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Wikileaks Releases Early Atomic Bomb Diagram
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has released a diagram of the first atomic weapon, as used in the Trinity test and subsequently exploded over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, together with an extremely interesting scientific analysis. Wikileaks has not been able to fault the document or find reference to it elsewhere. Given the high quality of other Wikileaks submissions, the document may be what it purports to be, or it may be a sophisticated intelligence agency fraud, designed to mislead the atomic weapons development programs of countries like Iran. The neutron initiator is particularly novel. 'When polonium is crushed onto beryllium by explosion, reaction occurs between polonium alpha emissions and beryllium leading to Carbon-12 & 1 neutron. This, in practice, would lead to a predictable neutron flux, sufficient to set off device.'"
Ok we get it, wikileaks has a lot of cool shit to check out, but this is getting redundant.
It's not news to say "Hey look wikileaks has XXX up". People can goto wikileaks themselves and see without you guys posting it like its real news.
But I thought the mechanics of such a device were pretty well understood? Don't they just divide a sphere with sufficient critical mass into "pie" pieces and then just use explosives to force all the pieces together at the appropriate time? (I'm sure it's not quite THAT simple.)
Cheers,
Having the plans, and having the tooling and know-how to actually follow the plans to get a working device are two hugely different matters.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I expect that this is going to get Wikileaks a lot of publicity, but I think it may be harmful publicity-- whenever they try to claim that they're doing a useful service, people are now going to point at this and say "yeah, and also publishing plans for weapons."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Actually, very specific information about the Fat Man is widely available. For example, wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man -- but you can do even better with a quick search.
Having the schematics is a nice start, but even if you manage to collect the components, handle the components safely and actually construct something similar to the Fat Man, you end up with an ENORMOUS device that is relatively weak compared to the nuclear devices of today. Your going to have trouble sneaking this monstrosity, say, through the Holland tunnel into NYC.
Now, schematics for a suitcase nucleur device made from readily available and cheap components... that would raise my eyebrows.
Writing a new Godwin's law, are you? See some information you don't like then equate it to child porn and get it banned?
The design is over 50yrs old. Sheesh.
No, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
The Slashdot love for Wikileaks seems childish and immature. I understand that "information wants to be free" and that "censorship is bad", but I think we need to recognize that there is a limit to the healthy release of this sort of information. There's a reason you can't find this kind of material in a library, and it's not because they want to "repress your thoughts" or make you into a "(insert favorite conspiracy theory here) drone".
Obviously we would have little problems if these were plans for a gun instead of a nuclear device, and both kill people. But it seems like we should exercise some judgment before we decide that all information about everything should be available to all people all the time. "Woah! Cool! Nuclear Weapons plans! I bet we'd get a lot of press if we released THOSE!" seems like poor justification for wanting to distribute material of this kind.
I'm uncomfortable with this, and I'm sure others are too. There's a difference between sharing with P2P, sharing scientific information, and sharing nuclear weapons plans, especially on a site called "Wikileaks". The first I can justify by saying, "Lots of good stuff is shared on P2P". The first I second justify by saying, "Although these journals may technically hold the copyright on this information, the American people paid for it and it's ultimately good to release scientific information to the public." The third is ultimately pretty tough to justify. If Wikileaks was instead a book about "Engineering the World War" and parts of the plans were released to diagram how the allies used particular types of circuitry, I think I'd be okay with it. But simply releasing plans like this for no other reason than attention whoring seems at best like an incredibly severe lapse in judgement. And I'm ashamed to be part of a community that is supporting it.
Wikileaks seems to have a very crude (and some would argue wholly unintelligent) sense of right and wrong. Their philosophy lacks any nuance - all they seems to trump is that everything and anything should be published. If anyone says otherwise then they start screaming like an impudent 5 year old - CENSORSHIP - CENSORSHIP - I AM BEING GAGGED - THIS IS SUPPRESSION - THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.
Some of what they put out has a rightful place to enable anonymous whistleblowing. However they seem to be unable to discriminate between something that is rightful and something that is completely wrong. They will eventually find themselves far far on the wrong side of the law and will disappear. The shame in that is that the route for anonymous whistleblowing will then have been removed due to their inability to make good judgements.
In practice (I'm no expert, but this is the internet!) when you take the serviceability of weapons, missiles, communications, bunkers and all the other pieces into account, I'd be surprised if more that 1/4 of any major nuclear force could be launched on any particular day, unless there was a lot of build up time to get all the parts reassembled and tested. Just look at how long it takes to get a satellite launch vehicle or the scuttle ready to go.
That does lead to the rather worrying question of just how many nukes are in transit between their SILOs and the (re)manufacturing facilities on any given day.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Surely this is the engineering equivalent of child porn...
Ah, you mean a mostly artificially manufactured boogie-man, the mere mention of which instantly trumps any reasoned debate? Then yes, it probably is that.
I don't really get your "encouragement" argument, though. Do you really think some totalitarian dictator of a god-forsaken country is going to roll out of bed one morning, see this, and go "Whelp, time to start a 20 year plutonium enrichment program"?
This information is nothing new to anyone with any kind of semblance of the resources necessary to make any use of it.
sic transit gloria mundi
The hard part of making a nuclear weapon is getting the raw materials and the means to shape them precisely enough.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
And since you seem to be "in the know", what might this detail be? If you're going to call out the document, at least back up your assertion.
Well..
Beware of the trinity : KNOWLEDGE, MEANS, and INTENT.
In order to do anything, you must have knowledge, means, and intent. There are plenty of governments with the intent on making an impression on the global political front by any means necessary including posing a nuclear threat. Some of those governments have the means to accomplish this and lack the knowledge, while others may have the knowledge but not the means.
The trick to preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to keep the government with the means from being able to cooperate with the governments with the knowledge, especially when they both share the same intent. This means trying to limit the flow of information, funding, and materials using any means necessary.
Nice job of trivializing the need for secrecy by equating the information to build a nuclear weapon with child pornography.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
When making a nuke, the design is not a major obstacle, a handful of smart guys n gals could come up with a design from scratch pretty easy. It is the refinement of the delicious weapons grade nuclear material that is the problem. I say: Lets all share the love, nukes all or for none. If you want to blame someone for nuclear proliferation, blame the US govenment, they've given away a lot more nuclear secrets.
wait, lets go thru those 1 by 1. New nuke design: I you have the resources to make it, getting a design for free is just a little bonus, so who cares. Plans to invade Iran/Korea: The US has plans when it invades places? seriously tho if the US invades Iran or North Korea, that would be bad and wrong, I hope any plans are exposed, the US shouldn't do it. Defense of Taiwan plans: lets be brualy honest, the plan is: fuck 'em, let the chinks take it.
ok ok, seriously, joking aside. The answer to all these is basiclly this: Do you not think that if someone can hand these to wikileaks, they could and would sell it the chinese just as easily? Wikileaks exposes not just the data, but the insecurity of the system.
What would you prefer:
Scallywag gives Tiawan defence plans to wikileaks, controversy ensues, generals get kicked in the balls for poor security, plans are rewritten, security tightened. US happy.
OR
Traitor gives Tiawan defence plan to Chinese, US doesn't know, wallows in self satisfaction, US gets pwned.
As for police roit control plans, they should be released, fact is if an angry mob is about to go on the rampage, some nerd isn't going to pop up his head in the middle and say 'quick everyone down this street, the police will be waiting if we go that way' and have the crowd follow. However, if the police plan to use it against a peaceful protest, then the people ought to know how the police plan on attacking them so they can avoid being oppressed. And if the plan involves beating down and teargassing people who aren't doing anything wrong, people ought to know.
As the a drug raid, two words: Legalise It.
Personal secrets, now theres a lamo one. Do you think this stuff wouldn't be published by newspapers? If the government is going to stick thier noses into our lives they should expect the same. Don't want it to get out out you banged your secretary? shouldn't have banged her then. Personally, I like to hear about it when politicians fuck underage kids, or if they have a secret diary full of racist comments. I think its generally a good thing to know if the people who make our laws are liars, or racists or paedophiles.
Also, may I add, one final note, warning someone the pigs are after them is not obstructing justice.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
The problem with asking them to "discriminate between something that is rightful and something that is completely wrong" is that right and wrong are matters of opinion and absolutely not universal. I would hypothesise that those running Wikileaks may well be willing to publish things that they themselves consider 'wrong' on the basis that they do not consider it their own right to make that judgement.
Well, there's the rub. We might all be able to agree that some information should reasonably be kept secret. But what we can't agree on is which information, and often why. The principle of state secrets is one which is usually only truly upheld by those who believe government can and should be trusted. In America, it should be damn near treasonous to believe that, given the principles on which we are founded.
The case for secrecy is often made, but it's made not with examples of where failure to keep secret has harmed us. It's made using fear of what MIGHT happen if those secrets were revealed. We all have vivid imaginations and can think of worst-case scenarios to scare ourselves with what MIGHT happen. But it's far more useful for us to live in reality. I don't think we've ever become a weaker nation for our transparency.
Security through obscurity, as we all know, is no security at all. When did we forget this?
I can't tell if you're being serious or not. Your post is either +5 funny or -2 Flamebait.
This design will do nothing to further the aims of 'terrists'. Obtaining the raw materials is such a great hurdle in itself that the actual plans for this bomb are of secondary importance. I knew fairly specific information about this type of bomb when I was 10. I read about it in my encyclopedia, which I believe was a 1967 edition.
If this seems like dangerous or obscure knowledge to you, then you really have place discussing it.
These plans are about as useful as a map to the moon- They are so useless without an extensive infrastructure that they are practically worthless.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Will Wikileaks always know what is harmless and what is not?
A mistake could - quite literally - blow up in their face or mine.
It worries me that the Geek so easily trusts and defends an arbitrary power wielded in secret by one of his own.
>Neither Iran nor North Korea have waged wars of aggression in the past 50 years.
North Korea hasn't waged a war of aggression in the past 50 years... for a reason. The korean war ended with the south free because there were US troups at the border to keep north korean troops from taking the south.
Iran I agree may be exaggerated as a threat, but you should consider the roll that America's wars have played in history over the past 50 years.
Cold War Era:
The Korean War
Lebanon crisis of 1958
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Dominican Intervention
Vietnam War
Tehran hostage rescue
Grenada
Beirut
Panama
Post Cold War Era:
Gulf War
Somalia
Yugoslavia
Bush Era:
Afghanistan
Philippines
Liberia
Iraq
A lot of these conflicts had minor US involvement, but I've listed them for completeness (Liberia involved sending "three warships with 2,300 Marines into view of the coast," and funding Economic Community of West African States troops.)
What should be most notable about every last one of these wars, is that while some of them were major mistakes, all of them were in defense of pretty much every first world democratic country, and not just the united states.
People seem to enjoy bashing the United States for it's mistakes, and sometimes we deserve it, but the truth is that the current balance of power has benefited pretty much everyone posting on slashdot. There have been no new world wars for a reason. The soviet union ended it's domination of europe, and was not able to press in further than they did for a reason. Every first world nation prizes it's military alliance with the US for a reason.
The truth is that the roll that the US plays is maintaining a balance of power with democratic nations at the top, and dictatorial nations at the bottom. The truth is that without the US forces there to maintain that balance of power, this would end quickly. The other first world nations do not have comparable military forces, and largely don't have the forces necessary to defend themselves from their neighbors.
Consider what would have happened without US forces to maintain the ballance of power:
1. In the cold war, pretty much all of Europe would have ended up in soviet hands.
2. South Korea would fall to North Korea *immediately* if US forces weren't there to back them up.
3. Taiwan would end up in Chinese hands *today* if the US wasn't committed to defending them from invasion.
4. Pakistan would have difficulty surviving without US military aid.
5. Israel probably wouldn't survive without US backing.
Israel is probably the most controversial of those choices, and a lot of people, myself included, are pretty unhappy with how they treat the palestinians, but I don't think anyone wants to see Israel destroyed (well... except for the people trying to destroy it) as that would cost considerably more lives than the current conflict.
So while it may be reasonable to criticize specific US actions, it's pretty ridiculous to act like you don't want the US there defending your interests, or that you're unhappy with the status quo.
Was declassified decades ago. The need for the additional neutron source was questionable in the gun-type nuclear weapons, but the scientists who built the bomb wanted to make sure that it detonated. Especially since they had only tested the implosion device. (The gun-type device was considered so simple that it didn't need testing.)
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