The quote “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” is reason enough!
They could have had Thanos say it as he wipes out half the universe and it’d still wouldn’t sound as cool.
They could have had Thanos say it as he wipes out half the universe and it’d still wouldn’t sound as cool.
As John von Neumann later said, 'sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it'. It's clearly what Oppenheimer wanted.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Trinity
So he said it later.
On the day, he only thought about it.
Oppenheimer did not say he "said it". He said he "remembered" the verse.
> J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist and director of the Manhattan Project, learned Sanskrit in 1933 and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original form, citing it later as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life.
His later description of the moment is:
> We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Btw, the quote is from the Bhagavad Gita
A quick summary of the context in the Bhagavad Gita:
Ajurna, an aristocratic (Pandava Prince) warrior highly skilled in archery - right before engaging in a battle of two armies (two groups of cousins: Kauravas and Pandavas) for the succession of the throne - upon seeing all his close kin arranged in two opposing parties all with their unique skills and feats ready to kill and be killed - the warrior prince falls into a deep emotional turmoil. He begins to talk to his charioteer Krishnu who reveals himself to be an avatar of the deity Vishnu.
This dialogue evolves into a whole contemplation in which a part of the upanishadic cosmic view gets revealed to Arjuna/the reader; somewhat akin in style to the secular western form of Plato's dialogue (in this case the Socratic method is led by "reason" or "logos" not a sophisticated mythology like an avatar of a specific deity).
The dharma in the specific case of Ajurna, is to fulfill his caste duty of Kshatriya [1].
Or from the lens of quantum mechanics and modern history the bomb in some way or another was inevitable.
Its fine-tuned parameters (1) put in the Big Bang, the idea (2) conceived by Szilard [2] and the Anglo-American military apparatus (3) rather than merely convinced in its superiority putting the actual resources/technology into the ultimate pragmatic use [3][4] (first mover & cost/risk-reward ratio).
[0]https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/11/verse/30
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshatriya
[2]https://www.newscientist.com/definition/invention-nuclear-bo...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_weapons_program...
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#Membership_i...