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North Korea Air Sample Shows Radiation
Apocalypse111 writes, "According to CNN.com, air samples taken over North Korea have not yet shown any radiation from the event on Monday that North Korea claims was a nuclear test. This is not definitive proof that the event was non-nuclear, as it may either have been so small and deep that it did not let any radioactive debris escape, or perhaps the North Koreans sealed the site." Furthering speculation over whether North Korea has actually exploded a nuclear device, vk38 writes to point out a (free) article in today's Wall Street Journal claiming that the blast could have been
set off by exploding fertilizer (ammonium nitrate). The article points to the
Texas City disaster of 1947, in which 7,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the hold of a ship with the estimated power of 2 to 4 kilotons of TNT.
Update: 10/14 08:03 GMT by Z : The story at CNN has been updated: "A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows 'radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,' according to a statement from the office of the top U.S. intelligence official."
Update: 10/14 08:03 GMT by Z : The story at CNN has been updated: "A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows 'radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,' according to a statement from the office of the top U.S. intelligence official."
I think it's funny that this article is under the Hardware section. Maybe we could get Tom's Hardware to produce a 25-page full benchmark test of this nuclear explosion v. competing nuclear tests, and then we'll really get to the bottom of this.
Pfft, Canada does accidental explosions best: Halifax Explosion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion Atleast 200kTons there...
It's not so hard to pile up ten thousand tons of conventional explosive, and as discussed in the previous thread on the test itself there is some value in convincing your neighbors that you have nuclear weapons regardless of whether you actually have them.
The revised seismic figures were (if I recall right) something like 0.5 kT equivalent. The smallest easy-to-build bombs (those that have supercritical assemblies without hyper-compression of the metal) yield something like 10-30 kT, so this was either a fizzled nuke or a large pile of ANFO (or something like that).
In the last discussion I made a big deal about the Kamioka observatory and how they "should" have been able to see neutrinos from the blast -- but with an 0.5kT blast the number of neutrino interactions is only 1 or 2, so they can't be expected to distinguish a large chemical explosion from a very small fizzled nuclear explosion.
Maybe all the North Koreans jumped up and down at the same time.
Oddly enough, external microphones on the jet picked up something that sounded like singing... "I'm so wronery..."A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Are we justified sanctioning and otherwise punishing it, even if it lied?
Well, consider this: if someone comes to you and says "hey, I just crapped in your locker" without laughing, what do you do? either you punch him in the face rightaway for having crapped in your locker, or you don't believe him, look inside your locker, discover no turd, then turn around and punch him in the face for being a stupid asshole. Either way, you punch him in the face.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The Dear Leader watches everything. He is all-knowing. The Dear Leader was born on Mt. Paektu the Sacred Mountain. His birth was attended simultaneously by a double rainbow and a radiant star in the heavens. Surely that's a sign of Godhood. He is the light of our lives. We are blessed to have his benevolent gaze shining over our great nation.
This is really the best confirmation data we have. DPRK says they set off a nuke. Even if a nuke had fizzled, it would've been bigger than the 550T explosion the seismometers felt. From here, "A geology professor at Yale, Jeffrey Park, emails to tell me that the updated Richter magnitude for the North Korea event is 3.5, which he calls "mighty small for a crude nuke." And that's true: it suggests a very small yield. But the odd thing is that it's actually harder to build a 1 kiloton weapon than a 5 or 10 kiloton weapon, and it's unlikely North Korea has the expertise to do this."
So, nobody's really sure what to believe right now, and eventually it'll just fall to consensus on the data we already have.
The best place to hear about the debate's over at ArmsControlWonk. New radionucliotide data, insider info from some well-placed anonymous sources, and insights into the scientific cultures within dictatorships paints an interesting picture.
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UPDATE ON THIS STORY AS OF 8:30PM EASTERN:
US has evidence of radioactivity from North Korea