Trinity - the first atomic explosion in the world

Trinity, (code name for Jornada del Muerto, south New Mexico), 16th of july, 1945. The time is 05:29 h 40 sec am. In the control center, 900 meters away from the tower that carries the trinity bomb, Sam Allison is counting: 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 -

ZERO - it was only a cry - then there was this silence, that seem to last an infinity. And in this millionth second of silence, you only heard the love whisper of the toads of Trinity...

Then a gleaming light flashed across the darkness, a flaming lightning shoots up into the sky and turned to a blinding bell of fire. It was exactly 5:29:45. For a split of a second, the light of this fireball was brighter than all suns; the temperature in its center was 10.000 times higher than the sun surface. The pressure, that acted on the ground was more than 100 billion atmospheres, the strongest pressure ever generated on earth.

Within a millionth second the fireball catched the earth; after 25 milliseconds is was as large as the Washington Monument, and after 8 tenth of a second, the white gleaming ball attained the high of the Empire State Building.

The power of 20.000 tons TNT got free in this moment. At an altitude of 200 meters, the foaming ball that was still shooting up into the atmosphere turned into red-yellow, than blood-red color. At an altitude of 4.500 meters, the fireball broke through the cloud cover - first orange-red, then in a darker getting pink color. A few seconds later, it attained an final altitude of 12.000 meters and started to flow into a giantic ring of grey ash. The surrounding air was ionzed and crowned the ring with the shine of a crimson halo. As the cloud finally got some peace, the smoke pillar was driven to the north and a pink glow colored the sky over Trinity.

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Made in 1997 by Michael Schmid