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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.
But if anything ever needed the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag, this was it.
Wow, cool! Let's nuke it and see what happens!
The mind boggles.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
At least it will be a very pretty ending when the nuclear war begins.
These images look very similar to what I had seen last night. The colors bouncing off of the clouds lit up the sky quite well. In fact, if no one replies in the next few minutes I can probably assume that was the end of humanity.
In the end I suppose it's time to do what I always wanted to do. You know, the things we won't do because of societies "rules." However, now that society no longer exists I can finally bathe myself in chocolate sauce, whip cream, nuts and ride my bike around town screaming who has a banana!
Even being the end of the world it's shaping up to be a great day.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
It is amazing how the US comes down on on other countries for even thinking of having 1 bomb. While their history is of irresponsibly setting them off like fire crackers on the 4th. How many atolls no longer exist? How many places on earth are radioactive? Yet we are all supposed to believe that they are the sole responsible country on the earth.
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".
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.
was to nuke rainbows. A high ranking general was quoted as saying the military applications of rainbows and rainbow based technologies can't be ignored.
... but the more I read about what some of these scientists got up to the more I begin to wonder if some of them weren't borderline insane or at least so totally absorbed in the narrow science they were persuing that they didn't think about or didn't care about the potential consequences if things went wrong.
... 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.)
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.
Do we know of any long term consequences of these ill-advised tests?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Those radiation belts are composed of trapped electron and proton particles, bouncing back and forth along those magnetic field lines. There are several numerical models that predict what the population of these particles based on their location, and general behavior under different conditions (solar cycle variations, solar flares, etc).
Anyone building a satellite will use those models to determine what levels of radiation levels the satellite will encounter along its orbit, and add on the appropriate level of shielding to protect the electronics.
A nuclear bomb will never be able to alter the shape of the belts. All it will do is add a spectacular amount of electron and proton particles to the radiation belt, potentially frying the electronics of most of the low to medium orbit satellite (geosynchronous ones will probably be ok). Depending on the size of the bomb, the radiation belt may take weeks or even months to return to a 'natural' state.
There are some experiments in the works to 'tweak' the radiation belts by beaming low frequency EM waves, to change the energy of the existing particle populations. In theory, that will enable some of the particles to become 'untrapped', thereby reducing the overall population.
Some countries like Japan certainly have the wealth and the technology base to build them, but don't for very deliberate political reasons
Gojira!!
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu