Quote of the day by J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” How the Manhattan Project made a scientist regret his greatest achievement

Quote of the day by J. Robert Oppenheimer: At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the New Mexico desert turned white. A 21,000-ton TNT blast ripped the sky open. The man who built it stood and watched in silence. J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, did not celebrate. He whispered a line from the Bhagavad Gita — "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" — and the nuclear age began. His bomb killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people within weeks. The U.S. government gave him a medal.