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A Look Back At Bombing the Van Allen Belts
An anonymous reader points out a recent story at NPR describing one of the greatest lightshows in history — a US hydrogen bomb test 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean in 1962. The mission came about after James Van Allen confirmed the existence of radiation belts around the earth that now bear his name. As it turns out, the same day Van Allen announced his findings at a press conference, he "agreed with the military to get involved with a project to set off atomic bombs in the magnetosphere to see if they could disrupt it." According to NPR, "The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth's atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might 'alter' the natural shape of the belts." The article is accompanied by a podcast and a video with recently declassified views of the test. They also explain how the different colors of light in the sky were produced.
I believe there's an international treaty where you cannot nuclear attack a nation having an nuclear arsenaln, even if it's just "one nuke".
This fact allows the US to nuke, say Irak, until they have developed their own nuclear weapons. That's why these nations are developing their own weapons, not to "nuke the Western world" but to get themselves safe.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
In case anyone got interested, the 1958 test was called Operation Argus.
By the way, despite what TFA says, there are two electron radiation belts, not just two of them at all; there's also a proton one. Wikipedia considers it to be a part of the inner radiation belt, but the accepted terminology says otherwise to the best of my knowledge.
... if this plan involved any of the same people who wanted to set off a nuclear bomb on the moon.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This test series (specifically, Starfish Prime) uncovered the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effect, an unexpected side effect of nuclear explosions at altitude. The gamma rays from a high altitude burst hit atoms and thus eject electrons high in the atmosphere over a wide area, more or less simultaneously, and the current from the ejected electrons can cause a very wide-spread electromagnetic pulse, which can knock out power lines and electronics at great distances (> 1000 km).
So, I guess we can call Allen the father of the EMP, although I am not sure he would have wanted the honor.
I will give this a shot. I assume you mean these.
a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts.
a. Yes, especially in the radio.
b. Yes, in a fairly predictable fashion (from heat, gamma rays).
c. No
d. Yes, for a short while, sort of like a solar flare. That can actually cause a "geomagnetically induced current," which could be a problem for long electrical transmission lines.
However, the real find from the test was the prompt EMP, which was not anticipated. (See my post further down on that one.)
Isaac Azimov wrote a short sci-fi story about an explorer, who had just come back from visiting the newly contacted planet "Earth", adding humans to the "Register Of Intelligent Life". Some minutes later, after the explorer explained how humans tested atomic bombs "on their own planet" the registrar erased the entry as being unqualified for inclusion under "Intelligent".
He didn't cross of humans as "being unqualified for inclusion under intelligent." He crossed off humans under the assumption we would cause ourselves to go extinct, as many other species who had qualified as intelligent, had. Also, the explorer hadn't contacted Earth, he had observed/explored it. Humans had no knowledge of the Explorer or the Register.
Well, it's not like there's law against it.
We finally have a Supreme Court that takes the Second Amendment seriously, and there is nothing there in the Constitution that would allow the Government to limit your capacity to defend yourself and your family against your neighbors and tyrants.
In fact, the Second Amendment's intent can only be fulfilled if every family owned a nuclear weapon. Only then will the Government think twice before using the eminent domain and tax-and-spend laws to confiscate your Private Property.
Before the television show there was the movie, and that premise was most of the entire plot.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
http://www.iranfocus.com/en/?option=com_content&task=view&id=4164
Transcript of speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran
"Such people are using words like "it's not possible". They say how could we have a world without America and Zionism? But you know well that this slogan and goal can be achieved and can definitely be realised"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That is a misconception, though unfortunately a common one. The real situation was that a single scientist on the project posited that it might, all of the others disproved it mathematically, he irresponsibly went to the press, and they kicked him out. That's the truth, though it makes a much less sensational headline.
I think, perhaps, the terrorists didn't forsee the real end-result of that terror.
On the contrary, they foresaw it only too well, and the USA's reaction meant that they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Having the population of the USA live in a state of fear would be an important goal for them (after all, is this not the very definition of the word "terrorism"?), and in this the subsequent actions of the USA government, and their stoking of the perceived terrorist threat, helped Al Qaeda succeed in this.
If you recall, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was worldwide sympathy for the USA, and not just from its usual allies. How quickly, and how damagingly (to the USA itself) this goodwill was squandered by what happened in Iraq (and the decision to start a war there in the first place) and the more-extreme excesses of the "war on terror". Portraying the conflict as some sort of religious crusade also played into their hands.
The Bush administration was played like a fiddle by Al Qaeda.
Source, please.
Richard Rhodes' _Making of the Atomic Bomb_ mentions that it was Fermi who offered tongue-in-cheek to take wagers from other scientists on whether the bomb would ignite the atmosphere and if this would destroy just New Mexico or the whole world, annoying Groves in the process. Oppenheimer asked Teller to look into this along with other similar far-fetched possibilities.
No one went to the press. No one was kicked off the project over this. That's the truth, though it makes a much less sensational headline.
FreeSpeech.org
There has never been an invasion of a nuclear state.
Yom Kippur War