While at the barbershop in San Francisco, Luis Alvarez reads in the newspaper about Hahn and Strassman’s nuclear fission experiment in Germany. He immediately leaves the barbershop and runs to Oppenheimer to tell him the news. Robert reacts skeptically, saying “impossible.” But the next day, Alvarez successfully repeats the experiment, and Robert realizes within minutes that not only are neutrons created, but they can also split other atoms, triggering a chain reaction and thus a bomb.
