Supernovae Ia and Nuclear Bombs

I am reading Ray Monk's: Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Within the Center.

Fascinating book!

It is clear to me now, that the problems for making a nuclear bomb at Los Alamos, were the best preparation to eventually understand Supernovae Ia (Read note below). Only a man with the mental capacity of Julius Robert Oppenheimer could have done that. Later in life, he started the scientific study of black holes. I was lucky to have helped Hank Lewis at Santa Barbara, one of his students. He was a very intelligent man himself.

What pains me though, is that governments use the work of these luminaries to wage war.

On the bright side, one of the physicists I met at UCSB, Alexei Vladimir Filippenko, went on to discover the acceleration of the Universe. He did this, by looking at these exploding nuclear bombs, the Supernovae Ia.

So it goes.