Oh, but what a shame, you're an AC. While you may claim a First Post, you have no power to actually protect it. Therefore, I hereby annex this post in the name of Poland.
Be proud former Eastern Bloc state and new NATO member, for you may claim this post as your own!
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A Russian plane flying 77 people from Israel to Russia exploded before crashing into the Black Sea, Russian officials have said.
Israel, which operates some of the most stringent aviation safety measures, has cancelled all take-offs from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv as a result.
The Siber Airlines Tu-154 nose-dived into the Black Sea at about midday on Thursday during a flight from Tel Aviv to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
Both the Russian Transport Ministry and domestic security service said an Armenian An-24 plane flying near the Tu-154 had reported to Russian air traffic controllers in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, that they had seen an explosion aboard the plane.
RESOURCES
Other Russian plane crashes
"The Armenians informed us that they saw the plane exploding in mid-air," FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin shown on television, Reuters reported.
Garik Ovanisian, the pilot of the Armenian plane, was reported by The Associated Press as saying: "I saw the explosion on the plane, which was above me at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,790 feet) above the Black Sea.
"The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea.
"After that I saw a big white spot on the sea and I had the impression that oil was burning."
Initial reports said that 66 people had been on board the regular weekly charter flight 1812, but later figures said 66 passengers and 11 crew members.
Unconfirmed reports said all the passengers were Israelis. Many Russians have moved to Israel during the past decade.
Russian authorities have not ruled out the possibility of terrorism.
An investigation will be held, led by Vladimir Rushailo, head of the presidential security council, and attempts to retrieve the flight's data recorder will be made.
Every plane arriving and departing Ben-Gurion airport undergoes strict security measures and all planes are guarded on the tarmac.
Passengers boarding planes also undergo exhaustive security checks.
Israel's Transport Ministry said it would be investigating all theories, including sabotage.
"It could be an accident, it could be sabotage, it could be anything," a spokesman for Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh told Reuters.
CNN's Jill Dougherty in Moscow said: "Nerves are on edge. Nobody is making any connection with the September 11 attacks, but it is certainly something investigators will be looking at."
She added: "There is huge concern in Russia in an atmosphere of terrorism
"There is a fear that Russia could be targeted for some sort of retribution for its support of a global crackdown on international terrorism."
Vasily Yurchuk, the Russian ministry spokesman, said the plane went down 185 kilometres (114 miles) off the Russian coastal city of Adler, near the Georgian border, The Associated Press reported.
Based on excerpts from Section 2 of Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked
Qustions by Carey Sublette.
"Teller-Ulam" Summary
All thermonuclear weapons existing in the world today appear to be based
on a scheme usually called the "Teller-Ulam" design (after its inventors
Stanislaw Ulan and Edward Teller), or "staged radiation implosion" for a
physically descriptive designation. Other designs have been devised that
use thermonuclear reactions to enhance weapon yield in various ways, but
the term "hydrogen bomb" can be taken to be virtually synonymous with
this scheme.
Basic Principles of Staged Radiation Implosion
Using the easy to ignite, but very costly, tritium-deuterium fuel it is
possible to ignite a reasonably efficient fusion burn in fuel at normal
densities using the heat from a fission explosion (50-100 million
degrees K). However, it is militarily desirable to use fuels that are
cheaper, and more stable than tritium. Deuterium, the sole fuel in
reactions 2 and 3 (see Fusion Principles), is relatively cheap
(especially considering its enormous energy content) and is completely
stable. Pure deuterium has been used in at least one fusion weapon test
- Ivy Mike, the first true fusion weapon explosion in history (1
November 1952). Unfortunately since deuterium is hydrogen it is
difficult to store. It must either be highly compressed, or liquified at
extremely low temperatures. This problem can be overcome by combining
the deuterium chemically with lithium to form lithium deuteride, a
stable solid. An additional benefit is that through reactions 5 and 6,
the lithium can itself participate in the fusion reaction.
To make use of these fuels, the slower reaction rates must be offset by
compressing them to densities hundreds or thousands of times greater
than those of normal conditions. At any given temperature the reaction
rate goes up with the square of the density, a thousand-fold compression
gives a million-fold reaction rate increase.
The work required to compress a gas is proportional to its temperature
(at these pressures the physical strength of materials is negligible,
and everything can be considered a gas). To minimize the work required
for compression, or alternatively to achieve maximum compression for a
given amount of work, it is important to keep the fusion fuel from
getting hot until after the desired density is reached.
The key to making large fusion bombs is finding a way for using the
energy of an atomic bomb trigger to compress a mass of deuterium
sufficiently for the D-D reactions to become practical, followed by
heating of the mass to ignition temperatures after the proper density
has been achieved. The technique for doing this is staged radiation
implosion, also called the Teller-Ulam configuration after its original
joint inventors, Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller (also reinvented
independently by Andrei Sakharov and his associates, and by others in
Britain, France, and China).
The Teller-Ulam configuration makes use of the fact that at the high
temperatures of a fission bomb 80% or more of the energy exists as soft
X-rays, not kinetic energy. The transport of energy by radiation from
the fission core greatly exceeds the core's expansion rate (a mere 1000
km/sec or so). It is possible then to use this energy to compress, and
ignite a physically separate mass of fusion fuel (the seond stage)
through radiation implosion before the expanding trigger disrupts it.
The principles of the Teller-Ulam configuration are more easily
explained with the help of the diagram below. The bomb casing is roughly
cylindrical, with the fission Primary (or "trigger") at one end. The fusion fuel
(lithium deuteride in the diagram) is a cylinder or ellipsoid wrapped in
a pusher/tamper - a layer of very dense material (uranium or tungsten).
Running down the axis of the fuel cylinder is a Pu-239 or U-235 rod, 2-3
cm or so in diameter. Lining the casing is a layer of plastic or plastic
foam. Separating the trigger from the fuel package is a thick plug of
dense material (again U or W).
When the primary explodes, the X-rays escaping from the fission trigger
fill the radiation channel, the space between the bomb casing and the
fusion capsule, with a photon gas. This space is filled with plastic
foam, essentially just carbon and hydrogen, which becomes completely
ionized and transparent as the x-rays penetrate. The inner casing and
outer capsule surfaces are heated to very high temperatures. The uranium
shield between the trigger and the fusion capsule, and capsule
pusher/tamper, prevents the fusion fuel from becoming heated
prematurely.
Thermal equilibrium is established extremely rapidly, so that the
temperature and energy density is uniform throughout the radiation
channel. As the surface of the tamper becomes heated, it expands and
ablates (blows off the fuel capsule surface). This ablation process,
essentially a rocket turned inside out, generates tremendous pressure on
the fuel capsule and causes an accelerating implosion. Thermal
equilibrium assures that the implosion pressure is very uniformly
distributed. The transparent carbon-hydrogen plasma retards the early
expansion of the tamper and casing plasmas, keeping the radiation
channel from being blocked by these opaque high-Z materials until
equilibrium is fully established.
The force that compresses and accelerates the fusion fuel inward is
provided solely by the ablation pressure. The other two possible sources
of pressure - plasma pressure (pressure generated by the thermal motion
of the plasma confined between the casing and the fuel capsule) and
radiation pressure (pressure generated by thermal X-ray photons) do not
directly influence the process.
The pressure exerted by the plasma causes cylindrical (or spherical)
implosion of the fusion capsule, consisting of the pusher/tamper, fuel,
and the axial fissionable rod. The capsule is compressed to perhaps 1/30
of its original diameter for cylindrical compression (1/10 for spherical
compression), and thus reaches or exceeds 1000 times its original
density. It is noteworthy that at this point the explosive force
released by the trigger, an amount of energy sufficient to destroy a
small city, is being used simply to squeeze several kilograms of fuel!
It is unlikely that the fissionable rod reaches such extreme compression
however. Located at the center, it will experience an extremely violent
shock wave that will heat it to high temperatures but compress it only
modestly, increasing its density by a factor of 4 or so. This is
sufficient to make the rod super-critical. Depending on the degree of
symmetry, and the physics of the particular capsule collapse process
higher densities are possible. Thermalized neutrons trapped in the
fusion fuel, which are left over from the intense fission neutron flux,
initiate a chain reaction as sson as the rod becomes critical. The rod
fissions at an accelerating rate as it, and the rest of the fuel capsule
continue to implode and acts as the fusion "spark plug". Combined with
the high temperatures generated by the convergent shock wave, this
raises the temperature of the fusion fuel around the rod high enough to
initiate the fusion reaction. Self-supporting fusion burning then
spreads outward. The fusion tamper prevents the escape of thermal
radiation from the fuel, enhancing the burn efficiency considerably. The
temperatures generated by fusion burning can considerably exceed that
produced by fission (up to 300 million K). As the temperature rises, the
fusion reactions accelerate.
The fuel in the fission capsule consists of lithium deuteride that may
be enriched in the Li-6 isotope (which makes up 7.5% of natural
lithium). There is some tritium generated by the fission neutrons, but
as noted above the contribution to bomb yield is insignificant. Far more
tritium is produced by the D+D reactions, either directly by reaction 3,
or by reaction 5 via the neutrons produced in reaction 2.
Since the D+T reaction rate is so high, and there is large excess of
deuterium, the tritium is consumed almost as fast it is produced. The
14.1 MeV neutrons also produce large amounts of tritium from Li-7
through reaction 6.
A large part of the fusion fuel can be burned before expansion quenches
the reaction by reducing the density, which takes some 20-40
nanoseconds. The power output of a fusion capsule is noteworthy. The
largest bomb ever exploded had a yield of 50 Mt, almost all produced by
its final fusion stage. Since 50 Mt is 2.1x10^17 joules, the power
produced during the burn was around 5.3x10^24 watts. This is more than
one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (4.3x10^26 watts)!!
The peak output was possibly even greater.
The 2.45 MeV and 14.1 MeV neutrons that escape from the fusion fuel can
also contribute greatly to bomb yield by inducing fission in the highly
compressed fusion tamper. This extra boost can release most of the
explosion energy, and commonly accounts for half of the yield of large
fission-fusion-fission bombs and can reach at least 85% of the total
yield.
The Teller-Ulam fusion bomb described so far is called a "two stage
bomb". The fission trigger (the first stage) compresses the fusion
capsule (the second stage). As powerful as the trigger is, there is a
limit to how large a capsule it can compress in the brief time
available. If a still bigger bomb is desired, then the explosion of the
fusion secondary can be used to compress and explode a larger third
stage. Each stage can be 10-100 times the size of the previous stage.
The 50 Mt bomb mentioned above was a three stage weapon.
<a href="http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/techn ology/03PRIV.html"> New York Times Site! </a>
Yes, I know there's still a space in there. This is because it's displaying rather than acting as part of a link. So be sure to remove the space, and use the real "Shift -," and "Shift -." instead of the < and > codes!
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, but what a shame, you're an AC. While you may claim a First Post, you have no power to actually protect it. Therefore, I hereby annex this post in the name of Poland.
Be proud former Eastern Bloc state and new NATO member, for you may claim this post as your own!
Heil bin Laden!
If I ever meet you, I will forcefeed you your own testicles.
Have a nice day.
Congratulations man. Welcome back! Now get to work, there's a great deal to be done.
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A Russian plane flying 77 people from Israel to Russia exploded before crashing into the Black Sea, Russian officials have said. Israel, which operates some of the most stringent aviation safety measures, has cancelled all take-offs from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv as a result. The Siber Airlines Tu-154 nose-dived into the Black Sea at about midday on Thursday during a flight from Tel Aviv to the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Both the Russian Transport Ministry and domestic security service said an Armenian An-24 plane flying near the Tu-154 had reported to Russian air traffic controllers in Rostov-on-Don, southern Russia, that they had seen an explosion aboard the plane. RESOURCES Other Russian plane crashes "The Armenians informed us that they saw the plane exploding in mid-air," FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin shown on television, Reuters reported. Garik Ovanisian, the pilot of the Armenian plane, was reported by The Associated Press as saying: "I saw the explosion on the plane, which was above me at an altitude of 11,000 metres (36,790 feet) above the Black Sea. "The plane fell into the sea, and there was another explosion in the sea. "After that I saw a big white spot on the sea and I had the impression that oil was burning." Initial reports said that 66 people had been on board the regular weekly charter flight 1812, but later figures said 66 passengers and 11 crew members. Unconfirmed reports said all the passengers were Israelis. Many Russians have moved to Israel during the past decade. Russian authorities have not ruled out the possibility of terrorism. An investigation will be held, led by Vladimir Rushailo, head of the presidential security council, and attempts to retrieve the flight's data recorder will be made. Every plane arriving and departing Ben-Gurion airport undergoes strict security measures and all planes are guarded on the tarmac. Passengers boarding planes also undergo exhaustive security checks. Israel's Transport Ministry said it would be investigating all theories, including sabotage. "It could be an accident, it could be sabotage, it could be anything," a spokesman for Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh told Reuters. CNN's Jill Dougherty in Moscow said: "Nerves are on edge. Nobody is making any connection with the September 11 attacks, but it is certainly something investigators will be looking at." She added: "There is huge concern in Russia in an atmosphere of terrorism "There is a fear that Russia could be targeted for some sort of retribution for its support of a global crackdown on international terrorism." Vasily Yurchuk, the Russian ministry spokesman, said the plane went down 185 kilometres (114 miles) off the Russian coastal city of Adler, near the Georgian border, The Associated Press reported.
I'll take balloons for 800 Alex!
Based on excerpts from Section 2 of Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Qustions by Carey Sublette. "Teller-Ulam" Summary
All thermonuclear weapons existing in the world today appear to be based on a scheme usually called the "Teller-Ulam" design (after its inventors Stanislaw Ulan and Edward Teller), or "staged radiation implosion" for a physically descriptive designation. Other designs have been devised that use thermonuclear reactions to enhance weapon yield in various ways, but the term "hydrogen bomb" can be taken to be virtually synonymous with this scheme. Basic Principles of Staged Radiation Implosion
Using the easy to ignite, but very costly, tritium-deuterium fuel it is possible to ignite a reasonably efficient fusion burn in fuel at normal densities using the heat from a fission explosion (50-100 million degrees K). However, it is militarily desirable to use fuels that are cheaper, and more stable than tritium. Deuterium, the sole fuel in reactions 2 and 3 (see Fusion Principles), is relatively cheap (especially considering its enormous energy content) and is completely stable. Pure deuterium has been used in at least one fusion weapon test - Ivy Mike, the first true fusion weapon explosion in history (1 November 1952). Unfortunately since deuterium is hydrogen it is difficult to store. It must either be highly compressed, or liquified at extremely low temperatures. This problem can be overcome by combining the deuterium chemically with lithium to form lithium deuteride, a stable solid. An additional benefit is that through reactions 5 and 6, the lithium can itself participate in the fusion reaction.
To make use of these fuels, the slower reaction rates must be offset by compressing them to densities hundreds or thousands of times greater than those of normal conditions. At any given temperature the reaction rate goes up with the square of the density, a thousand-fold compression gives a million-fold reaction rate increase.
The work required to compress a gas is proportional to its temperature (at these pressures the physical strength of materials is negligible, and everything can be considered a gas). To minimize the work required for compression, or alternatively to achieve maximum compression for a given amount of work, it is important to keep the fusion fuel from getting hot until after the desired density is reached.
The key to making large fusion bombs is finding a way for using the energy of an atomic bomb trigger to compress a mass of deuterium sufficiently for the D-D reactions to become practical, followed by heating of the mass to ignition temperatures after the proper density has been achieved. The technique for doing this is staged radiation implosion, also called the Teller-Ulam configuration after its original joint inventors, Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller (also reinvented independently by Andrei Sakharov and his associates, and by others in Britain, France, and China).
The Teller-Ulam configuration makes use of the fact that at the high temperatures of a fission bomb 80% or more of the energy exists as soft X-rays, not kinetic energy. The transport of energy by radiation from the fission core greatly exceeds the core's expansion rate (a mere 1000 km/sec or so). It is possible then to use this energy to compress, and ignite a physically separate mass of fusion fuel (the seond stage) through radiation implosion before the expanding trigger disrupts it.
The principles of the Teller-Ulam configuration are more easily explained with the help of the diagram below. The bomb casing is roughly cylindrical, with the fission Primary (or "trigger") at one end. The fusion fuel (lithium deuteride in the diagram) is a cylinder or ellipsoid wrapped in a pusher/tamper - a layer of very dense material (uranium or tungsten). Running down the axis of the fuel cylinder is a Pu-239 or U-235 rod, 2-3 cm or so in diameter. Lining the casing is a layer of plastic or plastic foam. Separating the trigger from the fuel package is a thick plug of dense material (again U or W).
When the primary explodes, the X-rays escaping from the fission trigger fill the radiation channel, the space between the bomb casing and the fusion capsule, with a photon gas. This space is filled with plastic foam, essentially just carbon and hydrogen, which becomes completely ionized and transparent as the x-rays penetrate. The inner casing and outer capsule surfaces are heated to very high temperatures. The uranium shield between the trigger and the fusion capsule, and capsule pusher/tamper, prevents the fusion fuel from becoming heated prematurely.
Thermal equilibrium is established extremely rapidly, so that the temperature and energy density is uniform throughout the radiation channel. As the surface of the tamper becomes heated, it expands and ablates (blows off the fuel capsule surface). This ablation process, essentially a rocket turned inside out, generates tremendous pressure on the fuel capsule and causes an accelerating implosion. Thermal equilibrium assures that the implosion pressure is very uniformly distributed. The transparent carbon-hydrogen plasma retards the early expansion of the tamper and casing plasmas, keeping the radiation channel from being blocked by these opaque high-Z materials until equilibrium is fully established.
The force that compresses and accelerates the fusion fuel inward is provided solely by the ablation pressure. The other two possible sources of pressure - plasma pressure (pressure generated by the thermal motion of the plasma confined between the casing and the fuel capsule) and radiation pressure (pressure generated by thermal X-ray photons) do not directly influence the process.
The pressure exerted by the plasma causes cylindrical (or spherical) implosion of the fusion capsule, consisting of the pusher/tamper, fuel, and the axial fissionable rod. The capsule is compressed to perhaps 1/30 of its original diameter for cylindrical compression (1/10 for spherical compression), and thus reaches or exceeds 1000 times its original density. It is noteworthy that at this point the explosive force released by the trigger, an amount of energy sufficient to destroy a small city, is being used simply to squeeze several kilograms of fuel!
It is unlikely that the fissionable rod reaches such extreme compression however. Located at the center, it will experience an extremely violent shock wave that will heat it to high temperatures but compress it only modestly, increasing its density by a factor of 4 or so. This is sufficient to make the rod super-critical. Depending on the degree of symmetry, and the physics of the particular capsule collapse process higher densities are possible. Thermalized neutrons trapped in the fusion fuel, which are left over from the intense fission neutron flux, initiate a chain reaction as sson as the rod becomes critical. The rod fissions at an accelerating rate as it, and the rest of the fuel capsule continue to implode and acts as the fusion "spark plug". Combined with the high temperatures generated by the convergent shock wave, this raises the temperature of the fusion fuel around the rod high enough to initiate the fusion reaction. Self-supporting fusion burning then spreads outward. The fusion tamper prevents the escape of thermal radiation from the fuel, enhancing the burn efficiency considerably. The temperatures generated by fusion burning can considerably exceed that produced by fission (up to 300 million K). As the temperature rises, the fusion reactions accelerate.
The fuel in the fission capsule consists of lithium deuteride that may be enriched in the Li-6 isotope (which makes up 7.5% of natural lithium). There is some tritium generated by the fission neutrons, but as noted above the contribution to bomb yield is insignificant. Far more tritium is produced by the D+D reactions, either directly by reaction 3, or by reaction 5 via the neutrons produced in reaction 2.
Since the D+T reaction rate is so high, and there is large excess of deuterium, the tritium is consumed almost as fast it is produced. The 14.1 MeV neutrons also produce large amounts of tritium from Li-7 through reaction 6.
A large part of the fusion fuel can be burned before expansion quenches the reaction by reducing the density, which takes some 20-40 nanoseconds. The power output of a fusion capsule is noteworthy. The largest bomb ever exploded had a yield of 50 Mt, almost all produced by its final fusion stage. Since 50 Mt is 2.1x10^17 joules, the power produced during the burn was around 5.3x10^24 watts. This is more than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (4.3x10^26 watts)!! The peak output was possibly even greater.
The 2.45 MeV and 14.1 MeV neutrons that escape from the fusion fuel can also contribute greatly to bomb yield by inducing fission in the highly compressed fusion tamper. This extra boost can release most of the explosion energy, and commonly accounts for half of the yield of large fission-fusion-fission bombs and can reach at least 85% of the total yield.
The Teller-Ulam fusion bomb described so far is called a "two stage bomb". The fission trigger (the first stage) compresses the fusion capsule (the second stage). As powerful as the trigger is, there is a limit to how large a capsule it can compress in the brief time available. If a still bigger bomb is desired, then the explosion of the fusion secondary can be used to compress and explode a larger third stage. Each stage can be 10-100 times the size of the previous stage. The 50 Mt bomb mentioned above was a three stage weapon.
Ebola-style killer virus sweeps Afghan border
DEVELOPING NEWS: RUSSIA CRASH
A flight from Israel to Russia has crashed in the Black Sea, according to Russian news agency Interfax.
FULL STORY SOON
Looks like somebody missed nap time today.
You sir, continue to be an idiot!
n ology/03PRIV.html"> New York Times Site! </a>
," and "Shift - ." instead of the < and > codes!
Try some html...
<a href="http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/tech
Yes, I know there's still a space in there. This is because it's displaying rather than acting as part of a link. So be sure to remove the space, and use the real "Shift -
You sir, are an idiot!
And if sex is overrated then you aren't doing it right..
You obviously didn't take very much time to read that. He said he wasn't doing it at all!
To do a haiku
You must follow the damn rules
Go and fuck yourself!
Hell yeah! I'm busting this bitch up like a high-school kegger!
w00t!
I'm going out on a limb here and saying I'm first!
Even if I'm not, I still am!
"I pissed my bed until I graduated from high school." -Michael Landon
Damn, my bad!
Dude, what was it Stephen King said about trolling?
"It is better to have had a first post and lost it, than not to have know a first post at all." -Wilfred Brimmley
I thought that was Michael Landon. Never trusted the guy, that's why I never follow his advice.
I won't claim to have gotten FP, lest I look the fool.
Why? You're already as low as you can get.
Get back in the welfare line you wetback bitch, I heard you had another kid.
God damned spick, get a fucking job!
Word. This 40's for them!
Damn, I guess I did make it! So up yours to everyone after me that thought they could!
w00t!
But damn it, I tried.
Mad propz to the one that did
I noticed. I was most disappointed.
Mad propz to you man, congrats!
Mod me down bitches, I wanna troll!
Damn. Never mind!
I do believe I did. And don't nobody claim this, I'm logged in!