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

Posted by timothy on 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.)

11 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Forbes Warning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    WARNING: The link goes to Forbes.com. Do no click on it.

  2. Whew by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just a normal fission nuke? Oh, ok, we're safe then.

    --
    My first program:

    Hell Segmentation fault

    1. Re: Whew by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Informative

      a fusion bomb may have much more power in terms of megatons TNT, but it won't destroy more than a medium sized city.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    2. Re: Whew by NormalVisual · · Score: 4, Informative

      Fusion bombs aren't that strong. An average 1.2 Mt device set off in the air at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World would likely leave most of Orlando unscathed beyond broken windows and a bad sunburn, and wouldn't even have any effects at KSC beyond hearing it. Running the plot for a much larger 5 Mt explosion shows that while there's significantly more damage, even the nearby cities of Sanford and Lakeland wouldn't be significantly affected.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  3. Re: Smells fishy. by TheReaperD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's no doubt that this is all about propaganda, it's just a question of who the story is aimed at.

    --
    "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
  4. Re: What the fuck has happened to Slashdot?! by TheReaperD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, over half of the topics you suggest are your personal pet peeves, rather than current news stories. The others have already had their run here. What do you suggest, that they keep rerunning your issues with software development until your satisfied with the end result? Now, that being said, some of the articles here have been pretty bad.

    --
    "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
  5. TWICE IN ONE DAY! by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

    WTF Slashdot.

    Two fucking Forbes articles in one day.
    Two fucking StartsWithASlashvertisement posts in one day.

    How many more readers do you want to leave? I'm getting to my breaking point!

  6. Why they detonated it by phantomfive · · 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.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  7. Fuck Forbes, and in particular Ethan Siegel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've posted this, today, on slashdot and I'm posting it again.

    In particular, Fuck Ethan Siegel, the handle resembling a human name used by the StartsWithABang guy, well-known Internet troll and manipulator of disinformation ("digital strategist" in today's Internet dysphemism), who is claimed to be "professor" perhaps of nothing but the art of aggressive marketeering.

    dieethandie.

    Forbes is a well known scam site.

    The website "offers" 17 trackers on a single page serving what they claim to be "content", by the count of Ghostery. In comparison, Slashdot serves 6.

    The site claims to promise "light ad" and nags you to turn off the ad blocker. In reality, it's 4% content and 96% ads.

    What's worse, the blogs hosted there offers no information that is so unique that is worthy of whitelisting the site in your content blocker. The "Starts with a bang" blog, for example, "publishes" stories that are actually regurgitated, thinly-wrapped, dumbed-down, borderline plagiarism from science journals, websites and blogs. The link to the actual news is usually buried with a wall of distracting text and images copied or re-phrased from the original source. The whole blog serves no other purpose than baiting the reader for the purpose of tracking.

    In addition, it appears that the purpose of hosting ads includes malware delivery.

    The behavior of Forbes.com is at best sociopathic and outright criminal at worst. They look really desperate.

    It's only a matter of time before this hub of mal-adverts gets its page ranks bitchslapped by Google, and pulling down the rank of all prolific referrers, including Slashdot.

    Which is completely deserved.

  8. Effective immunization against US aggression... by bogaboga · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to the Norh Koreans:

    "...The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and the Gaddafi regime in Libya could not escape the fate of destruction after being deprived of their foundations for nuclear development and giving up nuclear programs of their own accord, yielding to the pressure of the US and the West keen on their regime changes... a bitter lesson should be drawn from those events..."

    I wonder why I am inclined to believe them. Am I alone?

  9. Re: Smells fishy. by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    A lot of people think it was aimed at China.

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