Lets have a gee-whiz topic :D

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Lincolnshirebodger

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Ok look at THIS!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu88gb1EpmI

This is the Tsar Bomba, the largest 3 stage thermonuclear device every triggered.

It was orginally 100 megatons, but the final design would have weighed 35 tonnes, so they had to leave enough of the third stage Duterium fuel cells off to reduce the weight to 27 tonnes, the heaviest payload they could lift with a stripped down Tupolarev TU95 Bear Stratobomber. This reduced the payload to 'only 57' megatons.....

The ground shots are all from 100 km away. :shock:

The fireball was 4 km across, and because of this it had to be detonated at 4 km height. The explosion destroyed houses 40 km away and broke windows 100 km away.

A well known phenomenon in atmospheric explosions is the "double flash": an initial rapid peak in brightness that quickly drops, followed by a much slower rise to a second peak in luminosity that lasts much longer. The two peaks are similar to total luminosity, but as the second peak lasts 100 times as long, it accounts for 99% of the emitted light and thermal radiation. In small nuclear explosions, like the 20 kt Trinity test, the first peak passes so quickly that it cannot be seen (unless captured by a high speed camera). The first peak is reached, and the luminosity plunges to its minimum point in only 10 milliseconds. The human eye sees only the second peak, which is reached at 140 milliseconds. But the time scale stretches out as yield increases and in the 50 megaton test the first peak occurs at more than half a second (560 milliseconds), and the minimum occurs at 7 seconds. This is easily visible in the test footage.

Another interesting feature is the effect of the shock wave reflected from the ground striking the bottom of the fireball. Simply from fireball radius scaling laws, one would expect the fireball to reach down and engulf the ground around the hypocenter ("ground zero"). In fact, the shock wave reaches the ground before the fireball expansion can, and bounces upward, striking the bottom of the fireball, flattening it and driving it upward, thus preventing actual contact with the ground.

However it was never a weapon. The only way to haul it was very slowly on a Bear, and such an aircraft woudl have been a sitting duck. Also, theres no target in Europe big enough to justify such a large bomb, it was made as a political statement.

Thats Ghee Whiz Science !!

:D
 
Not sure whether to rise to this one or not...I think not, it's just very sad :( Who was it said the 'bomb' was a 'doorway slamming in Hell'? and then don't forget what Oppenheimer said...'the destroyer of worlds' I can think of slightly more impressive examples of 'Gee Whizz' science - Rob
 
Morals and ethics and Philosophy aside, im just looking at the technology. It was impressive if useless.

You can find the site on Google Earth, its a large black area on one end of a godforsaken wilderness called Noyova Zemla.

Dont knock Nuclear bomb technology. It brought us better nuclear reactors and all sorts of other inventions, for example medical centrifuges were a spin off of nuclear weapons, and medical research would be truly stuffed without centrifuges, and it kept the peace in the Cold War of more then 60 years. :D (even the Cuban Missile Crisis was never going to end in a nuclear exchange, Kruschev wasnt stupid)

Once the MAD principle was established, there was never likely to be an all out war. The biggest threat is these days is the terrorist with the suitcase nuke.
 
Sorry LB. Too heavy for me, I'm a simpleton at heart. :D Ignorance is bliss. The human race would have survived regardless . As you quoted Kruschev wasn't stupid, I don't think any human in that particular situation would have reacted differently.
 
The human race would have survived regardless

Well, those bits of it fortunate enough or in positions of power high enough to have access to nuclear shelters and fresh drinking water anyway. The likes of you and me were advised to sit under the kitchen table in the event of a nuclear war! Its bad enough politicians run the country, but to think of them as breeding stock for repopulationg the human race leaves me with a slightly sickly feeling :twisted:

Steve.
 
Hi,

I read an article in The Sunday Times about nuclear weapons they didn't know how powerful they where until they let them off some where 3-4 times more powerful than they where calculated to be.

Isn't a shame that we are most inventive when it come to killing :cry:


Pete
 
When I was a kid in the 1950s, we didn't have a TV and the only news footage we ever saw was Pathe newsreels at the local cinema. I remember one time they showed a nuclear bomb test explosion and the effects on test buildings in the target zone. It gave me nightmares for weeks afterwards.

In fact, the sight of a nuclear bomb's mushroom cloud slowly erupting into the sky still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
 
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I spent years having nightmares whenever I heard a plane approaching at night. Never found anything very amusing about nuclear weapons.

Or weapons of any sort, really.
 
Smudger":22rk7pjq said:
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I spent years having nightmares whenever I heard a plane approaching at night. Never found anything very amusing about nuclear weapons.

Or weapons of any sort, really.

I didn't understand what it was all about at the time as I was only 11, but I do distinctly remember my parents sitting on the edge of the sofa and they were ever so slightly worried 8-[ It was only later that I found out through the media and reading about it just what a game of brinkmanship it actually was. I seem to remember though that the USA were placing missiles in Eastern Europe...or am I getting confused with current events today? - Rob
 
The US missiles were in Turkey.
I was bricking myself - I really thought the end had come. I was 13 and just about old enough to understand what was going on.
 
HI Lincolnshirebodger, you lost me at ( This is the ). What you really mean is it's :shock: F...... Big!. Like to keep things simple :roll: . Don't get problems like that with wood. :lol:
 
Pete Maddex":335f0igp said:
Hi,

I read an article in The Sunday Times about nuclear weapons they didn't know how powerful they where until they let them off some where 3-4 times more powerful than they where calculated to be.

Isn't a shame that we are most inventive when it come to killing :cry:


Pete

They were guessing at first, but by about 1952 they could pretty much calculate the yield.

The only one that went seriously wrong was Crossroads Baker, :)July 24 1946)because someone had the bright idea of suspending the bomb 90 feet under a ship and detonating it. The water pressure contained the blast and magnified it, producing a truly collosal fireball underwater, and a fireball underwater isnt a fireball, its a steam ball:

baker1.jpg


The explosion lifted several million tons of water in the air. In its apogee the water column was 2000ft(600m) high with walls 300ft(100m) thick. Obviously the explosion generated huge waves in the ocean. The Aircraft Carrier USS Saratoga's stern rose 43ft(13.5m) above the surface, on the crest of the first wave.

The entire lagoon was contaminated with radioactive particles. In fact, for the first 24 hours after Baker detonation the radiation levels were lethal, and remained very dangerous for the next week. This effect has not been anticipated, and eventually President Truman called off the third deep underwater test codenamed Charlie.
 
Smudger":2ux4wcnr said:
The US missiles were in Turkey.
**** - not too far off then :) and I'm correct in assuming the pointy ends faced North? Hardly surprising then that the then USSR acted accordingly - Rob
 
woodbloke":2uzsz8c0 said:
Smudger":2uzsz8c0 said:
The US missiles were in Turkey.
**** - not too far off then :) and I'm correct in assuming the pointy ends faced North? Hardly surprising then that the then USSR acted accordingly - Rob

Quite. This was not a fact much highlighted by the US at the time...
I believe, though, that they were pretty obsolete. But even an obsolete nuke will spoil your whole afternoon.
 
Smudger":r1501azw said:
woodbloke":r1501azw said:
Smudger":r1501azw said:
The US missiles were in Turkey.
**** - not too far off then :) and I'm correct in assuming the pointy ends faced North? Hardly surprising then that the then USSR acted accordingly - Rob

Quite. This was not a fact much highlighted by the US at the time...
I believe, though, that they were pretty obsolete. But even an obsolete nuke will spoil your whole afternoon.

They were Mk 3A bombs (also known as the Model 1561) on top of a LGM-30A Minuteman-I . At the time they were a 15 year old design although the rocket was brand spanky new.

The Minuteman-I Autonetics D-17 flight computer used was very interesting. It didnt have RAM like a modern PC, the RAM was a Read/Write hard disc , but floating on an air cushioned magnetic bearing. This was small enough and fast enough to work as quick as RAM, and was easier to radiation harden (otherwise the fist missile to detonate screws all the other incoming for miles with the EMP)
 
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