First 3D Simulations of Complete Nuclear Detonations

jhiv writes: "The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) reports that 'Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories have completed the first full-system three-dimensional simulations of a nuclear weapon's explosion'. The simulations are two of the largest computer simulations ever attempted, each taking weeks to complete on the ASCI White supercomputer. The Los Alamos team used the ASCI Blue Mountain supercomputer to visualize the results. Additional coverage can be found in this story in the Albuquerque Journal."

Comments

will this work?

[quinto2000]

i remember a great article in Science about 4 years ago that heralded the coming of age of computer simulations as a replacement for nuclear testing. Instead today, the US is trying to back out of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, nuclear weapons are proliferating instead of being disarmed, and if I recall correctly we still test nuclear weapons underground. When will we realize that nuclear weapons are a menace? When will we accept that we need to take the lead in ending their use?

As an American citizen, I am sometimes disgusted by our government. I really hope that computer simulations can replace the war games, but right now I'm not so certain.

Re:will this work?

[Henry V .009]

We do not test nuclear weapons underground, or above ground for that matter. America is confident in its computer simulations. But our confidence in our simulations is not the only factor. Nuclear weapons are never meant to be used. They are meant to deter (threaten). Therefore what is paramount is our enemies' confidence in our simulations.

Re:will this work?

[quinto2000]

Of course, the US is the only country to ever use the H-Bomb: and we used it twice. Directly after September 11, I distinctly remember our former Secretary of State advocating the use of Nuclear weapons -- before we had any idea of what an appropriate target would be. The US is a little more trigger happy than you like to think.

PS -- we have a nuclear armament large enough to destroy the world several times over. How much more "deterrence" do we need?

Re:will this work?

[prismatic]

If by "use" you mean "test", you might be correct. But if you're implying that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were H-bombs, you are mistaken. they were A-bombs. H-bombs are hydrogen fusion bombs. the two ww2 nukes were fission weapons.

Re:will this work?

[IsaacW]

This is an important result, if only because it simulates the physics of an event in 3-D for a rather complex situation. Many major improvements in technology have come about simply because someone needed a better way to kill someone, and these technologies often find peaceful applications as well. Remember that the early work with nuclear reactions was solely to create a bomb, and from that research we now have safe nuclear reactors that produce very cheap power.

At the very least, this simulation shows that computers can be used to predict the results of very complex interactions between matter and energy. Surely these same supercomputers can be used to simulate other equally complex phenomena, and these tests break the ice for simulations to come.

On another note, the United States does not test any physical nuclear devices anymore, underground or otherwise.

Re:will this work?

[EnderWiggnz]

refresh my memory... but ...

there's no leftover radiation from h-bombs, is there?

Re:will this work?

[cdh]

Remember where the majority of nuclear testing and action is taking place: India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea. The fact that the US is at least keeping up with research should be considered a good thing.

The test ban treaty, much like the flawed environmental treaties, just don't work. Why? Because they are punitive against many countries, in particular the US. The US always has to pay more, do more, etc. than any other country. They also don't work because the countries that cause many of the problems (see above list) don't abide by them, even if they signed the treaties. They don't follow them, yet if the US decides to change its mind in order to keep a lead, they are criticised.

Sorry, the US isn't the "bad guy" here, even though it's popular among many people to think so.

Re:will this work?

[Combuchan]

The United States is withdrawing from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because the language in it prevents the signer nations from developing missile-defense anti-nuke shields. The theory was back in 1973 that if one nation had this technology, they could fire their nukes on another nation and be spared from the concept of mutually assured destruction, (MAD) the idea that if you fire one nuke, you essentially end the world.

The problem with the Test Ban Treaty is that it was written in a different era. Hopefully the events of 11 September indicates to you that there are more than enough people more than willing to kill themselves to inflict as much destruction on the United States as possible.

MAD doesn't work as an effective deterrent when your enemy is willing to die to kill you.

I saw a History Channel tagline that referenced nuclear weapons in the most relevant way: "Weapons so powerful, their mere existence implies 'Peace, or else.'"

This may be straying a bit off-topic here, but what if we hadn't developed the nuke? How many allied and Japanese forces would have died in the invasion of Japan had we not dropped the bomb? 125,000 civillian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison to the amount of possible casualties. The USA estimates 1,000,000 allied casulties in such an invasion, maybe times that by 5 to get the number of Japanese killed.

Remember. Nukes suck. But they're the better than the alternative. However, straying back on topic ... how do they know this simulation is accurate?

P.S. If you disagree, don't moderate, reply.

Re:will this work?

[PurpleFloyd]

Yes, there is a whole fscking lot of leftover radiation. Mostly from the fission bomb trigger (there's really no other way anyone knows of to get the heat required to start a fusion reaction), but IIRC fusion will also cause a fair amount of radiation, with all the nasty radioisotopes that take anywhere from minutes to centuries to break down.

Re:will this work?

[EnderWiggnz]

i was thinking of a neutron bomb, actually...

its amazing, with this new-fangled internet thing, you can research things really quickly.

someone should try to make a buck off of it, its cool.

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

Of course, the US is the only country to ever use the H-Bomb: and we used it twice.

Uh, no, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atom bombs (U235 and Plutonium). Fission bombs, not Hydrogen-fusion (or H) bombs.

Directly after September 11, I distinctly remember our former Secretary of State advocating the use of Nuclear weapons -- before we had any idea of what an appropriate target would be.

Which "former secretary of state?" I highly doubt this occured. More likely there was some bland statement about not taking any option off the table, the standard U.S. military response when asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Do you have a transcript or something to back up such a claim?

Again, this is use as a deterant. Whether anyone finds this "threat" credible in case like post-Sept. 11 is another matter.

Re:will this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the eurotrash think we're the bad guys. Fucking socialist pussies.

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

If it was just from the trigger, the left over radioactive material would be fairly minimal. Instead, what is usually done is to encase the hydrogen (tritium actually) in additional uranium or plutonium. This increases the yield and produces fall-out. This is a strategic decision, not a technical one, really.

When you hear talk of a "clean bomb," its one without this secondary fissile material.

Re:will this work?

[crystalplague]

the US only does subcritical testing anymore meaning there is not enough fissionable material to sustain a chain reaction. If I recall correctly, these are done in a large tunnel-like lab several hundred feet underground.

I always found it funny that OSHA makes the scientists that work there wear safety goggles and hard hats. If something goes wrong down there, it's going to go wrong in a big way and no amount of plexiglass is going to protect you.

Re:will this work?

[quinto2000]

Which "former secretary of state?" I highly doubt this occured. More likely there was some bland statement about not taking any option off the table, the standard U.S. military response when asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Do you have a transcript or something to back up such a claim?

It was on CNN. If you can't guess which former secretary of state I could possibly mean, try this indicted war criminal: http://www.etan.org/news/kissinger/

He is possibly the least sane man alive, so I don't claim it to have been official US policy. Nuclear weapons have always been on the table, however, for a lot more than detterrence; Nixon advocated the use of nukes in the Vietnam war, something that just came to light recently.

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

The United States is withdrawing from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because the language in it prevents the signer nations from developing missile-defense anti-nuke shields. The theory was back in 1973 that if one nation had this technology, they could fire their nukes on another nation and be spared from the concept of mutually assured destruction, (MAD) the idea that if you fire one nuke, you essentially end the world.

That's the ABM treaty, a treaty between just the U.S. and Russia. The CTBT is signed by nearly every civilized nation on earth, (including the U.S.) but ratified by very few (also not including the U.S.). We wouldn't exactly have to withdraw from it. (It's not binding since it isn't ratified.)

Clinton tried to get it ratified in his last couple of years, but had it tabled in the senate because he was going to loose the battle.

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

I'm not exactly going to defend Kissinger, but:

1) Who is he indicted by? An internationally recognized war crimes tribunal? Or a nation?

2) Why doesn't the anti-Kissinger site you point to have anything in its news archive about how he advocated using nukes in Afganistan? I would think this would be too good of strike against him for your site to pass up.

3) Nixon "told" people to do a lot of crazy things and would then come back the next day and say "You didn't do that, right? Good." So, if you tell me somewhere on tape he said "Nuke 'em" I'll believe you. Otherwise, again, supply a reference. (From an established media outlet or source, not some "Blame America First" site.)

Re:will this work?

[dohnut]

Well, they weren't H-bombs, but yes..

Study: 1950s nuclear fallout worse than thought

Re:will this work?

[AnalogBoy]

Mr. President, We can not afford a supercomputer simulation gap!

Seriously. We haven't detonated a nuclear warhead since September 23rd, 1992, an underground test called "Divider".

And I am disgusted by our government from time to time also. But my political views are.. well, too political, even for slashdot.

Re:will this work?

[HanzoSan]

Our government most likely has been doing sims privately for years, ever since the cold war. Now i guess its no longer classified, kinda like the shadow government is no longer a secret.

As for ending nuclear weapons, we already have better weapons than nuclear, far more dangerous. We have mind control / altering weapons, we have weapons which can destroy all the buildings in an area without harming many people, we have we, weapons which can destroy all the electronics in a city maybe even a small country,we have germ warfare which could kill out millions of our enemies without any of them even noticing we are attacking them, we have the internet which we could use to cause their own people to turn againsnt their governments (if their government lets them on the net)

Nuclear weapons can do alot of damage but most of the damage is done to the enviornment and to the innocent people, not so much damage is done to the actual military enemy we'd be fighting if they have bunkers and caves and tunnels and bomb shelters. What good is nuke to someone who would survive it? Now germ warfare, and taking down all their electronics with one attack, and bombs which are made to destroy all their underground bases.

My point is, Nuke alone isnt useful, the only people interested in nuke are terrorists who want to kill innocent people.

If india were to use nuke on pakistan, lots of innocent people in pakistan would die, the military would launch nuke and many people in india would die, both countries would get absolutely no where.

Real wars are about missions, targets, and just throwing bombs around is not something thats usually done.

We threw a bomb at japan but it was because back then no one knew what nuke was.

Everyone knows about nuke now.

I worry more about the weapons which we dont know much about, or anything about at all, considering all the technology we have today, the weapons could be way more deadly and a country could be destroyed overnight by something like a virus which spreads through the air.

I worry about airborn unstoppable virii which kills people in a matter of hours.

Re:will this work?

[FrostedChaos]

No, the point doesn't stand.

When the first atomic bomb was used, few people had any idea of how destructive it would be. The full potential of nuclear weapons only became evident after WWII. When the Allies told Stalin about the bomb, he responded with indifference, at least initially. President Truman authorized its use without much debate. He believed, and probably rightly so, that it would save lives by shortening the war.

It's easy to see how they could have underestimated "The Bomb." The first atomic bomb wasn't an H-Bomb, or a cluster bomb. It wasn't even housed in a missile. More people died in the firebombing of Dresden than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The significance of nuclear weapons only became clear during the cold war, when both sides created massive stockpiles of bombs. The world could have ended then, at least for the U.S. and Russia. Whether or not humanity would have survived in some form is an open question.

So think before you condemn the U.S. for inventing the atomic bomb. Almost every country involved in WWII had a nuclear weapons program. America just happened to get there first. Unfortunately, we cannot unilaterally disarm now, although we should probably reduce the size of our stockpile.

In fact, from what I can tell, America is not "trigger-happy" at all. The last war, against Afghanistan, was fought with almost no loss of life on either side.

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

You'll notice the last date on this document is September, 1992. The last time we did an underground test.

We haven't tested a device in almost ten years and have no real plans to resume, although to its discredit the Bush administration has begun talking about the possibility.

Re:will this work?

[quinto2000]

The Nixon quote was on the AP wire. Do your own goddam research. I told you also, on the Kissinger point I heard him say it on CNN. I don't know where a transcript is. I just linked to the first site I saw on Google that mentioned Kissinger to let you know who I was talking about and admit his history is not the typical administration member's.

Re:will this work?

[AnalogBoy]

Honestly i'm surprised bush didn't drop the bomb on Afghanistan. He strikes me as the kind of guy who would do it - he's got his Captain Crunch spy decoder ring on, and enjoys being the drama queen (activating cold war reserve gov't..)

It'll be interesting in 40 years or so when the white house Gee Dubya Shrubya mp3's are released. Perhaps more anti-semetic nuclear-toting hothead "republican" action!

Just my $0.02, Taxed 15 ways.

Re:will this work?

[garcia]

haha, no. they were meant to be used. it was probably sometime during the 1960s that deterence was seen as a viable alternative.

Kennedy played his cards right and set a precedent.

What I am personally afraid of is some smaller
nation obtaining nuclear warfare weapons and using them w/o the understanding of their true results. Not every war could be avoided by ignoring official memos from a drunken leader.

Re:will this work?

[grub]

I made one lousy +5 joke about Jon Katz, and now I'm banned from moderating.
Interesting. What's the poop?

Re:will this work?

[Waffle Iron]

Instead, what is usually done is to encase the hydrogen (tritium actually) in additional uranium or plutonium.

IIRC, tritium is very rare and only a few grams are used to "boost" the fission trigger. The main fusion fuel in most H bombs is a mixture of lithium and deuterium, which conveniently combine to form a solid chemical compound.

At any rate, in many bombs, the fusion is not even the main source of energy. It is used as a massive source of neutrons, instantly converting hundreds or thousands of pounds of dirt cheap unenriched uranium into fissionable fuel (unenriched uranium also avoids worries about dangerous multiple critical masses in one bomb). Many bombs get only about 1/3 of their energy from actual fusion, the rest is from the fast-neutron induced fission of the uranium blanket surrounding the fusion core. The end result orders of magnitude more fallout isotopes than a simple A-bomb.

Re:will this work?

[FrostedChaos]

No. I'm sorry. Nukes are still the ultimate weapon. Let's review.

Mind Control: A fantasy pure and simple. Maybe we have new interrogation drugs, but that's hardly the same thing.

Weapons which destroy all the buildings in an area: I'm not sure what you're talking about here (guided missiles?) but you should understand that when a building comes down, the people inside tend to die.

Weapons to destroy electronics: This is something which actually exists. However, it still isn't as useful as you might think. Most of the countries that have electronics also have nuclear weapons. So, using this weapon is similar to firing a spitball at someone who is holding a gun to your head. Not a smart move. NOTE: The EMF from a nuclear bomb would burn out most electronics.

Germ warfare: Yes, biological weapons were researched during the cold war. Many of them are extremely deadly. But biological weapons are still unreliable and hard to distribute. The only real use of these weapons would seem to be a stealth attack. But nukes can also be used stealthily... and that's the scariest part. NOTE: Keep in mind that there will always be a few people who survive any biological attack, either because they are immune, or because they are not exposed to the biological agent.

Nuclear weapons can do alot of damage but most of the damage is done to the enviornment and to the innocent people, not so much damage is done to the actual military enemy we'd be fighting if they have bunkers and caves and tunnels and bomb shelters.
First of all, in case you haven't noticed, armies tend to need things like food, water, and weaponry, none of which can be produced in large quantities if the CITY GOT NUKED. Secondly, you vastly overestimate the efficacity of bomb shelters. No bomb shelter, cave, or tunnel we have can survive a direct hit by a modern nuclear bomb. Period. We also don't have bomb shelters large enough to contain the entire military.

Are you starting to see? Has the light come on yet? The sun could dawn tomorrow on a world with no afghanistan at all. Or no Russia, or no north america. We have enough nukes to sterilize the earth. You don't need to fantasize about viruses, or bacteria, or smart bombs. The ultimate weapon is already here.

By the way, your writing style reminds me of Gene Ray. Conjugate verbs bad. TIME CUBE good. Ook!

Re:will this work?

[quinto2000]

Nixon then and Kissinger now. You misread my statements, purposefully it seems. Kissinger in September of 2001 said something along the lines of "nuclear weapons would be appropriate" on CNN (not the missing tapes). Nixon during the Vietnam War suggested using nukes, something which came to light in the last few weeks. Two separate occasions, which was pretty clear from my statement.

H-bomb/A-Bomb was a simple mistake in nomenclature. Not being an expert in nuclear physics, I didn't realize the difference. Stupid me. The effect is the same -- hundreds of thousands of dead civillians. (Of course, nukes don't have a corner on this market -- more civillians died in the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined)

Re:will this work?

[Dyolf Knip]

Of course, the US is the only country to ever use the H-Bomb: and we used it twice.

Incorrect. The US has tested several H-bombs, but we are not the only ones to do so. For instance, the largest detonation on record was a Soviet device.

The US is the only one to actually use nukes on people (which ended up being far less bloody than the alternative), but then those were purely fission weapons. No fusing hydrogen.

Lastly, nukes are not wholly without practical applications. Pulsedrives would be a space propulsion system vastly superior to anything we use today. The concept is 50 years old. They could be used to move asteroids and comets around. Lots of uses, though the EMP is rather difficult to deal with.

Re:will this work?

[Henry V .009]

That's about it. For some reason I'm banned from moderating. (I have the right box checked on my homepage, no metamod, no nothing.) I didn't moderate in the great Troll round-up or anything. The only thing that I can think of that may have caused it is a joke I made about Katz a while back. It is nearly the first post on the topic where they introduced the friend/foe system a while back.

Re:will this work?

[Utopia]

FYI.
None of the countries (except china) you listed have signed the CTBT (comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty).
So they need not abide it.

Re:will this work?

[Galvatron]

Stalin responded with indifference because he already knew about the project, had spies in place, and had scientists actively working to copy the American designs. Truman, in his unbelievable ignorance, thought he could secure more favorable peace terms in dividing up Germany by sending Stalin veiled threats about a new superweapon. All he did in reality though was kickstart the cold war and let Stalin know that he was a bit behind in the rush to build the first nuclear weapons.

Also, they knew damn well how powerful the blast would be. What they didn't expect was the radioactive fallout. For decades after radioactive materials were still used for glow in the dark consumer objects (watch faces, for example).

Other than that though, I agree with your points. The nuclear attacks shocked an exceptionally stubborn and prideful country into surrendering, almost certainly reducing loss of life on both sides.

Re:will this work?

[spasm]

..except the fact the US continues to run simulations 'forces' other countries (notably France) to continue to test nuclear weapons to "calibrate" *their* simulations, which they happily admit don't match the sophistication of those conducted by the US.

Every time the US boasts about simulations like this one, they effectively encourage countries like France to crack another one on some poor innocent south pacific atoll.

Re:will this work?

[Sakhmet]

Yup, you can kill a lot of the people a lot of the time, but you can't kill all the people all the time.

Reading these comments frightens me. Badly. Does anyone here even think that tactical thermonuclear devices are a good idea? Like, good enough to warrant having one in your backyard for your little sister to play on? Not me, and not my little sister.

Sakhmet.

Re:will this work?

[Jeremi]

The last war, against Afghanistan, was fought with almost no loss of life on either side.

The war against Al-Quaeda isn't over, and thousands of people have been killed. How is that 'almost no loss of life' ?

Re:will this work?

[El_Nofx]

Really good article in wired this month about all of this. Check it out.
Talks about the future of Nuclear Scientists and what they are doing about the loss of knowledge

Re:will this work?

[Jeremi]

The US always has to pay more, do more, etc. than any other country.

(enable rant mode)

Well, cry me a freaking river. Poor little USA has to take on more responsibility than, say, Botswana. How unfair that we are expected to do more than people who can barely feed themselves! We can put a man on the moon, but ask us to clean up our own mess and all of a sudden we turn into a bunch of crybabies, whining about how unfair it is that we (who contribute the most to pollution, and enjoy the best of the fruits that also cause the pollution) are asked to do the most work to stop polluting.

Honestly, was there ever a bigger bunch of spoiled, pampered, arrogant, ignorant prigs? Every time I see an 8 mile per gallon, 6 ton SUV behemoth carrying its lone driver to the mall, it makes me wonder why we haven't been voted off the planet yet. (probably has something to do with those nukes ;^))

(end rant mode)

Re:will this work?

[KodaK]

The last war, against Afghanistan, was fought with almost no loss of life on either side.

It's not over, yet.

Re:will this work?

[rosewood]

Compare that to any other war and its NOTHING

I guess clarified no real statistical loss of life

yes people died and that sucked but damn, when the news gets to say "one soldier died today" - thats not half bad

and when we get the luxury of saying "we can strike when few people are there" thats not half bad either

War still sucks tho

Re:will this work?

[drik00]

if you have a bunch of kids on a playground, they're eventually going to get into fights...what happens when a few of them bring knives to school? If you are one of the kids with a knife, are you going to leave yours at home, or are you going to keep it in your back pocket, as an insurance piece?

Nuclear weapons are a bane to our existence, but they're here, so how, realistically, should we be dealing with them? We cant throw all of ours away, and *hope* everyone else does too...that's just not realistic...sorry.

Re:will this work?

[ender81b]

My point is, Nuke alone isnt useful, the only people interested in nuke are terrorists who want to kill innocent people.

The nuclear bomb is meant to be a THREAT! not actually used, all this is doing is making sure our stockpile can continue to be a threat.

If india were to use nuke on pakistan, lots of innocent people in pakistan would die, the military would launch nuke and many people in india would die, both countries would get absolutely no where.

Precisely. Which is why the nukes will *never* be used in either case. To do so would mean the destruction of either/both country's and massive world commendation. The bombs are simply deterance, or, again a THREAT against an attack and actually probably will make that area more stable in the long run (neither country wants to risk a nuclear war).

Real wars are about missions, targets, and just throwing bombs around is not something thats usually done.

Real wars are about survival and winning - without firing a shot. Nuclear weapons ensure the safety of many countrys - not a single country on earth would dare attack the U.S. directly b/c of fear of instant annihilation. Note that Taliban continued to protest its innocence until the very end; and since WWII their hasn't been a single convential attack upon the U.S. A span of 51 years.

We threw a bomb at japan but it was because back then no one knew what nuke was.

Ahhh, we knew precisely what the bomb would do - but the japanese didn't. We dropped the bomb to end the war and prevent millions of casulties that would've occured if we had invaded Japan. Even after Hiroshima/Nagasaki the majority of the Japanese war council didn't want to surrender. Only the (supposed) intervention of Emperor Hirohito caused them to surrender.

Re:will this work?

[MullerMn]

IIRC, tritium is very rare and only a few grams..

Tritium is rare as it has a half life of only 12 years, but it can be produced my bombarding Lithium with neutrons. This is how currently designed Tokamak fusion reactors create part of their own fuel.

--
Andy

Re:will this work?

[vondo]

Don't put words in my mouth. He made two assertions, one of which was technically wrong and another which is highly suspect.

How do you go from questioning someone's facts to thinking dropping the bomb was the right thing to do? That's quite a leap.

Re:will this work?

[Paradise Pete]

How do you know you're "banned?"

Re:will this work?

[Kibo]

Those who wish me ill, and those who seek to right percieved injustices by willfully and knowingly killing innocents are no form of life I place any value in.

They seek the glory of Allah, I'm proud to have my tax dollars sending them to it.

Re:will this work?

[technos]

Botswana. How unfair that we are expected to do more than people who can barely feed themselves!

it makes me wonder why we haven't been voted off the planet yet. (probably has something to do with those nukes ;^))

From AP

In three decades, Botswana has moved from being one of the 10 poorest nations to being among the world's upper half in wealth.

and a quick look through the CIA fact-books tells me that over those three decades, we've probably given them almost a billion bucks in foreign aid, not including the one-time bail outs like the 10 million we spent helping them clean up the flood a few years ago, and certainly not adjusting for inflation, I'm too lazy.

There's a reason we ain't been 'voted off' by the 'poor, starving Botswana's, and it sure as hell ain't the nukes.

Re:will this work?

[cdh]

Thanks for making my point. The fact that these nations don't even bother to sign them shows that they don't care about the rest of the world. People say that the US is so self centered and arrogant, yet a country of a billion+ people (India) doesn't even bother to sign something to help the rest of the world. In my mind, that's the epitome of arrogance and self centeredness.

Re:will this work?

[FFFish]

"MAD doesn't work as an effective deterrent when your enemy is willing to die to kill you."

Er, the same can be said for missile-defense anti-nuke shields. The danger to the USA isn't from outside the borders: no one's likely to toss an nuke missle at New York. The danger is from within, when some madmen decide to use a suitcase nuke, mail out smallpox, or use cheap'n'easy fertilizer bombs to blow up a federal building.

The Star Wars shield is just an excuse for funneling endless money to the defense industry; all part of the trend of taking money from the middle-class and give it to the super-rich.

Re:will this work?

[danielrose]

The nuclear attacks shocked an exceptionally stubborn and prideful country into surrendering, almost certainly reducing loss of life on both sides.

Exceptionally stubborn and prideful??
Sounds much like most americans I've met.

Re:will this work?

[crystalplague]

i have some tritium albeit very small amounts. it comes in the form of a sealed glass tube with trtium gas inside. the inner walls of the tube are coated with phosphorous. when the beta radiation hits the phosphorous, it gets excited and glows. these completely self contained light sources glow for 10 - 20 years. however, in order to import them to most NATO countries, you need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or equivalent. If you live in a non-NATO country however, forget about it. I however obtained them without a NRC license, which is in case you all try it, very much illegal.

Re:will this work?

[mother_superius]

I'd like to think that, but I can't be so sure right now. Bush recinded on the US promise not to nuke nations without nuclear weapons, and is developing several plans to use them, including a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Back to the days of tactical nuclear warfare, Reagan lives. Only now there's no nuclear superpower to oppose us. At least we were more cautious when we were enemies with Russia.

Re:will this work?

[danielrose]

no shit sherlock, did i fucking write it in the first place? cockhead.

Re:will this work?

[Kupek]

There was debate, and there still is. The Undersecratary of the Navy--I can't remember his first name, but I'm fairly certain his last name was Byrd--was against bombing, and I believe Eisenhower was as well.

Leo Scilzard (I probably spelled that wrong), a physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project led a petition that many other scientists signed urging Truman not to use the bomb.

Whether or not it was the "right" decision is not a black and white issue, but it is wrong to say it happened "without much debate."

Re:will this work?

[Kupek]

Which may be true, but don't think that in any way exempts the US from being the same. They are completely independent of each other.

The Bush administration has put out feelers to dropping the test-ban treaty. How would you react if we did? Would you have the same conclusions about how much this country cares about the rest of the world? If not, why not?

Re:will this work?

[Kupek]

"Foreign aid." Phhht. Translation: investing. I'd be very skeptical about the nature of that money; was it truly aid (i.e., no financial return expected, and it was used for social means, not just building infastructure for industry), or was it American corporations investing in a potentially profitable market?

Re:will this work?

[Kupek]

There's an eassy in Declarations of Independence by Howard Zinn that I think you would find interesting. The chapter title has Machiavelli in there somewhere; Zinn's thesis is that US foreign policy is Machiavellian, even if we are "democratic" at home.

He goes into the bombing of Hiroshim and Nagasaki quite a bit, and provides arguments against yours (mainly, that the bombing saved lives).

[I'm not entirely sure it's in Declarations of Idependence. If not, I know for sure it's in a compilation book, Howard Zinn on War.]

Re:will this work?

[ahaning]

Maybe your karma is too high now. You know, the system tries to pick the most "average" users. Karma not too high, not too low... Reads comments, but doesn't read like crazy and such. It could just be coincidence.

Then again, unless you're checking the No Score +1 Bonus box, your karma isn't above 25. You might just try mailing Rob or Jeff about it. Just remember to be civil or your mail will just be deleted.

Either way, removing moderating rights seems an odd "punishment". I'd think they'd just bitchslap you.

How accurate were the results?

[Ryu2]

They said they compared the simulation with an actual underground test. How did it measure up? The article didn't say.

Or is that secret?

Re:How accurate were the results?

[T5]

That's classified way above DOE Q (the rough equivalent of the DOD Top Secret) level.

Re:Innovation...

[quinto2000]

Do you realize that Gore's proposed military budget was even higher than Bush's? Not something that made me happy, but your point is utterly without relevance.

750 years?

[Erris]

The AJ article had an estimate of 750 years of run time for a good home computer to do the same thing. So, how long would it take for a few thousand home computers, good, bad and ugly? Do you know what that cute little screen saver is really doing? Bwa-ha-ha-haaa!

Re:750 years?

[GigsVT]

Assuming the job is easily distributable, without things like large bandwidth requirements between nodes, then it's just arithmatic. 750 home computer years, 750 home computers take around one year, plus a year or two for efficiency loss. Now you know why the college computer labs freak out when you install things like dnet or seti on them.....

They just don't want to have to comply with the "military grade computer" requirements! :)

Re:750 years?

[blair1q]

Currently, the UD molecule screener uses as much as 375 CPU-years per day.

On that network you could run this nuke simulation twice a week. Without building a billion-dollar computer.

Of course, you're probably not going to get the same amount of participation with ATOM BOMB research as you are with CURING CANCER research (Do you know what that cute little screen saver is really doing? Bwa-ha-ha-haaa! -Erris). But overt ANTHRAX VACCINE research got a decent fraction of the way there, and is closer to the former than the latter, in practical terms.

--Blair

Certification of the stockpile

[T5]

By law, the directors of the nuclear weapons labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore, IIRC) are required to certify annually the readiness of the nuclear stockpile. This has been a problem due to the lack of production of tritium in the US, with the exception of a small amount from Savannah River in South Carolina and just recently at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Tennessee. Without sufficient quantities of tritium, the aging thermonuclear arsenal's decay of tritium puts the existing weapons at risk of not functioning within their design parameters. The only thing more frightening than a nuke that works is one that you can't rely on to work when needed. Thus, the directors have threatened to not certify the arsenal.

With this new computing power, the directors can now verify the status of even degraded weapons whose functionality was up till now a mystery and make better decisions about how to use the still small amounts of tritium being produced.

Re:Innovation...

[SirRichardPumpaloaf]

Do you really think those guys just started working on this a few weeks ago? Surely they must have been funded and working during the Clinton administration as well. With so many good, established reasons to dislike Clinton I can never understand why people feel compelled to fabricate such ridiculous, farfetched ones.

Re:What exacly are they trying to learn?

[thesupraman]

It's quite simple, they are trying to find out how long the current weapons will keep working, and how the rate of failure changes over time.

These devices contain quite an amount of rather radioactive material, which emits a lot of high energy particles, this causes other materials around them to change over time, therefore then need to know if they will stay safe, and will work if required.

The worked out how to build a 'big enough bomb' quite some time ago, but building new devices is expensive, as it blowing them up from time to time for testing, simulating the 'aging' devices is a much cheaper and simpler option, as well as providing supercomputing power for 'other' work.

FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[Anonymous Coward]

First lets figure out how many times faster this computer is.

One of them they gave statistics that it did the work of 750 years worth of computer time in 39 days.
First lets figure out how many days there are in 750 years
750*365.25(accounting for leap year) ~= 273937

Thats 273,937 days in 750 years (give or take a couple of weeks)

Now 273,937 / 39 gives us are actual ratio which is a factor of 7024.
This means that the los Alsomething is 7024 times as fast.

Now a typical computer now a days can run quake 3 at around an average fps of 60.
7024 * 60 gives us the fps of the super computer.

Which is a grand total of 421,422 FPS!!!!

My only question... When can I buy one?

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[insane8]

As soon as you have about 110 million dollars .. why do those guys in Los Alamos get all the cool toys ??

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[Travoltus]

Wow!
I bet they're gonna use this computer to make Shrek II :)

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[Hamshrew]

You can't.

As far as I know, the ASCI White system is pretty much "classified" in a way. I know it uses Power3 processors... over 8000 of them, in fact. And it has a mesh-type interconnect... very expensive stuff here. You can see how it compares here

Note that the second most powerful supercomputer peaks at HALF the GigaFlops... there's some serious power there. Though that list is technically innacurate... the #2 machine only has 3000 processors, and 8 on standby in case of hardware failure. That one is an "open" cluster, however. I don't think it's opened quite yet, and I can't even remember the name... something French... LeMue or somesuch.

I did take a look at it once, though. Sweet machine(s) :-) And you can't help but be impressed when you learn that it took 4.5 TONS of cabling to wire that puppy!

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[TheRock]

The machine is about 7,000 times faster because it is around 9,000 times bigger, though each processor is slower than you 1.x GHz processor. So the FPS figure isn't achieveable, but get 8,000 of your closest freinds together and you have a network with really low pings to play with.

You can buy one the Lawrence Livermore machine from IBM. I'm sure they would appreciate the business.

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[jandrese]

I did take a look at it once, though. Sweet machine(s) :-) And you can't help but be impressed when you learn that it took 4.5 TONS of cabling to wire that puppy!

That's less impressive if you've every worked with cabling those high end systems. 4.5 tons of Craylink would only be like 100 feet (at least when you have to carry it around all day. :)

It's not quite that bad, but when you have 500 conductor cables the weight does add up quick.

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[wik]

LeMieux. They like to name machines after Pittsburgh Penguins players. According to PSC, the full-scale machine will be operating in production on April 1, 2002.

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[bpmcdermott]

Simple, call any IBM business partner or call IBM direct. Anything more than 512 is a special order from what I recall. It appears that ASCI white is 512 375MHz Power3 SMP High nodes and a ton of storage.

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/pseries/hardw are/largescale/sp.html

Re:FPS If this computer were used to run Quake 3

[JWhitlock]

Now a typical computer now a days can run quake 3 at around an average fps of 60. 7024 * 60 gives us the fps of the super computer.

Which is a grand total of 421,422 FPS!!!!

My only question... When can I buy one?

If Moore's law holds up, in 25-30 years, for about $1000.

Of course, in 30 years, it will only get 30 fps in Quake XII.

Definately not the first

[HanzoSan]

I'm sure our government has done it 20-30 years ago but its been classified.

If anyone honestly believes its the first EVER and that our military didnt do this kinda stuff during the cold war they are crazy.

trillions of dollars have been spent over the last serveral years, 10s of trillions over the last 20 years and this is the first sim, in 2002? hahaha a joke right?

Re:Definately not the first

[beta21]

NO this is a first. Maybe simulations into the effects of a nuke were done but never and actual simulation of one going off.

Just think about how much physics is needed for this. Hudge temperature gradients, wavefronts the list is endless. This all has to be simulated.

We can't even simulate weather properly yet becasue of lack of computing power.

Re:Definately not the first

[HanzoSan]

So you have top secret military clearance? how do you know? Oh wait because they said so? you believe everything they said?

You cant believe what the government says, classified means they wont tell you about it or will lie to you until they are read to announce it.

Its announced now, but it could have been simulated in a classified fashion in the past.

Re:Definately not the first

[dvdeug]

You cant believe what the government says, classified means they wont tell you about it or will lie to you until they are read to announce it.

The question is how did they have the computer power? Even for the military, these computer prices are a bit expensive, and with Moore's law, we haven't had the computing power available at any cost until recently.

Re:Definately not the first

[GigsVT]

Not to increase conspiracy paranoia, but it's entirely possible that the government has their own completely seperate design, fab, etc on a whole line of top secret processors that is all top secret. And also, who's to say that the government hasn't approached Intel, and convinced them to lag their releases one generation behind what they make available to the government, all top secret.

That's the thing about secrecy, you never know!

It's not likely, but it is possible. BTW- Moore's law is no more a law than Murphey's law. It's just a prediction that is uncannily true so far.
If we stopped developing all new processors, I guess that would disprove Moore's law? Suppose AMD hadn't made an end run on Intel. do you think processors would be as fast as they are today? My point is, the rate of processor speed (or transistor density for the purist), isn't dictated by any law, it's dictated by how much effort we put into it, which is dictated in part by market forces when you are tlaking about corporations.

Re:Definately not the first

[dvdeug]

Not to increase conspiracy paranoia, but it's entirely possible that the government has their own completely seperate design, fab, etc on a whole line of top secret processors that is all top secret.

A multi-billion dollar project - so we can see how a nuke explodes? It makes much more sense to use that money to keep bases open or build more planes and warships, considering how tight the military budget has been recently.

That's the thing about secrecy, you never know!

Ergo, cognito sum. We truely know almost nothing. Rational deduction from sensory input can lead us far, though.

Re:Innovation...

[SirRichardPumpaloaf]

But when was Bush's first budget approved? And no, starting from scratch there is no way that anyone could do this project in a year.

Re:What exacly are they trying to learn?

[crystalplague]

This reminds me of a summit between the US and the former Soviet Union. The United States was amazed to learn that the Soviets did not possess the computers that they (the US) did to run the calculations. When the Soviets were asked about this, one (whos name escapes me now) said "We don't care about no computers, we just want it go boom," or something to that effect.

Re:Innovation...

[T5]

Understand that one of the roles of the DOE, of which the NNSA is a part, is the civilian caretakers of the nuclear stockpile. DOD doesn't have the ultimate authority the nuclear stockpile - DOE does.

It's a subtle distinction, but one well worth understanding.

Can you explain.

[Axe]

Why do I HATE YOU ALL so much today? Must be something with this virtual nuclear tests - I got virtual radioactive poisoning.. It spreads over wires..

Re:Can you explain.

[bwoodring]

Does stupidity spread over wires too?

Re:Innovation...

[jimhill]

"We're lucky 'The National Nuclear Security Administration' even lasted through that mess of 8 years. Thoughts anyone?"

Yeah, here's a thought:

With all due respect, kwishot, like many Slashdot posters you're posting out of your ass and while you might win points among the equally ignorant you turn yourself into a laughingstock for those with a greater understanding.

The nuclear weapons complex is under the purview of the US Department of Energy. Almost since it was created from AEC/ERDA in the mid 1970s, DOE has been under attack for its poor organization, poor administration, and poor security record. Multiple panels and commissions and auditors spent their time submitting final reports and recommendations suggesting that the security aspect of the weapons complex be removed from DOE control or at least placed in the hands of a semi-autonomous agency.

After the _annus horribilis_ that was 2000 for Los Alamos, support both public and Congressional was high for these recommendations to be implemented. New Mexico Republican Senator Pete Domenici introduced legislation which would create the National Nuclear Security Administration as a semi-autonomous agency within DOE and that legislation passed with support from both parties and was signed into law by Democratic President Clinton. (Side note: then Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, former Democratic Congressman from, yep, New Mexico, took a well-publicized pummeling from members of both parties, not least of which was West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, who told Richardson that he could never vote to confirm Richardson for another government position again.)

I'm not a supporter of Clinton's -- his decision to appoint Hazel O'Leary as his first Energy Secretary will be a long, Long, LONG time in overcoming (among her since-revoked brilliant ideas was eliminating the color-coded badges which were used to provide a visual cue of a person's clearance level in favor of a less "discriminatory" monochrome badge). To fall to your knees and give thanks that an agency created in the closing year of his administration survived the eight year Reign of Terror just reveals that you don't have the first clue what you're addressing. Next time you're tempted to fire off a post on a topic to whose table you bring complete ignorance, may I suggest that you instead spend a few moments educating yourself -- and only then, if you feel you have something of value to contribute, should you click on "Submit".

Re:Innovation...

[Mandelbrute]

Would we have these advances in technology if the Democrats were still in office?

I strongly suspect that this is not the sort of thing that can be cobbled together in a few months. The funding would have come from the previous administration and not the current one.

Higher military funding = more technological innovation.

And you can pay for the funding by blocking your military allies out of US trade - or at least that seems to be the plan.

Thoughts anyone?

The new administration hasn't been in long enough to do anything but talk. Effects of budgets don't happen until the money is spent to do stuff.

Hmmm...

[andyring]

Those computers are extremely cool (I want one!), and hey, if they do the job without having to blow things up, it works for me. But, how long until some Microsoft salesweasel comes along and tries to convince them to run NT on it? Brings new meaning to your computer bombing....

Re:Innovation...

[quinto2000]

different circumnstances. I'm talking about Gore's original plan vs Bush's original plan. Note that the second link is from a traditionally leftist source -- not likely to want to make Gore look bad unless he really did propose more spending than Bush. People like to think that Democrats are different from Republicans -- they really aren't on most issues. What's different is the spin put on their efforts by the left or the right. The left jumps on anything they don't like from the right, but are silent about the democrats being too conservative. Vice versa too, I suppose. Politics overrides ideology buster, sorry to break it to you.

How do you simulate a nuclear explosion?

[Dickweed Man]

What kind of math/physics is involved?

Re:How do you simulate a nuclear explosion?

[T5]

Mostly thermodynamics, plasma dynamics, fluid dynamics, nuclear physics, and about $110M for the iron.

Super computer wars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets just end war all together and just fight our battles on our super computers. Whoever can make the render the biggest atomic explosion the fastest wins!

Oh wait.. thats "US" :)

Re:Innovation...

[T5]

Indeed, I believe that a good part of the reason that NNSA was created was because of Hazel O'Leary. Between her poor fashion sense vis a vis badging, her idiocy in revealing classified data in public forums (neutron bomb, anyone?), and the Wen Ho Lee debacle clearly show a DOE that wasn't minding the store.

And, BTW, some of those poor badges are still in use, including the one around my neck.

Kissinger

[glrotate]

Your point 3 was exactly right. Nixon said: "Nuke 'em" and guess who (Kissinger) said "we can't". Nixon said "I know".

End of story.

Sorry - you're wrong.

[Werelock]

I actually did a paper a year ago on the need for a science court in US governmental decision making. One of the key points I kept running into in my research was that nothing science related a first year president pushes for, or even gets through, will be seen before he leaves office - even if he does two turns. Each project gets re-evaluated by the president, committees, congress, etc repeatedly throughout it's life. Usually the next president either downsizes it, kills it, upsizes it, or ignores it. They rarely say "that's cool as it is, just give them the same amount this year." Most science required 3 or 4 terms before results were truly seen.

So, in all actuallity, Clinton either started this or continued it on from his predecessor. GWB had jack to do with it other than to see the results and maybe a final bill.

-JD

Nope.

[cameldrv]

The reason for the big push in computational testing is the comprehensive test ban treaty, which was supported by the Democrats, and opposed by the Republicans. The main reason for the ASCI program is the CTBT, which is now dead in the water, due to Republican opposition.

Re:Nope.

[delcielo]

While the CTBT was never ratified by Congress, the nation is behaving as if it was. We are following the provisions of the treaty. It's a neat little trick of the way it works. Clinton signs the treaty, Congress refuses to ratify it. Everybody gets to say they did their part; but if we decide there's an overriding need to break the provisions of the treaty, we don't get all of that messiness you get when you've actually ratified it.

This is probably the best it could have worked out. Obviously, this computational testing program has the support of both parties. It's very difficult to actually push a single-party agenda that big, and sustain it unilaterally.

And if we need to, we just run a real test. Hell, France did it, and what lasting consequences have they endured? None. The only lasting consequences have been to the ecology.

Re:Nope.

[cameldrv]

Bush has stated that he wants to resume underground testing. I'm not fully informed on all of the politics that went into creating the ASCI program, but I don't think that the Republicans would want to halt any program that has to do with nuclear weapons. The fundamental fact remains that contrary to the original poster's claims, Bush had nothing to do with this. The CTBT was the primary motivation for buying these huge computers, and Clinton was the one backing the CTBT.

Go get the simulated death-ray!

[Perdition]

Now, all that's needed is a simulated giant mutated dinosaur threatening simulated Japanese villagers until the simulated Japanese government brings in the simulated boy-genius and his simulated sidekicks to combat it with a simulated giant ninja robot! Being part of the very future I imagined as a child is the most fun I have ever had.

Re:Go get the simulated death-ray!

[Perdition]

One serious question... how do they know they've simulated it correctly? In order to effectively simulate something with overwhelming correctness, you have to have an exact match of results. In other words, you can roughly simulate most of any detonation, but you have to know that you cannot exactly simulate any detonation, even of a firecracker. Shy of explododing a real nuke, you cannot simulate it with any true confidence. I mean, I've simulated asking many women out on dates, but field data strongly contrasts with said simulations. That being said, here's my simulation of and exploding nuke, on the cheap: BOOM!

Is everyone okay?

Final Fantasy

[DeadBugs]

Has squaresoft announced a port for Final Fantasy XI on the ASCI White computer yet? Although I guess a simulation of nuclear destruction is about as final a fantasy as you can get

In 20 years we can do it at home

[dmendesf]

First, ASCI White specs: Name: ASCI White Built by: IBM over a period of 5 years for the Department of Energy Price: for $110 million. Power: 1,000 times more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue; capable of roughly 12.3 trillion calculations per second CPU: Made of off-the shelf IBM Power3 processors (well, 8,192 of them altogether) RAM: 16 terabytes Disk space: 160 terabytes Power requirements: 3 megawatts of electricity (would light up 3,000 homes) Now let's say 1 Power3 = 1 domestic processor of today... By Moore's law, in 18 months our computational power will double, so: 2^x = 8192 x = 13 13 * 18 months = 19,5 years conclusion: video games will be very cool in 20 years

Re:In 20 years we can do it at home

[spiro_killglance]

Hans Moravec estimates the human mind
to have the computationial power of around
10 THz, This machine ought to be able to emulate
a human mind in real time. Which to me is more
useful then simulating nuclear weapons.

Time to build a proper X-ray holographic scanner,
and start uploading the worthy.

Re:In 20 years we can do it at home

[fireboy1919]

Eh...when the airplane began its existance everyone thought that by about the year 2000 everyone would own one - that they would be as ubiquitous as cars. That hasn't happened. Why? Because after a decade or two of perfection, the airplane industry leveled off in its ability to improve. They just cost too much to fly.

Why do you expect anything different from any other piece of technology? We already know the physical limits of silicon, and we're close to predicting the limits of protien based chips. We'll hit those limits (within the industry) in between five and ten years. Even then, to make a desktop machine that fast will cost lots of space, electricity, and money.

Conclusion: we can't know much about what video games will be like in 20 years.

Re:In 20 years we can do it at home

[RKloti]

Yes, and when aircraft first developed, people thought that in 2010 people would be flying biplanes made out of cloth flying a few hundered metres above the ground at perhaps 100 km/h at most, rather than 500 ton double-decker quadraple jet-powered aluminium behemoths travelling at 950 km/h 10 km above the Earth's surface. (See Airbus A380-800)

Re:In 20 years we can do it at home

[GigsVT]

Deep Blue is a stupid comparison. The ASCI series is built with general purpose processors. ASCI Red was made with Pentium 200s if I recall correctly. Something like 6 or 8 thousand of them.

Deep Blue used ASICs to boost operations that were specific to chess. Anyway, I guess their PR department needed an easy comparison.

In 20 years we can do it at home

[dmendesf]

First, ASCI White specs: Name: ASCI White Built by: IBM over a period of 5 years for the Department of Energy

Price: for $110 million. Power: 1,000 times more powerful than IBM's Deep Blue; capable of roughly 12.3 trillion calculations per second

CPU: Made of off-the shelf IBM Power3 processors (well, 8,192 of them altogether)

RAM: 16 terabytes Disk space: 160 terabytes Power requirements: 3 megawatts of electricity (would light up 3,000 homes)

Now let's say 1 Power3 = 1 domestic processor of today... By Moore's law, in 18 months our computational power will double, so:

2^x = 8192
x = 13
13 * 18 months = 19,5 years

conclusion: video games will be very cool in 20 years

Re:What exacly are they trying to learn?

[Bistromat]

They're trying to learn how to improve the efficiency of the weapons. Early nukes, such as the infamous two dropped on Japan, fissioned only about 2% of the nuclear material they contained. By using different detonator explosive configurations, different neutron sources, and different case materials and arrangements scientists can improve the yield of these weapons without increasing the amount of fissionable material going into them. It's on the bleeding edge of physics, so testing is the only way to verify that the new technologies they use will actually work if, say, they need to drop these things on someone.

That said, the early nuclear tests were conducted in such an irresponsible and criminally negligent manner that hundreds of thousands of Americans were radiologically poisoned by iodine fallout from the atmospheric blasts in Nevada. The government sometimes has its own agenda, and that agenda need not involve the people.

Hmm....

[Mahrin Skel]

Let's see: 750 years on a high-end desktop, done in 39 days, or roughly 1/10th of a year, so this supercomp is equal to 7500 PC's. So, the SETI@Home network could have run the whole simulation in about a week, for free.

For this they spent $110,000,000 tax dollars? For that matter, how many PC's does the government already own, anyway?

--Dave Rickey

Re:Hmm....

[Stonehand]

...if you ignore the interconnect issues, of course. Which, for spatial situations, you generally *can't* -- I'd think that the dynamics would involve a whole horde of PDEs at different points in space, each of which needs to do a LOT of communication with its neighbors every iteration. That's the sort of thing that needs real computers with real bandwidth, not desktop toys with DSL connections.

Not to mention that you'd be distributing the software to every country on Earth that's interested in nuclear weapons simulation, which would be STUPID.

Pipe Dreams

[MousePotato]

I don't like nukes and I don't like blowing them up on our little planet. They present long term after effects that are scary.

That said, I really don't want to have other countries have weapons capabilities that we don't. We can't give up that nuclear wildcard and we can't be afraid to use them if the need arises.

Ohh..

[grazzy]

I can see it infront of my already.

SimNuke 2003.

Build the ultimate nuke! Kill em all!

Re:What exacly are they trying to learn?

[FrostedChaos]

That's not entirely true. The soviets had numerous mainframes in the 60s and onward. They missed out on the silicon revolution, primarily due to the senility of the Russian economy.

That being said, computer-aided design of weapons, aircraft, etc. was a major advantage that the west had in the late 70s and 80s.

addendum...

[Loki_1929]

Several hours later it was discovered that the software used by the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories had a slight flaw, and the corrected simulations show that the nuclear explosions were in fact beige.

In a related story, the updated software was found to contain massive amounts of spyware.

Mmmmm.

[pyxl]

Always nice to see folks well into the upper 1% of the populace in brainpower working hard on determing the most efficient way to kill a billion people.
*chuckle*
Got ya, didn't I? :)
It's a shame, really, that instantiations of entertainingly complex situations can't be adequately addressed in a pithy remark or 20, but have to have the attribute set of the given situation mapped out prior to effective discussion. Which takes time, attention, and a decent short-term memory in the least - things that plenty of folks don't have in concurrence - making many interesting conversations untenable. Issues of sanity, emotional reaction, education and world view just make things that much more quirky.
Oh well. For an adequate depicted example of a good number of the concepts in this, go see Time Machine. The image of a broken Moon floating across the sky is extraordinary - makes the movie worth seeing all by itself, and is the depiction I'm talking about.
I'm babbling. Bed time.

Re:Mmmmm.

[GigsVT]

Damn dude, less LSD next time.

What a waste...

[SoupaFly]

These super computers should be used by the NSA to help analyze every voice and text communication in the United States.

But seriously, I think it's great we can 'test' nukes without irradiating large portions of the country. I just wish we were as committed to saving the planet and living together as we are to spreading American mono-culture and smiting our enemies.

Obviously you dont keep up with technology

[HanzoSan]

Mind control weapons do exsist, and are used even b y low level forces such as swat teams. Mind Altering sounds and noises are the low tech mind control weapons, altering brain wave patterns with sound is easy, Mind control is easy using holographic technologies and altering brain waves you could convince small groups of people that god is speaking to them, and do all kinds of other tactics, yes our government DOES have alot of mind control technologies and holographic technologies.

Do you keep up with science? Its not fantasy, its in the labs, and if its in the labs, our government has weapons based on it.

Weapons which destroy building kill people in them yes, but the reason for having these weapons is to destroy entire cities and cripple an economy, imagine someone destroying all of the towers in new york in the middle of the night and everyone waking up and finding that all the buildings are crumbled.

Electronic warfare, we can easily take out an entire military force with this.

Germ warfare is far more dangerous than a nuke, a germ virus could kill every mammal on this planet, did you ever watch the movie the blob? You think something like that couldnt easily happen? An unstoppable virus or a bacteria could easily wipe out entire countries or even the world and only the people with the cure can stop it, even with all our weapons we'd die.

Armies have food, water, and weapons, and they have enough to last for years. Armies can grow their own food underground, water isnt difficult to get either its just hard to purify. Bomb Shelters that are for us arent very efficient, government quality bomb shelters are almost indestructable, we cant even nuke bin ladens cheap cave shelters. You try nuking Iraq, you think you'd kill saddam? No you'd just kill all his people and piss off the whole arab world.

You can have allthe nukes you want, you nuke, they nuke you back, now both of you lose, both your countries destroyed. This is not a very smart military strategy, its suicide.

This is why nuke is a suicide weapon, something a terrorist would use not a military.

Militaries of say Iraqs level are most likely to use germ warfare like antrax or perhaps something even worse.

Militaries like China,hey would use sophisticated electronics, destroy our electronics with stuff like EMP, and destroy our buildings all over night.

Militaries on our level would and maybe have used mind control warfare if we know the people we are using it on dont know about it yet, I think we'd use something like that in the middle east, would it work? At most it would drive them insane, at least it would confuse them on the battlefield, keep them from being able to think straight, and give us a psychhological advantage.

Yes its proven that sounds can do this, example? Scratch a chalkboard and listen to that sound, imagine a sound thats as bad or worse than that which is constant, you wouldnt be able to sleep, you wouldnt be able to think right, you'd be disoriented, theres sounds which can completely alter your brainwave patterns, and make you tired, even make you dizzy and pass out.

This stuff would be useless against a fairly intelligent military, but against some guys who just have basic weapons like machine guns and the like, who are backed into a corner or hiding in a cave, it would be useful, not to mention these techinques can be used to turn them against each other and keep them from being organized, remember the papers we passed out to afganastan about bin laden turning against them?

I'd say mind control would be one of the most dangerous weapons because you wouldnt know you are being manipulated.

As far as Nuke being the most powerful weapon? Not even close! Nuke can do alot of destruction which lasts a long timee and harms the enviornment, but nuke is not something any government is going to use, terrorists may use it, governments would never use nuke,heres why.

Out of all of these other ways to attack, nuke allows your enemy to know you attacked them.

How would your enemy know you used germ warfare against them? They'd just have a weird virus pop up out of no where.

How would they know you destroyed their electronics, all they'd know is a bomb destroyed it all, all of these other things can be made from within the enemies country and launched, nuke however you'd have to launch a missle, which means if you mess up you are being nuked, if you hit on target you are still going to be nuked, so you cant win.

The only thing we have to do is make sure no one can nuke us from within our own country. Nuke is no where near as easy to make as a virus or an EMP bomb, nuke requires gathering alot of things which are very difficult to get or create, and trying to smuggle nuke in is going to be almost impossiblew if the borders are properly monitored.

While nuke is dangerous, I think we have other more dangerous and pretty much unstopable technologies to worry about,

I think i'd have a better chance surviving a nukee than surviving the black plague.

oh and dont forget the fact that there could be genetic warfare, what would stop a government from changing the gene in say paracites, mosquitos etc which have a virus which spreads accross the USA and at a set period of time everyone in the USA dies. or paracites in the water.

Face it we all could drop dead tomorrow if some virus did get into all of our systems or some paracite did get into the water, if the virus was around for the last 20 years spreading then i'd say most of the population would be infected. If it were an airborn virus then everyone could be infected, and if its a virus thats set to kill a person after a set amount of time
how could you stop it?

I think germ warfare, all the genetics technologies, and biological stuff is more dangerous than nuke by far because we all could be dying and not even know it.

Re:Obviously you dont keep up with technology

[rofgile]

"Best comment EVER."

Re:Obviously you dont keep up with technology

[Thatman311]

Wow you don't get it do you. Germ warfare has a problem called delivary of the germ. Mind control? What the hell. Direct mind control wouldn't get very far. People know why they are doing what they are doing. They just may have to do it to try to protect something. Now if you consider the influencing of ones outlook on something over a long period of time mind control then yes you have a point but I don't consider that. I consider it you agreeing with someone's point of view for the *reasons* they layed out.

The whole point of something is to let people know you did it...who cares about stealth. Do it and then tell...without that it isn't fun. :)

Re:Obviously you dont keep up with technology

[Anonymous Coward]

The Man's mind control devices are telling me to do something: laugh uncontrollably at your tinfoil-hat paranoia and quack pseudoscience claims.

Bahaahahahahahaha!

In other news, TransGaming sucks. MPEGs at 11.

you're close....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 365.25 day in a year according to the Julian calendar. The calendar in use through most of the world at present is the Gregorian calendar, in which there are 365.2425 days in a year. The Julian calendar was switched to the Gregorian in 1582. Well, the Catholic world switched over on that date, other countries followed shortly after.
There are countries that use other calendars than
the Gregorian, most notably the USSR calendar and the Iranian calendar. Both of these are more accurate than the Gregorian, each losing about one day every 150,000 years, while the Greogrian loses a day approximately every 5000 years. Now I'm rambling, but my point is that nobody uses a calendar with 365.25 days in a year anymore.

Re:What exacly are they trying to learn?

[oldzoot]

Actually, they are comparing the simulation with real world physical test results. When the simulation is tuned well enough to match the actual results of a test shot, then they will probably change the device parameters of the simulation code to model a differnt actual test and see if the results are still valid. At some point the simulation code will be deemed first order reliable and can then be used for testing new concepts for weapons designs. As an example of why this might be usefull, consider that there may have been advances in the chemical high explosives used in the systems as well as advances in the command/control and safety systems relative to what was designed into weapons made in the 1950s or 1960s or even later. If it were possible to re-use the nuclear components of old weapons in a new bomb design with modern insensitive high explosive and more reliable detonation/control, denial of use and other safety systems, how could we put such a new weapon design into the stockpile without testing ? Accurate computer simulation may provide enough confidence in such a re-design to allow its certification for stockpile use. The ability to re-use the old nuclear components would eliminate significant hazards of handling these dangerous and exotic nuclear materials in processes such as re-casting and machining. If you are interested in learning more about the physics and history of nuclear weapons, check out the Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Questions.

Z

We'd have more technology by far if democrats were

[HanzoSan]

Democrates arent the ones who have had these trillion dollar tax cuts which only benifit rich people.

This had nothing to do with bush, bush cuts taxes so that means less funding not more.

too bad it's as lame as iron chef

[bojan]

Perhaps there's something useful in this data, perhaps it'll save the world.

But that's a perhaps.

Had these supercomputers been use to aid in progress of something like a cure for a disease, or perhaps the money used to fund educational institutions that lack funding, there would be definite benefits, and not "perhaps" ones.

Another example of how technology isn't used to solve actual problems, but trivial ones.

Moore's Law

[jbf]

Kinda scary, isn't it, that 750 years of current desktop runtime is one year of desktop runtime in 15 years, according to Moore's law?

Don't let that program get out... especially on a "misplaced" hard disk...

Re:Moore's Law

[GigsVT]

What use would it be to anyone? Even if a rival country got it, it probably would only be useful for simulating OUR bombs, not theirs.

Re:Moore's Law

[jbf]

Seems like its good for simulating any bombs... otherwise how would you validate it?

Slightly OT... is Slashdot supposed to pay $50?

[DoctorYoshi]

As I was reading the details to this story on ABQJournal, I saw this odd link on the bottom of the page.

(PRC# 3.4676.620668)

Wondering what a PRC article was, I followed it, only to discover various ways I couly pay to use this article.

One of the options is "HTML Link : Publisher's permission to link to an article." and they charge $50 for this privledge. Apparently this whole scheme is managed by iCopyright.com

I thought there was some legal precedence in the past allowing deep linking. What happened?

I must admit...

[drik00]

This really makes me wonder, if it took two weeks at the ASCI White-level of computing, how long would it take on a system like Seti@Home?

Please reply if you have informed opinions...

Re:I must admit...

[daveman_1]

It took four months of testing over a span of eight months. Why the hell do people think this would make a good project for a distributed client? I seriously doubt this type of simulation could be made to run on a distributed system. If it were possible, they probably would have used PCs instead of extremely expensive hardware. Besides, didn't anyone look at those extremely cool shots of the datacenter?

Another way to look at it (har har)

[Crag]

The Quake Done Quick folks play all of Quake I in well under an hour. If a computer were 7000 times faster than the PCs they used, then it could do two hours (7200 seconds) worth of something in about 1 second. The demos for the QdQ games would run in a over half a second.

A better way of putting it is that each of its 8000 nodes could render 30 frames (a half second at 60fps) worth of the whole quake demo simultaneously.

We are going to have some great computer generated video some day...

They're here...

[AaronStJ]

Look like the BFAs are here. This is the seond time I've seen one. Not quite time to subscribe, though

They should GPL the code!!!

[Isldeur]

Hey, everyone should email Los Alamos and see if they'll GPL the code. Wouldnt' that be great!? ;)

Bob Conspiracy?

[DJPenguin]

Why are most of the names in the article Bob, Rob, or Robert? Seems a bit fishy to me... :)

Next year..

[t_allardyce]

.. The scientists plan to build an even bigger supercomputer: the ASCI White:II. With this thay plan to simulate the Hiroshima bomb, the city, and even the people. One spokesperson explained: "We want to produce a full 3D simulation witch we can load into our playstation to watch. It will simulate _everything_ buildings being destroyed, the flash burns, little children screaming, vaporized bodies, even the radiation effects over a period of 50 years. We will also be simulating the US government at that time, with a little simulated president to spread lots of FUD!"

Silver Lining in the Cloud

[godred]

Whereas this program is controversial today, I see a potential benefit in the future. Once the numerical model of atomic weapons is refined by these techniques (say 10-15 years), they should also be accessible on a cheap computer by that time. "Why is that good?", you ask, since an average terrorist can use it to build a desktop nuke. It is so because millions of people will be able to play with it on their own too, and a genius *might* figure out an antidote for the a-bomb cheaply through simulation. I say this is a far likely scenario since human nature is fundamentally good and the probability of a breakthrough rises with more brainiacs working on it.

Re:Silver Lining in the Cloud

[RKloti]

An antidote for the A-Bomb?!

How do you create an antidote for a weapon?
I think you mean an "antidote" for radiation poisoning.

Re:Silver Lining in the Cloud

[godred]

As far as the antidote is concerned, it is better left undefined so that one's imagination is unrestrained. It could be in the form of an "energy shield" or a "remote neutriono radiation attenuator beam" or an "energy sponge" or ???.
Overall, I'm suggesting that more research is always better. Especially the kind of research that involves numerical simulation because it is accessible to the masses with a modern computer (the ones 20 years from now should exceed modern supercomputers), and not just a small number of specialists.

In 50 years we can do it at home in realtime

[Paul Fernhout]

Building on your calculations, assuming it takes 39 days now to do the simulation, and assuming (big if) the simulation was of one second of real-time,
39days * 24hrs/day * 60min/hr * 60sec/min = 3369600 seconds to run now.
So when according to Moore's law will computers be about three million times faster than in 2020? That is approximately:
2^x = 3369600
x ~= 22
22 doublings * 18 months / doubling = 33 years.
So, building on your analysis that following Moore's law we can do this in 20 years taking 39 days on a home computer, in another 30 years we can do this in real time. So by about 2050, video games can have very realistic nuclear explosions (at the quantum level).

If anyone can do such simulations in realtime at home in 2050, then one possible outcome has to be that any government or large organization or wealthy individual can fairly easily design (and then make) such devices -- or ones even more advanced (smaller, easier to assemble, etc.). Einstein warned, "The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." My feeling is one way to transcend the threat of everyone being able to quickly destroy using nuclear or other weapons is to create the means where everyone can create even faster than, just like duckweed in a pond keeps growing even as fast as ducks eat it. That means true defense requires a sustained investment in advanced manufacturing technology and organizing manufacturing knowledge(including self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and asteroidal ore.) We must accept that such things aren't pipe dreams -- they are absolute necessities (as is a simultaneous focus on reducing the causes of war such as injustice, want, and ignorance).

I don't mind spending money on defense -- I just want to see the money spent well on defending against true threats to human survival -- want, ignorance, injustice, corruption, "love of money", and weapons of mass destruction (whoever controls them at the moment -- like the Russian Mafia?). We are over 50 years beyond the creation of nuclear weapons; the defense department should be willing to think at least another 50 years ahead. The defense department is instructed by Congress to win wars and in the long term this strategy will fail because of technological amplification swamping the biosphere's capacity to support humans (such as through Moore's law leading to every home computer being a nuclear weapons design station in 2050 or sooner). I want to see a defense department that learns how to transcend wars and thus be able to truly defend all of humanity.

Would not it take at least as much courage to transcend wars as to win them? Our armed forces have no short supply of courage, and so perhaps there is hope.

One of the problems with this sort of weapons design work is it is too exciting for technically minded people to easily resist doing it. See for example: Ted Taylor: Confessions of a nuclear weapons design addict. We need alternative technical projects that are even more exciting and cost even more (shameless plug for OSCOMAK!)

Of course, according to Moravec and Kurzweil and Vinge, AI will be rampant before then and we will be passing through the AI singularity -- another cause for hope or despair about transcending nuclear war depending on your perspective.

Simulation? How boring! Let's do the real stuff.

[DeadeyeFlint]

According to the LA Times, the Bush administration is is planning the use of nuclear weapons against "the axis of evil" and serveral other countries, See the article U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms for details. You may want to check out the commentary as well.

This is very disturbing. What kind of people you have elected to run your country?

But since he asked wouldn't it be impolite?

[Kibo]

Aside from the developments of Robert Goddard, as a private individual, under the FDR administrations, the end of world war 2 and the bounty of the german weapons programs. The Atomic bomb. ICBM's under Kennedy. Cruise missles and the B-70 valkyrie (forerunner of the B-1b) to say nothing of stealth technology came of age, and the later started with Carter AFAIK. But most significant weapons programs inception to implimentation tended to last decades, witness the B-52 which is planned to have an 80 year lifespan. In general democrats seem to be fans of new weapons programs, republicans more enamoured with expansion of existing public ones, and intelligence gathering. But I imagine that if I acctually put some effort into researching this I would find that it's very evenly split.

Re:But since he asked wouldn't it be impolite?

[Mandelbrute]

In general democrats seem to be fans of new weapons programs,

Good point - the other odd thing is that Nixon went to China, and GW Bush is finally putting the childish blockade of Cuba to an end. Those that lean towards socialism don't want to look remotely like a communist, and those on the right don't want to look as if they are so far to the right that they meet up with Stalin looping around the circle from the other direction.

Your milage may vary, particularly since I use kilometres.

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[GigsVT]

This is great.

It's probably just trolling (not the way slashdot people use trolling).

Icopyrgight.com probably just fishes for suckers to pay the fee. If someone links to the site who is a little guy, they will just pay the $50 rather than try to fight it in court. Inethical business model, hope to see them sued into oblivion. Bastards.

(OT) Aside concerning TRON

[sharkey]

Since /. ran the TRON review yesterday: Livermore Labs is where the "big door" leading to the ENCOM labs is located.

Except that US has lot of real data

[aepervius]

US did a lot of above ground detonation (as well as UdSSR). They even have a lot of data still beeing classified on teh Nagsaki and hiroshima detonation. So they can happily switch to detonation. Other country can't. And sicne Nuclear weapon determent only works if both party have the same "maturity" degree of weapon, other country (be it France or India or Pakistan or whatever) will still have to continue testing at least to get better "simulation" them too. This is why nuclear "determent" will always push all country to further their research to build better easier to handle detonation. Nuclear determent only lead to escalade. Furthermore AFAIK anyway france did stop Mururora udnerground detonation to switch to simulation too.

Re:Innovation...

[snilloc]

And this could be viewed two different ways...

the "Only Nixon could go to China"/"It took a Democratic president to end 'welfare as we know it'" type of thing. The theory of "the way to get something done is to have somebody without a stereotypical partisan agenda do it".

Or, it could be the Carlin-esque Bigger Dick theory. Gore compensating for the perceived shortcomings of Democratic Party military leadership.

ASCI Info

[mfago]

For more info on this program, check out: LLNL ASCI Site especially the "Platforms" link at the top of the page.

FWIF, the open systems are used to simulate all sorts of things, not just nuclear weapons. For example, I've been running materials science simulations on ASCI Frost.

Other interesting facts:

Asci Q is currently being developed by Compaq (uses thousands of Alphas). Expected performance: 30 TerraOPS

The final ASCI computer, currently under bid, will be ASCI Purple. Expected performance: 100TerraOPS. From the RFP: "6MW power max."

So what's the answer anyway?

[QDerf]

42?

HanzoSan is Alex Chiu!

[Cheshire Cat]

If you read some of HanzoSan's previous articles, he posts weird rants like this one. Reading many of his posts, I can only conclude that he is actually another crazy Chinaman named Alex Chiu.

so what

[Bossofall]

Soon we can test the real thing on countries we don't like.

that's nuts

[sedawkgrep]

fast