The Unexpected Outcomes of the Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project resulted in reactions both new and unforeseen.
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Unexpected outcomes
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Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator with Manhattan Project Emblem (Public Domain)

Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator

(Inside Science) -- The Manhattan Project was one of the largest and most ambitious scientific ventures of all time, and it brought the power of the atom to humanity. Some of its direct and indirect outcomes are obvious -- for example, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the development of nuclear power. But it also affected science and society in ways that few would have predicted. Here, we present a small sampling of the institutions and developments that can trace their origins to the Manhattan Project.

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Unexpected Outcomes infographic
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Illustration and infographic by Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator. Images include Manhattan Project Emblem (Public Domain), Fermilab (U.S. Department of Energy), Bomb Pulse chart (Public Domain), Julian E. Mack (Atomic Heritage), Lassina Zerbo (United Nations Flickr), and a Plutonium-238 pellet (U.S. Department of Energy).

For more stories, videos and infographics related to Inside Science's coverage of the far-reaching ways that the Manhattan Project influenced science and society, visit our page: Seventy-Five Years After Trinity.

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Abigail Malate is a graphic designer at the American Institute of Physics, which produces the editorially independent news service Inside Science.