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> "and the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform algorithm"

Supposedly, at Garwin's scheming, one of the creators wasn't aware the immediate application of the algorithms they were optimizing was nuclear weapons,

> "Tukey reportedly came up with the idea during a meeting of President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee discussing ways to detect nuclear-weapon tests in the Soviet Union by employing seismometers located outside the country. These sensors would generate seismological time series. However, analysis of this data would require fast algorithms for computing DFTs due to the number of sensors and length of time. This task was critical for the ratification of the proposed nuclear test ban so that any violations could be detected without need to visit Soviet facilities.[4][5] Another participant at that meeting, Richard Garwin of IBM, recognized the potential of the method and put Tukey in touch with Cooley. However, Garwin made sure that Cooley did not know the original purpose. Instead, Cooley was told that this was needed to determine periodicities of the spin orientations in a 3-D crystal of helium-3."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooley–Tukey_FFT_algorithm#His...

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adastra22 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That application was for detecting nuclear bombs, not making them. That’s a big difference.

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opello 19 hours ago | parent [-]

I expect at the time the distinction was irrelevant.

I also don't think it's necessary to be critical about the wording above. Perhaps "was related to nuclear weapons" reads better? But it's not exactly ambiguous, especially after reading the quoted passage.

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pfdietz 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> I expect at the time the distinction was irrelevant.

Detection of nuclear bomb explosions is central to arms control treaties. Those are pretty much the opposite of nuclear weapon creation.

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opello 10 hours ago | parent [-]

I understand. However, in the climate of the nuclear arms race, I think that all projects having anything to do with nuclear physics were likely to be kept under tight wraps.

The comment I replied to seems to be taking a snarky tone toward a comment that was interesting and furthering the actual topic of the post. By highlighting that it didn't take a stance:

> one of the creators wasn't aware the immediate application of the algorithms they were optimizing was nuclear weapons

Even your reply to me seems to only allow interpreting "application ... was nuclear weapons" to mean "building" or "developing" instead of "detecting" when to me it simply means "in the domain of." And certainly you agree that detection is in the space of nuclear weapons?

The obvious reason detection technology falls under the same secrecy umbrella as weapons design is because one leads quite quickly to the other if you start to think about why it might be developed.

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adastra22 8 hours ago | parent [-]

To me at least it would very clearly mean building or developing. “In the domain of” would require explicit clarification.

	▲	opello 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right. And I think that's an unnecessarily narrow perspective to take.

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QuantumGood 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"Is that fusion in your pocket or are you just trying to determine periodicities of the spin orientations in a 3-D crystal of helium-3?"