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With 'Oppenheimer' still dominating box office, expert shares findings from visit to nuclear testing site in the Pacific

Aug 1, 2023

1 min

Arthur Trembanis

The box office smash "Oppenheimer" captured imagination of a new generation of Americans who never knew a world without nuclear weapons.


University of Delaware professor Art Trembanis can provide a unique perspective on this topic as well as the history of nuclear weapon testing. Four years ago, he was part of a team that visited the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands, where the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s and 1950s that sank warships, tanks and other vehicles as part of a simulated nuclear battlefield. He realized that if he had been in that spot during any one of those tests, he would have been engulfed in a humongous atomic mushroom cloud.


Trembanis' team was tasked with conducting an underwater mapping effort to locate and characterize the 12-ship ghost fleet that sits 180 feet deep at the bottom of Bikini Lagoon.


He is available for interviews and can be contacted by clicking on his profile photo or via his ExpertFile profile.


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Arthur Trembanis

Arthur Trembanis

Professor, Marine Science and Policy

Prof. Trembanis research focuses on understanding beaches for resilience and mapping the seafloor using robots to develop the Blue Economy.

Seafloor MappingCoastal Erosion and MorphodynamicsHurricanes and Nor'eastersUnderwater RobotsShipwrecks
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