Post by Neko Bazu on Jan 17, 2007 10:55:38 GMT -1
Killing time at work, I've been reading about nuke weapons on wikipedia (as I oft do, in truth). I wish to point out now I'm not an anti-nuclear demonstrator of any sort; I'm well aware of the dangers, and don't like them, but I can't see worldwide leaders accepting that using them won't be about who wins, but who loses least. At any rate, that's not what I'm posting about.
This post is about how bloody frightening they are - you don't realise their power until you really look into it. The extract below is in reference to the Russian device 'Tsar Bomba' - it was a 50 megaton device, scaled down from 100MT initially because the Ruskies didn't want to blow the shit out of their own country. It was dropped in the 1950's - technology available now theoretically enables us to build a device capable of thousands of megatons of power, though no-one's that bloody stupid, fortunately (the trend is toward smaller, more accurate weapons anyway).
There's talk of using a nuke of that size to deflect any asteroids or such that may be heading for Earth though - and again, bear in mind that the below excerpt is based on something with under 1/200th of the potential power...
As the title says, much of the eek!
(I'm not aiming to be political or anything here btw; just raising a talking point
This post is about how bloody frightening they are - you don't realise their power until you really look into it. The extract below is in reference to the Russian device 'Tsar Bomba' - it was a 50 megaton device, scaled down from 100MT initially because the Ruskies didn't want to blow the shit out of their own country. It was dropped in the 1950's - technology available now theoretically enables us to build a device capable of thousands of megatons of power, though no-one's that bloody stupid, fortunately (the trend is toward smaller, more accurate weapons anyway).
There's talk of using a nuke of that size to deflect any asteroids or such that may be heading for Earth though - and again, bear in mind that the below excerpt is based on something with under 1/200th of the potential power...
The bomb, weighing 27 tonnes, was so large (8 meters long by 2 m in diameter) that the Tu-95 had to have its bomb bay doors and wing fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kilogram fall retardation parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 km from ground zero. Failing such retardation, the bomb would have either reached its planned detonation altitude so fast it would have turned the test into a suicide mission, or it would have crashed into the ground at high speed with unpredictable results. The U.S. has fitted a few of its nuclear bombs with parachute retardation for the same reason.
The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m., located approximately at 73.85° N 54.50° E, over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10,500 m; it was designed to detonate at a height of 4,000 m over the land surface (4,200 m over sea level) by barometric sensors.
The original U.S. estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Nonetheless, Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen 1,000 km away. The heat could have caused third degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high and 30-40 km wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the earth.
Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds, was a power of about 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun. The detonation of Tsar Bomba therefore qualifies as being the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity. By contrast, the largest weapon ever produced by the United States, the now-decommissioned B41, had a predicted maximum yield of 25 Mt, and the largest nuclear device ever tested by the U.S. (Castle Bravo) yielded 15 Mt. Note the recent comparison with the asteroid impact which may have formed the Chicxulub Crater, an event larger by some six orders of magnitude.
The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m., located approximately at 73.85° N 54.50° E, over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10,500 m; it was designed to detonate at a height of 4,000 m over the land surface (4,200 m over sea level) by barometric sensors.
The original U.S. estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Nonetheless, Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen 1,000 km away. The heat could have caused third degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high and 30-40 km wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the earth.
Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds, was a power of about 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun. The detonation of Tsar Bomba therefore qualifies as being the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity. By contrast, the largest weapon ever produced by the United States, the now-decommissioned B41, had a predicted maximum yield of 25 Mt, and the largest nuclear device ever tested by the U.S. (Castle Bravo) yielded 15 Mt. Note the recent comparison with the asteroid impact which may have formed the Chicxulub Crater, an event larger by some six orders of magnitude.
As the title says, much of the eek!
(I'm not aiming to be political or anything here btw; just raising a talking point
