During the early part of WWII, the U.S. military brought some of the brightest scientific minds in the U.S. together in an isolated pocket of New Mexico. The top-secret location became known as the Los Alamos Laboratory. There, scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, designing and building the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. 

The Manhattan Project no longer exists, but as this video shows, the secret location has been rebuilt, virtually. Using a new, free iPhone app called Los Alamos: The Secret City of the Manhattan Project, you can tour the secret atomic city as it existed in 1945.

By exploring buildings, reading documents, and playing games, you can become part of the top-secret Manhattan Project—though the app stops short of showing users how to actually make a bomb. The experience finishes at the Trinity atomic test site, where scientists detonated the first test bomb. It’s a virtual, time-traveling counterpart to the real-world site, which still opens to visitors twice per year.

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