50th Anniversary of the Starfish Prime Nuclear Weapon Test Today 190
The Bad Astronomer writes "50 years ago today, the U.S. detonated a nuclear weapon 240 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Called Starfish Prime, it was supposed to help U.S. scientists and the military understand how the Soviets might try to stop incoming nuclear missiles. What it actually did was blow out hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii 900 miles away, damage a half dozen satellites, and create artificial aurorae and intense radiation zones above the Earth. It taught the world what an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) was, and what the effects might be from a powerful solar flare, a nearby supernova, or a gamma-ray burst."
and gave birth to... (Score:2)
another device for science fiction. Can't even recall the number (high) of books and short fiction where this device has figured in somewhere.
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another device for science fiction.
Also survivalist fiction, typically with no bearing on the reality.
Some science fact... (Score:4, Informative)
EMP cannons (non-nuclear variety) are now no longer fiction [eurekaaerospace.com]...
Although they still have the fictional variety for our amusement [xkcd.com]...
Re:and gave birth to...r (Score:2)
including government propos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60 [youtube.com]
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I'd like to see a science fiction story with a probe landing on Venus and finding evidence of a nuclear weapons accident destroying what used to be a planet covered by forests.
More likely to find highways choked with derelict SUVs
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Venus's problem isn't so much that it has a CO2-based atmosphere, as that it has a *90 atmosphere* CO2-based atmosphere. Even if you removed all of the CO2 and were left with a 3.5 atm nitrogen atmosphere it'd still have a major greenhouse effect (nitrogen isn't generally a greenhouse gas, but at higher densities than are found on Earth, due to the higher collision rate, it gains an induced dipole moment; this is seen on Titan)
As another example, Mars too has a primarily CO2-based atmosphere. But it's a 0
Re:and gave birth to... (Score:4, Funny)
Hence, it's frigid instead of burning-hot like Venus.
-- Sir Elton John, probably not FRS
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Pretty poor effort there Jock, if you are going to troll you need to do much better than that. -1 pissweak...
"Are you sure this is safe?" (Score:5, Funny)
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Everything.
Gamma Rays! (Score:2)
So that explains how the Rock [google.com] got super powers!
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Do mean Hulk or Fantastic 4?
Not really supernovae and gamma-ray bursts (Score:5, Insightful)
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Once Again Mother Nature can kick our Asses with out hesitation.
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From what distance?
Re:Not really supernovae and gamma-ray bursts (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess, the nuclear test would have to be much much closer to register as one pixel vs. the sun, if you want to compare it vs. a type 1a supernova. Maybe 100m from the nuclear blast is about similar to type 1a supernova at 150,000,000,000m, or about where the sun is, and then *maybe* you may compare the two on the scale of one pixel (the nuke) vs. sun in terms of brightness over about 5 seconds.
A nuclear device can only come close to brightness comparison if you are looking at scales of microseconds or similar. And that comparison only works because of the limitations of speed of light!
To keep it in perspective, a supernova can blow away Earth's like planet atmospheres over a distance of *light years*. It can irradiate and destroy ozone layers at a distance of hundreds and hundreds of light years, and some at a few thousand light years.
Some cosmic BOOMs are so large, that they will glow more brightly than the rest of the visible universe combined. And the longer you look, the larger BOOMs are seen :)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7893771/Nasa-satellite-blinded-by-biggest-ever-star-explosion-seen-in-space.html [telegraph.co.uk]
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Pretty much. I am thinking that most of the geeks have left slashdot and it is now just a stone to grind political axes without any understanding. What happened to the good old days of people building mech playhouses for their kids in the backyard.
Now that was a whole lot of awesome
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All arrested for child endangerment.
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Actually, comparing one pixel on my screen to a class-G star a couple lightyears away seems entirely reasonable.
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Comparing a man-made nuclear bomb to a gamma-ray burst [wikipedia.org] seems kind of like comparing one pixel on your monitor to the Sun.
mostly because I'd notice if a pixel on my monitor burnt out.
Actually? (Score:5, Insightful)
it was supposed to help US scientists and the military understand how the Soviets might try to stop incoming nuclear missiles. What it actually did was
Thanks for the loaded language; actually, it probably did both. It's nice that now when we know about all the negative effects so we can peer down our nose at the evil scientist puppets of the military but they really didn't know back then. That's why it's called an "experiment".
Re:Actually? (Score:4, Funny)
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Ha, I'd like to hear commentary on the nobility of scientific experiments if/when China does this. I'm sure we would have no problem with them bursting nukes over our heads and knocking out our satellites (oops!)
The previous experiment found out about the harmful side effects 50+ years prior so you think the only reason anyone would complain about worldwide radiation today is because of petty nationalism?
Re:Actually? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually a lot of the data was lost because it went off the charts or the equipment was destroyed.
The dumb thing was they assumed the Soviets would try it without actually witnessing them testing their own version. When you look at the history of the nuclear stand-off the US looks pretty crazy next to the USSR. I can understand why the US is now so paranoid about countries like Iran getting nuclear weapons - it's because they assume Iran will be as nuts as they were.
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it was supposed to help US scientists and the military understand how the Soviets might try to stop incoming nuclear missiles. What it actually did was
Thanks for the loaded language; actually, it probably did both.
Right. The results were probably something like "neat, so we can fry the electronics of incoming missiles by launching a high-altitude burst of our own, and we don't even have to get very close... and we can use this to take out satellites, spacecraft, civilian ground systems, all sorts of things... but we better harden all our military systems against the EMP burst. On the downside, we now have to replace about a thousand light bulbs in Hawaii, but hey, Science!"
On the other hand, there was a reason Starfi
This was used in "Voyage to the bottom... (Score:3)
... of the Sea" (With the cool sub that had a giant viewport in the front and could launch a flying saucer like aircraft).
I seem to remember a nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere causing the ionosphere(?) to ignite(?) and BAD THINGS happening. They are sent to launch a counter missile(?) which will extinguish the "flame". (Sorry, it's late here in Vietnam and I'm too lazy to research.
Unfortunately, this is probably a good argument against project Orion. Hundreds (thousands?) of tiny nukes going off in LEO would probably also do bad things.
Was this a factor leading up to the above ground test ban treaty? I mean it wouldn't be good to accidentally wipe out the world's electronics industry. (Now doing it on purpose, that's something else entirely). The test ban treaty probably stopped the development of "shaped" nuclear charges (blasting a city from an explosion in orbit) and other exotic weapons like fission bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Oh well, let's hope the Aliens are friendly!
Re:This was used in "Voyage to the bottom... (Score:5, Informative)
Was this a factor leading up to the above ground test ban treaty? I mean it wouldn't be good to accidentally wipe out the world's electronics industry. (Now doing it on purpose, that's something else entirely). The test ban treaty probably stopped the development of "shaped" nuclear charges (blasting a city from an explosion in orbit) and other exotic weapons like fission bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Oh well, let's hope the Aliens are friendly!
Note: I'm going completely off memory here, quite likely to get some details wrong.
This test (and Soviet counterparts) drove a high-altitude test ban treaty (that might actually be the name). They both rather quickly saw that continuing this would bring only ruin to them both.
That probably was a major factor in the later above-ground and then comprehensive test bans, proving that the two countries could write and abide by a treaty limiting nuclear weapons in any way. But those were years later.
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You're remembering a bad old scifi movie. 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' or something.
They got the idea from a bunch of morons demanding the 'precautionary principle' before it had a name.
They also thought atom bombs would blow a hole in the bottom of the ocean and all the water would drain out.
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Was this a factor leading up to the above ground test ban treaty?
Starfish Prime (as I recally the only successful detonation of operation Fishbowl) was in July 1962 so it was probably a factor. More generally the whole expiration of the moritorium on nuclear testing in 1961 (resulting in the US and USSR getting in to a propaganda "pissing contest" with radiation polluting the atmosphere). The cuban missle crisis which occured later in October 1962, however, was probably the primary factor leading up to the Limited test ban treaty which was signed in 1963.
The test ban treaty probably stopped the development of "shaped" nuclear charges (blasting a city from an explosion in orbit) and other exotic weapons like fission bomb pumped x-ray lasers.
Probably not, fo
Re:This was used in "Voyage to the bottom... (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, this is probably a good argument against project Orion. Hundreds (thousands?) of tiny nukes going off in LEO would probably also do bad things.
It means Orion has to be built in space and moved away from the planet on some other kind of propulsion before you can start launching nukes, not that Orion is a bad idea...
Someone's got a case of the "s'posed tas" (Score:5, Interesting)
A somewhat similar idea (but not too similar) is the idea of X-ray pindown. To facilitate an attack, the aggressor would detonate a neutron bomb high over the target country, bathing it in x-rays so harsh that the target country's ICBM's would be damaged if they tried to launch in retaliation.
Another interesting aside (at least I think it is): the early anti-ballistic missile programs, Sentinel and Safeguard, were designed to destroy incoming nuclear warheads by... blowing them up with other nuclear warheads. This had the positive effect of taking out one or two incoming warheads, and the very negative effect of blinding the system's radar to any other incoming warheads.
Mind your emissions, gentlemen.
Re:Someone's got a case of the "s'posed tas" (Score:5, Informative)
The phased arrays that backed the deployed ABM system would not have been blinded by the interceptor warhead initiations. This was the primary advantage of moving to a phase array system for intercept control duty. There is also the fact that the Spartan missiles would have been doing the intercepts well over Canada, and it is only the SPRINT missiles that would have been doing terminal interceptions. Even with Sprint, a 10-30kt event over your territory is a lot better than a much larger (say 1mt) event that's a ground-burst.
Presently both the US and the Russians use Hit-to-Kill ABM systems because both nations have too much stuff in orbit that is too expensive to replace that we couldn't afford to pump energy into the van Allen belts on the scale that a nuclear-dependent ABM system would provide.
Are you ready for an EMP ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
One small nuclear device detonated over the US at about 10,000 feet could make a huge mess of things. Not from the blast damage, not from radiation, but from EMP. Draw some 1,800 mile wide circles on a map and see how large an area can be affected.
The initial effect of an EM pulse would destroy just about everything attached to the power grid. Huge voltage spikes and induced currents would literally overload and destroy both the grid and things attached. Power delivery would most certainly be disrupted because the infrastructure used to deliver power would be seriously damaged. The power lines would exist, but the transformers, relays and controls would have serious problems. Further, power generating plants would likely be seriously damaged, so there would be no power to distribute. Radio communications would be almost totally disrupted for days, and partially disrupted for weeks. Land line phones would surely be seriously damaged and cell phones would not be useable.
Don't think that being disconnected from the grid would not mean you are safe. Anything with even a few feet of wire hanging onto it would be subject to serious damage. Most consumer electronics, including cars, cell phones, radios and TVs would likely be damaged beyond repair. Your solar powered home will be as dark as everybody else and those of you with local generators are unlikely to be in much better shape. You will literally find yourself back in horse and buggy days, only with very few horses to be had. Few cars would be running, mostly old ones with old ignition systems and mechanical fuel pumps.
The real question is how long would it take to repair the grid and get things going? If the east coast storms of last week are any example, one can only conclude that it will be a LONG time. How many people will starve during that time?
Science fiction aside, this EMP thing is real and more dangerous than using nuclear devices to blow stuff up. Even a small device could cause serious long lasting damage for a HUGE part of the US.
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Of course, doing so would also piss off pretty much the entire planet, because it would likely knock out hundreds of satellites and disrupt world-wide communications for weeks or months afterwards, and space travel for (potentially) years. So anyone who wants to pull something like that off has to be willing to face the military wrath of more or less the entire planet afterwards.
well, usually in fiction such device is exploded by someone plotting to incite war for various reasons.
anyhow, doubt that it would lead to total war if it was just some offshoot operation or by a non major state.
however, destroying an awful lot of electronics would sure fix the economy for couple of years right up.
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The first words out of our mouth when everyone else gets angry: Hey we've got a lot more where that came from!
At least, we used to, but we seem to be having technical difficulties with our ICBM launch control systems right now. Stand by...
Aw, crap.
(Sure US military networks are EMP shielded. In theory. How do you go about actually testing a network that big? It was probably last fully stress-tested sometime in the 1960s, and everything not inside an actual missile now is probably routed through some web-app written in Visual Basic on an outsourced Windows server in the Cloud.)
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It wouldn't be like that. It would be in Star Trek, where there is a panel overload. Basically, electricity flies out of the electronics and everybody flies around the bridge.
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Re:Are you ready for an EMP ?? (Score:5, Informative)
As 'luck' would have it, currently it is believed that an EMP pulse over North America would be worse than in Hawaii due to the difference in the geomagnetic field in the two locations. For example, it is believed that a blast over the Dakotas would mostly cause problems south of the blast vs a circle all the way around.
Now, I think from my reading that his numbers are wrong (it would need to be higher), but the total kt isn't as important (and a smaller bomb could be constructed to emphasize EMP over blast).
Check out the US Army's document "Nuclear Environment Survivability." (Report ADA278230)
Re:Are you ready for an EMP ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
While the effects you describe are definitely real and a huge issue, significant-footprint EMP really requires a thermonuclear device, not a "small" fission one.
For maximum EMP damage, 10,000 feet is far too low an altitude. You want a minimum of 50km altitude. So, to do a EMP, you must have orbital launch capability (i.e. Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile or better capability). Loading a nuke onboard a plane and detonating it at 40,000 feet won't work for producing an EMP of any effect.
Maximum area of the EMP is limited to "line of sight" to the detonation point. So, detonating higher in the atmosphere gives a larger potential EMP radius. However, the higher the altitude, the lower the total amount of radiated energy from the blast converted into EMP. This is primarily due to the atmosphere absorbing a significant amount of the energy before it reaches ground level. And, of course, EMP is not some binary works-or-not; it's a power level, and each device has a different level of interference that it can withstand before frying. So, you're faced with a tradeoff: the higher you detonate the warhead, the larger the potential area of the EMP, but the weaker the EMP is throughout the entire area.
Realistically speaking, warheads under 100kt don't produce usable EMP. At the minimum effective EMP altitude of about 30km, 100kt produces a useful EMP (one which will fry unshielded simple commercial electronics) directly underneath the weapon detonation, perhaps in a hectare or so. A 200kt weapon (the maximum effective yield of a non-boosted, pure fission weapon) could produce a EMP with maybe a few km or so radius.
Effective EMP areas require 300-400kt or more, which requires, at minimum, a boosted fission/fusion weapon, which is much more difficult to build than a pure fission weapon. With these, you might be able to get an EMP radius of 50-100km or so. To get the really big EMP, you need a thermonuclear weapon, ideally in the low MT range (2-5MT). These are the weapons that were used in the USA and USSR's Fractional Orbital Bombardment systems you read about in fiction books. They can produce the 1000km+ radius effects.
Given all the above, to do any real EMP, you need BOTH orbital launch capability, AND boosted fission nuclear weapon ability. At this point, a total of 6 countries (USA, Russia, UK, France, China, India) have this ability, with two possibly working on it (Pakistan, North Korea), and nobody else getting there anytime soon (even Israel is unlikely to have the requisite missile capability). In the big scheme of things, not something that we really have to worry about more than general nuclear weapon use, as EMP use is far beyond the capabilities of any non-state actor, and fairly obvious if any state-level attempt is being made to produce one.
-Erik
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I believe you are correct that a higher burst would be better, but the size and type of the bomb is not as important as you seem to indicate.
But my point here is that considering how bound we are to our technology and how unprepared we are for a wide spread disruption of even basic electrical power distribution, an EMP would be a serious problem.
Puts a whole new face on the missile defense systems....
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The threat of nuclear attacks is the same as it been since I was born.
Ditto for the threat of nuclear missiles.
The missile defense systems in the works likewise haven't changed much. They're attempts at funneling money to the military-industrial-complex for a product that isn't going to be used and probably wouldn't work well if it was.
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Hmmm... I think it would actually work if not right away eventually.... Why else would our old adversary in Russia be so opposed to such a system being fielded in Europe?
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Also, there's not much use for a missle shield that works eventually. You pretty much have one shot at it. If you screw that up, you're all kinda dead.
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Don't think that being disconnected from the grid would not mean you are safe. Anything with even a few feet of wire hanging onto it would be subject to serious damage. Most consumer electronics, including cars, cell phones, radios and TVs would likely be damaged beyond repair. Your solar powered home will be as dark as everybody else and those of you with local generators are unlikely to be in much better shape. You will literally find yourself back in horse and buggy days, only with very few horses to be had. Few cars would be running, mostly old ones with old ignition systems and mechanical fuel pumps
As Mr Nimzicki once said "Uh Mr. President. Thats not entirely accurate"
Please read the EMP commission report. http://www.empcommission.org/ [empcommission.org]
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As Mr Nimzicki once said "Uh Mr. President. Thats not entirely accurate"
Please read the EMP commission report. http://www.empcommission.org/ [empcommission.org]
What? You mean I didn't read the following correctly?
EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society, as well as to the ability of the United States and Western nations to project influence and military power.
The common element that can produce such an impact from EMP is primarily electronics, so pervasive in all aspects of our society and military, coupled through critical infrastructures. Our vulnerability is increasing daily as our use of and dependence on electronics continues to grow. The impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to potential protagonists who are not as dependent on modern electronics.
The current vulnerability of our critical infrastructures can both invite and reward attack if not corrected. Correction is feasible and well within the Nation's means and resources to accomplish.
From the Executive report Abstract
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What? You mean I didn't read the following correctly?
If you would have read the report you would not be coming back to me wondering what part(s) you got wrong.
What does the report say about vechicles? Old Vechicles? New Vechicles? What were the results of their testbed?
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If you look at their data, they determined that at 25KV/m applied pulse, 3 out of 5 autos would have serious enough issues to stop running. (Note these are autos made before 2005) However, the test is at about 1/2 the expected EMP voltages and I doubt they are really pulsing a car in a full up EMP test range but doing some capacitive discharge pulse looking for upset. Upset testing is just the starting point and if you get upset at these values you will have significant chance of damage at a full pulse.
I
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It's a lot of reading, but the EMP commission report seems to be the most thorough review of the possible impacts of EMP.
I read "One Second After" which paints the end-of-the-world scenario that the OP posits, and then I read the EMP Commission report. My impression was that the actual impact would be awful, but not as bad as the book proposes. The premise of "One Second After" is that almost everything is totally destroyed... all electronics, power, telecommunications, and modern transportation. In real
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Rock, Paper, Scissors, Vulcan... (Score:2)
Tinfoil hat beats EMP 9 times out of 10 according to 19 of 20 conspiracy theorists.
The trick is to electromagnetically harden your electronic against radiation. Key to this is to individually wrap electronics in tinfoil. For extra protection buy the heavy duty tinfoil.
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If you come to visit, you'll be bored to tears
We haven't even payed the phone bill in 300 years
But we ain't really quaint, so please don't point and stare
We're just technologically impaired
There's no phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury
Like Robonson Crusoe, it's as primitive as can be
We've been spending most our lives living in an Amish paradise
We're just plain and simple guys, living in an Amish paradise
There's no time for sin and vice, living in an Amish paradise
We don't fight, we all play nice, living in an Amish paradise
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Name one car built in the last 30 years that has no electronic parts needed to run.
Might not have happened (Score:5, Insightful)
Starfish Prime occurred during a sudden burst of testing between the lapse of an unofficial US-Soviet testing moratorium and the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1961-63). If the geopolitical winds had been a little different (i.e., if Khrushchev and Kennedy had respected each other and the French hadn't started testing in the Sahara), there might not have been any exo-atmospheric tests before the LTBT, and we wouldn't know about EMT.
Makes you wonder if there are any other major effects we and the Soviets missed.
Re:Might not have happened (Score:4, Insightful)
Makes you wonder if there are any other major effects we and the Soviets missed.
Horribly, fiery, radioactive death, for one.
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Horribly, fiery, radioactive death, for one.
Hardly. That's the primary and intended effect.
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Yes. And, thankfully, the Americans and Soviets "missed" that effect. The Japanese weren't so fortunate.
It didn't hurt the copper market... (Score:5, Insightful)
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EMP testing trestle with B-52:
http://www.brookings.edu/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/trestle.jpg [brookings.edu]
what's that... thing? (Score:2)
What goes shooting through the frame @ ~39 seconds into the video?
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William Blandy (Score:2)
Slightly offtopic but you won't be disappointed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE06ECcimb8 [youtube.com]
EMP Not The Only Way To Ruin Your Day (Score:3)
In the 1960s, Defense Secretary Mcnamara said that as few as three nuclear bombs exploded high above the USA could start every structure in North America on fire simultaneously. He was speaking to the point of how hard it would be to make effective defense. You might stop 3000 but if only 3 get through your day may still be ruined.
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Mcnamara was prone to exaggeration, in this case wild exaggeration....
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Technically, he was right. My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that you'll need three 500-gigaton bombs, but there's no upper limit to the size of a fusion bomb...
So it was actually quite useful then (Score:2)
An awful lot of unforeseen things were learned that way. Way to go science!
Ah, The Good Old Days (Score:3)
Back in the day we used asbestos as construction material and dioxins as pesticides! We didn't wear helmets for anything! We just rode our bikes down hills with no helmets or anything! The only people you saw wearing helmets were motorcycle riders, and most of them only did it because it was the law! Funnily enough these days everything else requires helmets and motorcycling doesn't. Ahh how times change! Anywhoo back to the story!
So there we were in this potentially highly toxic and dangerous environment, in a perpetual Mexican stand-off with the Soviets where one wrong twitch on either side could have destroyed the world. It's a wonder any of us survived to make a new generation. You know, "The Good Old Days!"
The Only Non-Classified Paper (Score:4, Informative)
On this date in 1962 my father recorded the detonation and the resulting pulse from a "laboratory" he had set up in his suburban house in the San Fernado Valley {Northwest Los Angelews] The resulting paper "Distant Electromagnetic Observations of the High-Altitude Nuclear Detonation of July 9, 1962" was the only non-classified scientific paper which was published in The Journal of Geophysical Research about the pulse see: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1963/JZ068i006p01781.shtml [agu.org]
Some where around here I have a 35mm Strip chart negative of the detonation as recorded by the oscilloscope camera... I would donate the film to a university library for preservation but I have no idea who'd be interested in it. At 89 years old my dad now suffers from dementia and does not remember much about his days as a pocket protector / slip stick using Space Scientist / Engineer
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Funny)
I know!
What it actually did was blow out hundreds of streetlights in Hawaii 900 miles away, damage a half dozen satellites, and create artificial aurorae and intense radiation zones above the Earth.
Sounds like a successful test to me. :-) Assuming they were testing for AWESOMENESS!
There was only ONE! (Score:5, Funny)
blow out hundreds of streetlights
Sounds like an immortal got his head chopped off that day.
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really makes you wish... there was only the one :)
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Seems like in over a thousand tests, we only tested nuclear weapons for their capability to be used as a weapon or to defend against them. I think we shouldn't test any more for that purpose, but testing for awesomeness like "launching stuff into the atmosphere using a nuke"... fuck yes!
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Funny)
I shudder to think of how much atmosphere, ozone, and other vital systems in our atmosphere might have been burned up by these tests.
After all, Nuclear testing is what killed off the Martians,and made mars such an inhospitable wasteland...
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how crazy of an effect [wordpress.com] nuclear bombs have had on our atmosphere. Basically, artifacts from the latter half of the 20th century and much of the 21st century will not be able to be reliably carbon dated in the future. Even if you want to include a compensation factor, the concentrations for a given location at different times over the lifespan of an organism and the organism's uptake at different points in its life aren't readily quantified.
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Your link is a 404...
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I blame the nuclear bombs.
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Here's how crazy of an effect [wordpress.com] nuclear bombs have had on our atmosphere. Basically, artifacts from the latter half of the 20th century and much of the 21st century will not be able to be reliably carbon dated in the future. Even if you want to include a compensation factor, the concentrations for a given location at different times over the lifespan of an organism and the organism's uptake at different points in its life aren't readily quantified.
Well, not quite. There is useful post-bomb [ucalgary.ca] carbon dating. Basically, we put a lot more C14 into the atmosphere in the 1950's than the natural background. It's largely gone from the air, but it will be decaying in trees and the like for some time to come, and that, too, can be used for dating.
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:4, Funny)
Dinosaurs aren't real, they were just made up to discourage time travelers.
You ever heard of the redneck Olympics?
Not everyone gets discouraged so easily....
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what the effects might be from a powerful solar flare, a nearby supernova, or a gamma-ray burst.
Might be a good idea to do it every July 4th, but please ramp up gradually over a couple years from "not much, zune rollout level pffft" to "full on mega solar flare" level. That way we can get our gear in line. I believe there was a nuclear program called "swords into plowshares" or something like that dedicated to using nukes to make a new larger panama canal and all that kind of stuff. This testing would seem a pretty good peaceful use of the stockpile.
Also WRT to the nuclear explosion being called "s
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Informative)
The godless communists, (as is often the case with these cold-war-era things) had an even larger, also not terribly well conceived; but much less euphemistically named project: "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy" [wikipedia.org].
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"named project: "Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy" "
or
NENE!!
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Is that like the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org], writ extremely large?
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It was more like, "Hey! We've got that whole 'Siberia' thing, right? Wouldn't it be great if we could irrigate it and make it do something useful?" "Well, sure, but all the major rivers skirt around it and head south. There's no way to redirect that much water-flow!" "Sure there is! WITH NUKES!!"
Meanwhile, the Americans had Op. Plowshare, which was basically fracking. But with nukes.
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Thanks for the link, I did not know that.
The most scary part was intended uses. They figured it could be used for fracking natural gas & wanted to blast the p-canal wider, & a new e-w passage. Can you imagine what panama might have had to say about that?
And of course fracking caused radioactive gas that was worthless, & we still haven't learned that lesson.
Sigh... BTW nice name, Good to see other mush heads around friend.
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that Panama was, in no small part, created as a country in order to facilitate US interests in building the canal the first time around, I suspect that we would have been more than happy to ensure that the CIA provided whatever assistance was required for the free people of panama to make the right choice.
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Also WRT to the nuclear explosion being called "starfish" this has lead to endless jokes about Taco Bell, McDonalds, resulting in food poisoning, resulting in nuclear level pain in my starfish, etc.
I'm sorry, what?
Re:Sounds like fun! (Score:5, Informative)
Someone is about to post a picture of the slang definition of 'starfish'.
Don't click the link.
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Um... kay...
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well i just found out it was done several hundred times! http://youtu.be/LLCF7vPanrY [youtu.be]
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http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=starfish+explosions&qpvt=starfish+explosions&FORM=IGRE [bing.com]
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Okie dokie. [google.com]