President Franklin Roosevelt, Albert Einstein warned that this technology could be
used to create an atomic bomb. Fueled by fears that Germany would produce such
a weapon, the United States established the Manhattan Project along with the Los
Alamos Laboratory to create their own atomic bomb.
The Los Alamos Laboratory created a uranium bomb, called Little Boy, and a
plutonium bomb, called Fat Man. Little Boy exploded over Hiroshima on August 6,
1945 and Fat Man exploded over Nagasaki three days later. The explosions killed
more than 130,000 people and ended World War II.
Today, the mission of the laboratory’s 10,000 employees is national security. Their
work focuses on the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile and the
development of technologies to reduce the threat of terrorists.
