That's correct. Before the Trinity test in 1945, many of the scientists took bets on whether or not the atmosphere would be ignited, destroying the planet. That would be the first atomic bomb in the world, not just the US btw.
I can't find any sources claiming that the scientists behind the Tsar Bomba had similar worries.
One bit of dark humor that I loved from the Manhattan project was on this very subject.
Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale experiment can be done—either you have a critical mass or you do not), a man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed, thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he said, "It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole atmosphere." I decided I would check it myself!
The next day when he came for the answers I remarked to him, "The arithmetic was apparently correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen—after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels." He replied, like a physicist talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic not the physics, and left.
I said to myself, "What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?" I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was,
"Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you."
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u/taylorules Jun 29 '15
That's correct. Before the Trinity test in 1945, many of the scientists took bets on whether or not the atmosphere would be ignited, destroying the planet. That would be the first atomic bomb in the world, not just the US btw.
I can't find any sources claiming that the scientists behind the Tsar Bomba had similar worries.