A murky anniversary will be marked this weekend — 75 years since the US began nuclear bomb experimentation in the Pacific. Operation Crossroads was the first time nuclear explosions were fully captured on film. And when I say fully, I mean, fully.
Huge volumes of footage were taken from every conceivable angle while the bombs went off, both for scientific and political purposes. Cutting edge drone cameras were deployed in what was, essentially, a blockbuster production that used up more than half the world’s available stock of film – causing a shortage in Hollywood.
And, just like the nuclear experiments themselves, the resulting images have a very long afterlife. They are used everywhere. In fact, if you’ve ever watched a menacing mushroom cloud rise up in slow motion on the horizon during a movie, the chances are, you were looking at Operation Crossroads.
This unnerving long read shows how those nuclear experiments in Bikini Atoll both changed the nature of modern warfare and came to occupy a truly weird place in our cultural imagination.
At the same time as the US marks 75 years since it interrupted the natural world in the most extreme way possible, a group in Cambridgeshire is marking 60 years since they decided to do the exact opposite.
A decades-long experiment has been quietly unfolding on a small plot of land called Monks Wood National Nature Reserve, where researchers once had the whimsical idea that it might be nice to see what would happen if they just left nature completely alone and watched what happened. Now, there’s a forest and a rich wilderness on the site, as these pictures reveal.
It is the case that many double-vaccinated people are contracting COVID right now – but should you be worried? We’ve looked at the data to help you understand what’s going on.
Also this week, how people really want to build back better, and breaking news of global significance from suburban Sydney, where local cockatoos have learned how to prise open wheelie bins with their
flipping beaks.
Plus do make time to listen to this week’s Conversation Weekly podcast on how the Olympics help push the limits of human performance.
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