How We Know North Korea Didn't Detonate a Hydrogen Bomb

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 9, 2016 @11:02AM from the still-weaponizing-fan-death dept.

StartsWithABang writes: The news has been aflame with reports that North Korea detonated a hydrogen bomb on January 6th, greatly expanding its nuclear capabilities with their fourth nuclear test and the potential to carry out a devastating strike against either South Korea or, if they're more ambitious, the United States. The physics of what a nuclear explosion actually does and how that signal propagates through the air, oceans and ground, however, can tell us whether this was truly a nuclear detonation at all, and if so, whether it was fusion or fission. From all the data we've collected, this appears to be nothing new: just a run-of-the-mill fission bomb, with the rest being a sensationalized claim. (Related: Yesterday's post about how seismic data also points to a conventional nuke, rather than an H-bomb.)

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Why they detonated it by phantomfive · 2016-01-09 11:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is my favorite theory of why N Korea detonated a bomb, because China snubbed the dear-leader's hand-picked girl band. Things are strange over there.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."