At an earlier stage of the Manhattan Project, physicists had debated the risk that the blast might be much larger than predicted by their calculations. Some had worried that it would ignite the nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere, perhaps even annihilate the planet. Subsequent calculations had seemed to rule out that scenario. But Enrico Fermi, who was at the observation post at Sandy Ridge that night, had a predilection for gallows humor. He offered to take wagers on the odds that the bomb would set fire to the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would destroy the State of New Mexico or the entire
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