Timeless S01E03 10/17/2016 "Atomic City"

"The model is clearly an IBM Correctable Selectric II, which was not put on the market until 1973."

yes, CLEARLY

LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVgVB3qsySQ

 

Well, they have changed the timeline for things that happened after the Hindenburg.

 

Well if you really want to nitpick, how about when it was said that crashing the two cars would cause them all to be blown up? All that was stolen was the nuclear core - which will not explode on its own without a detonator.

 

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This also isn't the first series to forget that the Department of Energy didn't exist until President Carter created it in 1977.

And I have a feeling that plutonium core is going to be used for something besides a bomb. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't having a critical mass of plutonium in a ball like that cause the explosion to happen? I thought that the whole point of the bomb was to force two or more pieces of uranium/plutonium together to form a critical mass.

 

The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima used the technique of slamming two sub-critical pieces of uranium together to create a critical mass and therefore atomic explosion. But the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was an implosion type bomb, a core of sub-critical plutonium is surrounded by several thousand pounds of high-explosive designed in such a way that the explosive force is directed inwards thereby crushing the plutonium core into a super-critical state. The Manhattan had two groups, one for each type, because they weren't sure which type would work. Turned out both types did.

The implosion type bombs are more efficient i.e. a higher percentage of the matter is converted to energy. So after WW II all atomic bombs were of the implosion type. So in 1962 that would be the type of bomb they were getting the core from.

My problem with the story is that plutonium is highly radioactive, so just being near it without some shielding would very dangerous.

 

But Max Headroom was wearing long rubber gloves, so he was protected.

 

It's ok, he had gloves on.

 

Plutonium 239 is a little bit radioactive but a whole lot poisonous, so the gloves are probably a good idea. After that, we take leave of reality altogether. Plutonium is twice as dense as lead; picking up a ball that size would be very difficult. But that is beside the point, because the plutonium core of a bomb exists as a sphere only for microseconds before it explodes; it's not a solid object that you can extract from the bomb and carry around.

Now I understand why the excellent show "Manhattan" was cancelled; obviously nobody watched it!

 

I thought it was only our travelers who referred to the Department of Energy... So it's not "the series" that forgot, but one of the characters. That seems fine to me...

 

Except wasn't the character who referenced the DoE existing in 1962 the one who is supposed to be the historical expert?

 

I'm a historical expert, and I have no idea when the DeO was created...

 

IIRC your historical period of interest was a few years before 1962.

 

Does she even have a period of interest? She seems like one of those TV experts who is an expert in everything, not just one field...paging Daniel Jackson!

 

It is a sphere to start with, the high explosives used to implode it just make it a much smaller sphere. Here is a picture of a real core. http://www.vanunu.com/uscampaign/pix/pic9.jpg

This is a diagram of an implosion atomic bomb showing the spherical core. http://zarco-macross.wdfiles.com/local--files/wiki:atomic-bomb/fatman.jpg

 

The second link also says it is a hollow sphere. So the implosion makes it a smaller solid sphere with critical mass.

 

Stargate! Win

 

I also noticed she seems to be a veritable know-it-all. But that's what the script requires.

 

Too bad Wyatt isn't as good a hand-to-hand fighter as she is a historian...