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Feds Attempt To Censor Parts of a New Book About the Hydrogen Bomb
HughPickens.com writes: The atom bomb — leveler of Hiroshima and instant killer of some 80,000 people — is just a pale cousin compared to the hydrogen bomb, which easily packs the punch of a thousand Hiroshimas. That is why Washington has for decades done everything in its power to keep the details of its design out of the public domain. Now William J. Broad reports in the NY Times that Kenneth W. Ford has defied a federal order to cut material from his new book that the government says teems with thermonuclear secrets. Ford says he included the disputed material because it had already been disclosed elsewhere and helped him paint a fuller picture of an important chapter of American history. But after he volunteered the manuscript for a security review, federal officials told him to remove about 10 percent of the text, or roughly 5,000 words. "They wanted to eviscerate the book," says Ford. "My first thought was, 'This is so ridiculous I won't even respond.'" For instance, the federal agency wanted him to strike a reference to the size of the first hydrogen test device — its base was seven feet wide and 20 feet high. Dr. Ford responded that public photographs of the device, with men, jeeps and a forklift nearby, gave a scale of comparison that clearly revealed its overall dimensions.
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs are attractive to nations and militaries because their fuel is relatively cheap. Inside a thick metal casing, the weapon relies on a small atom bomb that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Today, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the only declared members of the thermonuclear club, each possessing hundreds or thousands of hydrogen bombs. Military experts suspect that Israel has dozens of hydrogen bombs. India, Pakistan and North Korea are seen as interested in acquiring the potent weapon. The big secret the book discusses is thermal equilibrium, the discovery that the temperature of the hydrogen fuel and the radiation could match each other during the explosion (PDF). World Scientific, a publisher in Singapore, recently made Dr. Ford's book public in electronic form, with print versions to follow. Ford remains convinced the book "contains nothing whatsoever whose dissemination could, by any stretch of the imagination, damage the United States or help a country that is trying to build a hydrogen bomb." "Were I to follow all — or even most — of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book."
That sort of censorship is just going to blow up in their face!
when people try and censor stuff that is already public. We see it here, we see it with snowden (im not talking classified stuff) but if this person got the information without looking at classified materials, who do they think they are to tell him to not publish?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There is no upside to instructing hostiles in this.
an ill wind that blows no good
No Amateur is going to read a book and build a bomb.
And actually, the Military tested this idea a while back. Interestingly, the amateurs had postgrad level education (sub doctoral), and actually succeeded.
However.
All the knowledge was publicly available already. No special books needed.
The problem isn't the bureaucrats in question, rather the culture of fear and secrecy in which our government had steeped these last several decades. This problem needs to be addressed at its cultural roots, starting with your family and friends -- Tell them fear will do infinitely more harm than the things we're, as a society, afraid of.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
to open with something like "The atom bomb — leveler of Hiroshima and instant killer of some 80,000 people". As if no-one knew how the U.S murdered tens of thousands Japanese women, children, and other civilians. It is glorifying and making a horrible act sound almost cool and impressive. What kind of small, hateful person writes stuff like this.
wait until the IRS audits your publication profits.
So, the take away from this is... what? Any author gets to decide what information does or does not constitute a breach of national security based on what the effect of its deletion on their book sales would be? I for one would sleep more soundly knowing that that information wasn't in his book than I would knowing he was going to get a big fat royalty check.
Ok. Let's say they censor it. So, what is gained?
Terrorists can't get a hold on these "secrets"? Please. Care to take a look at the thermonuke club? Half of them doesn't have a government suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and the other half doesn't give a fuck who gets that information as long as the price is right.
There might be some overlapping, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How dare the government abridge our 2nd amendment rights. Who will join me in a Hydrogen Bomb Open Cary campaign?
The only way to ensure our freedom and safety is that every man woman and child has the comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction.
I remember seeing pics and descriptions of the Hydrogen Bomb in high school. Never bothered to examine the design again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... has the basic design. So what's the rub?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
"Dr. Ford hasn't been heard from for several days."
Interesting book, and awesome FREE MARKETING courtesy of the Feds! There's really nothing in this book that countries like Iran, NK, etc don't already have. He should publish both, one censored "inside" the US, and an uncensored version outside the US. Then people might even buy both of them...
as a real secret any more, if there ever was. If the "secret" is based on scientific research, it's been published and is reproducible and all the relevant people already know about it. If it's engineering, anyone can figure it out. Probably the only thing that's "secret" any more is the Coca Cola formula.
I was trying to figure out what this had to do with Slashdot, then it hit me.
Of course. Fat Man.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I got two of his books ("The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb") and have read them both a few times. Lots of really good information in there, but both were written pre-9/11. He's written two books since which I literally ordered a few minutes ago while reading about this.
Put a torrent up of the book, and tell fed.gov to go fuck themselves. Silly fascists seem to think that H bombs are still super secret tech.
Hate to say it Feds, but 60+ year old tech is hardly a secret.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
You manually submit a book to the government for review and then become upset when the gov does exactly what you asked?
Although the yield of the Weapons is contested. Radio Chemical analysis of the byproducts presented show there was a thermonuclear explosion, whether a fizzle or otherwise.
http://fas.org/news/india/1998/05/980500-conf.htm
RCM analysis:
http://www.barc.gov.in/publications/nl/1999/199907-01.pdf
Was it a successful weaponization?
Not known.
Was it thermonuclear?
Yes. Because RCM produced isotopes which are present in larger quantities in TN explosions.
Is India weaponizing or producing TN weapons?
Yes. They are enriching enough Uranium to make lots of TN weapons.
http://press.ihs.com/press-release/aerospace-defense-terrorism/ihs-reveals-new-potential-nuclear-enrichment-site-india
I don't know why Slashdot lets posts in without any verification.India probably has thermonuclear weapons, if Israel has them. India btw, declared that they possess Themonuclear weapons. I don't see why everyone else's claims are accepted at face value and the only country to ever publish an RCM analysis is discredited.
Now, I am open to the fact that the yield may be below expectations, but only the designers of the device will know that. There are dissenting voices in India, as well, but it's usually brought up when there is pressure to accede to CTBT or some such lunacy by the politicians. Just like China's anti-aircraft carrier missile or their stealth aircraft are used to get more funding.
"Were I to follow all .. of your suggestions," says Ford, "it would destroy the book." Oh no! When you put it that way, it would be awful to have wasted all that time putting the book together! I mean if we're going to weigh the possibility of making hydrogen bomb construction easier, thus endangering the lives of millions/billions of people in the future, versus some author having spent time putting together a book and then having it be a big waste of time, we have to side with the author. I mean seriously, how self-centered do you have to be as an person to make that argument?
To answer the other questions here -- Assuming the information is already available elsewhere doesn't mean anything because: (1) It's possible that the author is exaggerating (for his own 'I want to publish' reasons) how available that information is, and (2) it saves villains the work of finding and putting that information together on their own - information they might've overlooked.
But, I suspect Slashdot is going to stick with the old "let's make all information available" arguments, proving why they don't and shouldn't actually work in geopolitics. I remember a lot of those crappy arguments flying around when some scientists were talking about publishing the genetic sequences of highly-virulent and deadly strains of flu. Keep working on your quixotic quest to make a deadlier 21st century, Slashdot.
The design of the bombs is not the problem. Getting fissile material to build the trigger is the problem. Even a large corporation could probably not enrich uranium without attracting attention. Unless the book contains some method that Joe Sixpack can use to leach highly-enriched uranium from tailings or something, it's not a threat.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not sure why all the fuss about this book, when instead of building a thermonuclear device you can just order one ready made... I hear Iran will be shipping them to countries around the globe any day now. Pretty sure I'm in the test market area!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm more concerned about the effect this has on peoples' perception of our foreign policy. If people understood exactly how easy it is to build a Uranium atomic bomb (I understand we're talking about hydrogen here), they might feel very differently about being ok with Iran saying no to UN or IAEA regulator snooping.
Hydrogen bomb knowledge is still not exactly common (like the uranium bomb knowledge is) so I can understand and even support their interest here. This isn't even about domestic consumption, anybody here could figure it out how to find the info if they really wanted, it's about foreign power
Attention mods- The summary should read:
"The big secret the book discusses is...[REDACTED]"
Regards
Your Friendly Government Official
I know how suspension bridges work. I probably could build a small one, but any lengthy span would be well beyond me.
I know how internal combustion engines work. It would take a year of training on the tools before I'd be able to make one that even sorta worked, and then it would be at 1900s-level functionality.
I know how nuclear weapons work. Several types, in fact. But I cannot make them.
1) I could build a gun-type weapon, given the material (200lbs of 90% pure U-235, a 76mm artillery barrel, and some regular explosives), but I could not create the equipment to refine uranium.
2) I could probably build a reactor to generate plutonium, with massive effort and a significant risk of poisoning myself, but I could not build a working implosion bomb with it. It would take a year's training in explosives just to be able to build an existing design, and those designs are tightly secured.
3) With the materials, I might be able to upgrade an unboosted fission weapon into a boosted one. Maybe.
4) A fusion weapon is completely beyond me. You could stick me in Lawrence Livermore with all the parts in front of me, and without some Ikea-like instructions you aren't going to get anything.
We are protected from homemade gun-type weapons by the scarcity of uranium and the immense difficulty in refining it. Remember, this is something that was beyond the capabilities of most nations a scant 70 years ago. A dedicated nation-state or perhaps certain multinational corporations could pull it off, but not without detection.
We are protected against homemade implosion-type weapons by the complex engineering necessary, the esoteric nature of the specific engineering knowledge needed (nuclear physics and shaped explosives are not a common dual-major), and by the absolute need for testing before use. The former prevents fringe groups from succeeding; the latter prevents the non-suicidal from trying.
We are not protected by lack of general knowledge on nukes, because no such lack of knowledge exists. I learned half of this stuff from school textbooks, and the other half from Wikipedia. Anyone driven to find more can easily do so.
#1 - Afaik, a hydrogen bomb is a practical application of FUSION using FISSION, right (or wrong)?
#2 - The FUSION is achieved by implosion done by the atomic bomb(s) being 'set' around another nuclear pile, right (or wrong)??
(TIA on those, as I've always wondered if I was correct on that much @ least, or not...)
* NOW the "big one":
How on earth do they 'fire an electron' into the unstable U-238/Cobalt (or other unstable isotope)? Is THAT done by using a large electrical charge?? See, afaik @ least, electricity works by moving electrons across the surface of a wire (only surface) & thus, would 'fire electrons' into an unstable pile of fissionable material... or, is it done with something like CRT's used on their sweeper/flyback arm??
APK
P.S.=> No "severe physics geek" here, but I've always wondered if my assumptions were correct on the points I noted above - feel free to 'set me straight' please where I am off (or even way, Way, WAY off) & thanks again... apk
who will speak of the bombing of Hiroshima with words of merit and brag. Praising the atomic bomb as the "Leveler of Hiroshima" is so unbelievably small, petty, and hateful.
There's a big difference between uranium and a working hydrogen bomb. The US won't use nukes unless someone else detonates one first.
That isn't how it worked out for Hiroshima.....For all our talk about how we are morally 'better' because we are a 'democracy', remember we are the only country that has use a nuclear weapon on an enemy.
Also, this author probably doesn't have a security clearance, so pretty much all the sources of info he is going to have access to is going to be by definition declassified. Unless he was getting some of the engineers who work our current batch of nuclear weapons drunk and taking notes, it seems pretty unlikely that he has any privileged info. You can learn quite a bit about nuclear and thermonuclear devices if you know which physics papers to read. The physics for hydrogen bombs and stars are the same thing.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The number killed was very approximately 100,000. It is plain that not even the majority could possibly have been military personnel.
Clearly. However, the most important thing is to compare the Bombs to the estimated casualties of Operation Downfall--a hell of a lot more Japanese people would have been killed by the Allied invasion.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Wiki is not a source of truth, it is a source of editable information often edited for purposes of propaganda. A quick google search finds more articles disproving Wiki than I can count. Here are the first three.
Claiming that killing people saves lives is delusional to the point of insanity. Unfortunately this insanity is alive and well, though today we claim "we must kill all the Muslims to get peace" instead of those "dirty Japs". The only way to justify the delusion is to invent your own version of history, which never happened. Don't worry, I learned the same lessons in public schools and had to learn to think on my own to see the delusion.
If you have doubts, ask yourself if we ever had to land a single troop in Japan to get them to surrender? Check your history! Japan was completely blockaded. They had no ships to defend a convoy, no local production of petroleum, and could not defend themselves from any form of bombardment we were already attacking them with. We had planes fire bombing them at will, without an atomic bomb. There was no reason to invade them, it was only a matter of time before they surrendered. Then ask yourself why we dropped those bombs on non-military targets, because you won't be able to come up with a real answer for that either!.
That is right, we dropped the a-bomb because the US didn't give a shit about human lives or suffering. Our Government had no problem bitching about the Germans with their Jewish concentration camps, but yet we locked up whole families of Japanese Americans in our own. Oh, I know.. we didn't kill the people we put in jail so we were good guys right?
If you want to justify it, at least be honest about the reasons we bombed two cities full of civilians and not military targets. We are the bully that beat up the sickly kid, and people like you laugh about it. Fucking disgusting!
He is writing a book about "basics", not providing blue prints for everything required. If you at least read the summary you would see the point, but alas even reading a summary seems to be beyond your ability.
the trucker that built one a few years ago?
Is because an H Bomb is the only way you can deliver a payload atop a missile. an A bomb of any yield would be far to heavy.
Molybdenum shell, purified carbon, plutonium pitted trigger, uranium 235, high speed rectified wave electronic switching, plastic explosive. Construct quantum container and overflow the quantum equivalence.
So the author submits a book which he doesn't believe is legally required to be submitted. Then when changes are suggested he cries "censorship" and ignores the changes, with apparently no legal ramifications whatsoever. That doesn't sound much like censorship to me. The case involving the Progressive was indeed censorship (and prior restraint at that), but this seems more like an attempt to garner some publicity and "authenticity" for the book. But then again maybe I'm too old and cynical about these things.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Cheese it, it's the Feds!
Everyone hide your Beryllium-Pollonium detonators and your K-alpha reflector cavities, and act natural, for God's sake!
SETEC ASTRONOMY
strikes again.
If we [the world] invested the same effort and money into space exploration as we do in making weapons, we'd be already exploring the nearest galaxies.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
seven feet wide and 20 feet high
Doh. I made mine six feet wide. No wonder it didn't work!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
> Her work is read only by fellow DoD scientists ...
and the NSA, Mossad, Unit 8200, GRU, GIGN, MI-5 (6?), Vatican, Society of the Nine Unknown Men, Sanhedrin, Bilderbergs, Trilateran Committe, Antarctic Neu-Schwabian reptoid HQ, the Vogon-Dogon surveillance mothership and her pet dog, who is actually a Canine Galactic Republic secret agent in disguise...
What does his complexion have to do with this?
For example: http://nuclearweaponarchive.or...
With regard to "thermal equilibrium" we have from the above, Quote: "[Note: Many descriptions in the open literature exist dating back to the late seventies claiming that energetic X-rays from the primary are absorbed by the radiation casing (or plastic foam), and are re-emitted at a lower energy - implying that some sort of energy down-shifting mechanism (like X- ray fluorescence) is at work. This is a misconception. The lining of the casing is in local thermal equilibrium with the energy flux impinging on it, and re-radiates X-rays with the same spectrum. The X-ray spectrum softens simply because the photon gas cools as it expands to fill the entire radiation channel.] In physics a closed container of radiation, like the radiation case, is called a "hohlraum". This German word for "cavity" (which has the obvious English cognates "hole" and "room") has been attached to the study of the thermodynamics of radiation since the last century in connection with blackbody radiation. German physicists early in this century used it as a theoretical model for deriving the blackbody radiation laws from quantum mechanics. Energy in a hohlraum necessarily comes into thermal equilibrium and assumes a blackbody spectrum. This is important for obtaining the necessary symmetry for an efficient implosion. Regardless of how uneven the initial energy distribution within the casing is, the radiation field will quickly establish thermal equilibrium throughout the casing - heating all parts to the same temperature."
Hans Bethe said they made complicated bombs in those days. Hmmmm...
E Proelio Veritas.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't due to a history book on the subject. In fact, I know it wasn't because I also know that a crucial part of the Pakistani nuclear program was stolen by a Pakistani nationalist, Munir Ahmad Khan while working in The Netherlands a NATO country stockpiling US warheads at the time.
My conclusion is that if the US 'feds' are so protective of information regarding nuclear weapons that to me would appear as general public information, their efforts are obviously misdirected or maybe have been for some time.
The Feds have been trying to censor this information for decades, notably when The Progressive published an article in the 70s. They've lost every court case at every attempt, so this is no different. It sounds like a bunch of bureaucrats at the DOE trying to justify their salaries, so don't expect anything to come of it. It's a charade, and nothing more.
Tried to get the book for $18 unlimited access. Got this instead: "Offer to be added to cart is no longer valid, please refresh previous page."
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Dear Ms. Streisand,
You can find the entire book at http://cryptome.org/2015/03/building-the-h-bomb-kenneth-ford.zip
Thanks for your attention
Tom Clancy published 'The Sum of All Fears' in 1991. In the afterword, he mentions how it was frighteningly easy to piece together, from public domain data, how to build a multistage thermonuclear bomb. How he was couriered design specs for fabrication devices for the asking. How he felt the need to obfuscate some details, even though he knew there was no point, just to assuage his conscience.
As he points out, it's physics, and it's engineering.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
if Syria falls entirely and Iraq falls to ISIS, Iran will have two boarders to try and control against an equally tenacious enemy.
How do you figure that Iran would have two "boarders" to deal with if ISIS takes both Iraq and Syria? You know that Iraq sits BETWEEN Syria and Iran, right?
Go look it up. I don't remember if that was the article that told you how to build one at home. The really hard part of that was the centrifuging, where you put the solvent and uranium in a bucket, and spun around as fast as you could in your living room for half an hour....
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