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#6040 09/04/00 09:13 AM
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Does anyone know the full quote for this, which I think comes from the Bhagagavita(?) (part of the Mahabarata?) and ends "..the destroyer of dreams"? Supposedly its what came to the mind of one of the principal scientists at Los Alamos when he saw his invention demonstrated for the first time.


#6041 09/04/00 02:37 PM
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Here's some context for it:

With both India and Pakistan conducting a series of underground nuclear tests in May 1998, two of the South Asian countries joined an exclusive Club whose behind-the-veil motto was best summed up by no other person than Robert Oppenheimer, the unofficialfather of US atomic bomb, on seeing the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds!" The question now is, will India and Pakistan's joining the exclusive Club change South Asia? The question deserves serious considerations not so much for reasons of military strategy or technology as for what it has done or is likely to do to the South Asians socially and psychologically.

Oppenheimer's statement, incidentally, is a direct quote from the Bhagavad Gita. Until the first test at Pokharan in 1974, I, as a member of the South Asian community, took solace from the fact that Oppenheimer sought refuge in the wisdom of the East in highlighting the follies of the West.


Or, from another source:

If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One . . .
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
--- The Bhagavad-Gita (quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, at the first test of an atomic bomb [the Trinity Test] on July 16, 1945.)




#6042 09/04/00 05:11 PM
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wow,
nice one, brandon.


#6043 09/05/00 01:33 AM
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excellent - just what I was looking for and more! Thanks Brandon


#6044 09/05/00 11:00 PM
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*adding my applause*

Thanks, johnjohn, for bringing this up and to Brandon for giving us the full story.



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