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The Real Mother of All Bombs, 46 Years Ago
vaporland writes "Tsar Bomba is the Western name for the RDS-220, the largest, most powerful weapon ever detonated. The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961, in an archipelago in the Arctic Sea. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons. Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun for 39 nanoseconds of its detonation. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout. The Tsar Bomba qualifies as the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity."
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Streaming flash video of detonation:
http://sonicbomb.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=90
They're testing the effects of shockwaves, which types of light and how much of them are emitted in the blast, what exactly goes on (at the visible and molecular level) in the milliseconds after detonation, and PLENTY of other things. They were also testing new bomb designs and making sure they worked.
Regardless of what conspiracy theorist ideas you may have, they didn't spend billions developing these bombs, and then cause lots of (localized) damage testing them just for the pretty fireworks show. The tests DID have a point.
Not that I'm saying I LIKE the idea that the things are hanging around anymore. The idea that one bomb could kill millions and the idiotic world leaders wave them around like a revolver in the hands of a drunk is just a little on the "what the hades, are you totally insane??" side of things. It's a sad state of affairs we live in when people talk about "nukes for nukes" instead of the lives of the people that would be vaporized without a chance. If you've gotta use weapons, make them conventional or there won't be much of a world left to argue over...yaknow?
Trinity and Beyond along with the Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes are a very good primer on the Anglo-American development along with the science and math done in Europe and the Americas from 1900-1945.
If you are interested in the spying and hydrogen bomb development along with the Soviet bomb, Rhodes Black Sun covers that.
Because the statement that it would be equivalent to "The power output of the Sun for .39 nanoseconds" is misleading.
Don't get distracted by the 39ns figure. Power is an instantaneous quantity - it is a rate at which energy is transmitted. They are saying that the bomb sustained a level of power (rate of energy) output and held it there for a period of time - 39 ns - that approached 1% of the sun.
I repeat: 39ns is just the period of time that the power level peaked for. They calculated that the amplitude of the power peak itself, was equivalent to 1% the power output of the sun.
We don't care about how long the peak lasted for, the 39ns, unless you start integrating power over time as you just did, in which case you're comparing a quantity of energy, rather than a rate of energy output. Yes, I suppose you could say that 39ns @ 1% sun power is equivalent to an amount of energy produced by the sun in 0.39ns, but that's not the interesting number here, because we could similarly integrate just about any huge power source over a long enough interval of time (hours, days, years, whatever) to come up with "the same amount of energy output by the sun over 39 ns".
So the interesting number is in this case, yes, that the actual instantaneous absolute power output of the bomb approached 1% of that of the sun, albeit for only 39 ns.
Quite remarkable...
They are testing new materials and designs of the electronics and radioactive materials used. Some tests do fail or exceed expectations. Something like the George" shot, was physics experiment relating to the hydrogen bomb.
Buster-Jangle-Able was a fizzile with a one kilogram yield, but with alot of radiation.
The American test, Castle Bravo, yielded almost double the expected yield.
Castle Bravo didn't use cryogenic boosters for its fusion phase, so it lead to the developable and miniaturization of the hydrogen bomb (Fission-Fusion and Fission-Fusion-Fusion)
Then you tested to make sure entire systems world, like Grable of the Upshot-Knothole test was a nuclear weapon fired from a 280mm artillery piece and became the proof shot for the entire like of American nuclear artillery rounds.
Then also from tests at different altitudes they've learned to optimize the device's explosion altitude so smaller devices can be deployed.
"The other guys" were trying to develope their own bomb. The United States just got there first.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Firewalkers don't burn their feet because they are in contact with the heat for only a short period of time. This bomb didn't do apocalyptic damage because it only lasted for a brief amount of time. If the explosion held its peak for a minute, there would likely be issues produced that alter life as we know it, but it was a short enough burst that the energy was able to dissipate over a large area without issue.
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Eh? It's not so much the forests (the wood pulp for paper tends to come from quick growing farmed trees) but the streams and rivers that suffer from paper production, both from the paper production process and from the fertilizers used in the tree farms.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Japan was actually getting serious about the possibility of a fission bomb, Germany wasn't. Some historians think it was because Germany's racial doctrine was so aggressively disparaging of 'Jewish' physics, and so their research and funding ended up being steered in other directions. Japan had physicists who weren't afraid to use Einstein's or other Jewish physicists work in their own papers.
In September 1940, the Japanese Army controlled Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, or Rikken, was assigned a preliminary project. In 1942, the Japanese Navy began also (somewhat independently of the Army) working on a Uranium based fission device. The project was called F-Go {or sometimes just No. F, for fission]. This was located at Kyoto, and was actually the chief reason why Kyoto was added to the list of potential military targets for the U.S. bombs, although in the end the city was still taken off the list by Truman due to its historic and social value. Despite a certain military commitment these programs weren't backed with adequate resources, and the Japanese were probably still four or more years from having a bomb by the end of the war.
A Japanese plant, concealed in Hungnam, now part of North Korea, may have been the source of heavy water subsequently used by the USSR for its own bomb research. There are reports the Soviet Union continued to run that plant and collected the output every other month by submarine, and it alone may have shaved a year or more off the USSR's development time.
In May 1945, a German submarine which surrendered to US forces , was found to be carrying over 500 kg. of Uranium oxide destined for Japan. The oxide contained about 3.5 kilograms of isotope U-235. While not enough to make a bomb, that was a sizable fraction of one. After the Japanese surrender, the occupying US Army found five cyclotrons which were capable of separating fissionable material from ordinary uranium. The US bomb program was accomplished by using gaseous diffusion based separation, but cyclotronic separation was rejected not because it wouldn't work, but because it seemed likely to take longer. Some historians see the willingness of the Germans to supply Uranium to their ally as proof they didn't fully appreciate the potential, while Japan did.
Who is John Cabal?
"The pen is mightier than the sword" is often taken out of context. Everyone forgets the condition that comes BEFORE that statement: Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.
In countries ruled by a bunch of rich jackasses, the pen doesn't amount to much because nothing you write changes the fact that the rich jackasses still own and run everything! Just look around and you'll see that a 50 megaton nuke is still a lot more persuasive than your Bic; they may not overtly threaten with it, but the unspoken understanding that their power is backed up with force is always there.
This whole post is fictional history. Some statements in it are factual but the story, as presented, is false.
Japan was actually getting serious about the possibility of a fission bomb, Germany wasn't. Some historians think it was because Germany's racial doctrine was so aggressively disparaging of 'Jewish' physics, and so their research and funding ended up being steered in other directions. Japan had physicists who weren't afraid to use Einstein's or other Jewish physicists work in their own papers.
This a confused mishmash of half-facts and outright falsehoods. Nazi purges of academia had lost them a good portion of their best physicists who were either Jewish, or communists, or were non-Germans who simply had had enough of the regime. But Germany was the world center of physics at the time and they still had many, many highly competent physicists. Nazi doctrines had no influence at all in the practice of science by scientists. See Alan Beyerchen's excellent "Scientists Under Hitler".
In September 1940, the Japanese Army controlled Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, or Rikken, was assigned a preliminary project. In 1942, the Japanese Navy began also (somewhat independently of the Army) working on a Uranium based fission device. The project was called F-Go {or sometimes just No. F, for fission].
This much about Japan's effort at least is more or less correct, although the Japanese Army did not control the Riken (correct spelling, Rikken is a Dutch card game). The two research programs, NI-Go and F-Go, together constituted a tiny effort by a nation short on scientists and advanced industry. The total peak employment of both programs combined, including assigned military officers was 55 people, and the total amount of money appropriated to the effort was $350,000. The U.S. effort employed 2000 times as many people, and spent 5000 times as much money. In all of Japan there were only 30 active physicists, far too few to staff a serious fission effort. See Walter E. Grunden, "Secret Weapons and World War II: Japan in the Shadow of Big Science", University Press of Kansas, 2005.
This was located at Kyoto, and was actually the chief reason why Kyoto was added to the list of potential military targets for the U.S. bombs,...
This is simple fantasy. No such consideration ever came up in the work of the Target Committee.
True, though a vast understatement. The Japanese project had only prepared a few grams of ordinary uranium metal, had only a few hundred kilograms of crude uranium compounds on hand, and had not enriched even a microgram of uranium above natural levels. Really, the program had no results at all, and thus could hardly be said to have even truly begun.
A Japanese plant, concealed in Hungnam, now part of North Korea, may have been the source of heavy water subsequently used by the USSR for its own bomb research. There are reports the Soviet Union continued to run that plant and collected the output every other month by submarine, and it alone may have shaved a year or more off the USSR's development time.
All of the above is fantasy.
In May 1945, a German submarine which surrendered to US forces , was found to be carrying over 500 kg. of Uranium oxide destined for Japan. The oxide contained about 3.5 kilograms of isotope U-235. While not enough to make a bomb, that was a sizable fraction of one.
A bit like evaluating a pile of iron ore in terms of the number of jet engines you could potentially make out of it. That such a small quantity of uranium compound was considered significant by Japan indicates how short of resources they were.
After the Japanese surrender, the occupying US Army found five cyclotrons which were capable of separating fissionable material from ordinary uranium.
The U.S. Army didn't "find" them. They weren't secret
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun for 39 nanoseconds of its detonation.
The thing that irks me the most about Slashdot is the way that the majority of posters and commenters so maladroitly feign expertise in the sciences. Anyway, you meant to say "Tsar Bomba's rate of energy release, for a period of 39 nanoseconds, was ~1% of the Sun's rate of luminous energy release (which has been maintained continuously for ~4.5 billion years.)"