining, even astronomy. The Manhattan Project’s legacy of revolutionary science and engineering, along with the lessons learned from that time, continues in the spirit of the modern Laboratory. Cutting-edge research and technological breakthroughs still happen here, as scientists and engineers work to solve some of today’s most complex problems. Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory remains one of the United States’ premier science and technology institutions. Yet, many stayed to continue critical research in this new Nuclear Age. After the military deployment of two atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent end of World War II, some Los Alamos scientists took their families and returned to their pre-war lives. Twenty-eight months after Project Y began in Los Alamos, members of the Manhattan Project detonated the world’s first atomic weapon, the "Gadget," at the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico. ![]() This unprecedented undertaking required revolutionary science, engineering, technological innovation, and collaboration between civilians and military personnel from diverse backgrounds. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist from the University of California at Berkeley, as the scientific project director. Their mission: develop an atomic weapon before Nazi Germany. Scientists, engineers, explosive experts, military personnel, and members of the Special Engineer Detachment all convened on the rural Pajarito Plateau in New Mexico for a secret project during World War II. ![]()
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