History of the United States 6–3 decision in Korematsu v. United States Supreme Court case. Research and development took flight as well, best seen in the Manhattan Project, a secret effort to harness nuclear fission to produce highly destructive atomic bombs. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb at the Trinity test, conducted at New Mexico's Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range on
Cosmic bomb (phrase) uses the phrase several times in his 1973 novel "Gravity's Rainbow", which is set roughly in the period during which the term was current. The term rapidly fell into disuse as applied to weaponry, soon yielding to "atomic bomb" (which, in turn, was eventually to yield to "nuclear weapon"). In equestrian circles, it survived for many years in the racing career of a thoroughbred named "Cosmic Bomb" and in the pedigrees of horses he sired. More recently, the term has been applied to powerful energy surges from celestial objects known as magnetars. Cosmic bomb (phrase) "Cosmic bomb" was another name