AFAIK Due to Newton’s impact depth laws: in a vacuum (space) an atomic bomb can only vaporize (near) it’s own mass in material if completely surrounded. This means that even at a relatively close distance even paint won’t be removed. This is why the Orion plus propulsion can get away without destroying the pusher plate.
nagualdesign nope; only a thin layer vaporizing is needed to transfer the momentum. I think I’m going to do a video on this at some point to explain why.
@@theCodyReeder In the vicinity of a nuclear explosion, close enough to vapourize a thin layer of steel, what sort of paint do you think would survive? 😕
8:20 Notice how the nuclear blast changed the aluminium, as Scott Manley calls it, into aluminum, the American form of the 13th element. The intense heat of the fireball literally blasted away a letter 'i' from the aluminium.
The original element name is aluminum, the i was added much later. Know your history. We have a saying in the USA, It is better to stay quiet and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.
I'm disappointed that no mention was made of the tests on lead-lined refrigerators, as shown in the documentary _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull._
@Ron Maimon it's still absurd.... Simply the force put on him when the fridge hits the ground would turn a person to a pulp, the acceleration would also kill him
@Ron Maimon Hello. Please rewatch the scene and observe how the fridge overtakes the car that is speeding away from the explosion AT FULL SPEED. The instantaneous acceleration for that movement alone would have killed him several times over not to talk about the impact of the landing.
Kid: I don't wanna clean my room! Mom: If you don't, it could burst into flames from a nuclear bomb hitting nearby. Kid: Guess I'll do my part for the country, then.
I've seen that film. It's a bit surreal. It was a women's group that came up with the idea (I want to say something like 'American Women's Institute' ?) They wanted to know how different furnishings, decor and fittings would be affected by nuclear weapons, what would have the best chance of surviving? At the time it was accepted nukes would be used in war and
@@ptonpc Wow, my mother bought light, nearly white, fiberglass curtains. And for the fireplace, she picked light, nearly white, refractory brick. She also hounded me to keep my bedroom clean. Now it all makes sense! Ironically, she eventually died of liver cancer as a result of viewing a nuclear test as a teenager. She was a very curious gal.
2:18 Put your goggles on - radiation can cause cancer but just to make sure smoke a cigarette while you are watching the blast! What different world that was..
145 Ponderosa Pine Trees. Operation Upshot-Knothole; Encore Shot (27kt) A Weapons Effect Test. The trees were "planted" ~1980 m from GZ and as it was an Air-Burst, the Hypocentre. Along with other objects and Troops, this Shot, like other Operations & Shots (Tests) e.g. Priscilla, Grapple and Annie, tested the various structures and hardening/shielding materials, as well as preparing Troops for Real-life Nuclear Warfare. The "E" used for the name "Encore" = indicates it's an "Effects" test. The trees simulated a woodland environment, as likely encountered during a conflict, and would house foxholes etc. covering troops and or general cover. The test also demonstrated the Static Overpressure, Positive Phase, Dynamic Pressure, Negative Phase (Afterwinds) and Stagnant Pressures (the Blast Front pushes the away, extinguished the initial fires, before "pulling" them towards the Hypocentre, with many breaking during this phase) Oh yeah, the measurements of the Second Thermal Pulse are also gleaned from said tests on vegetation. Great video! Cheers for the interesting premise! Well Earned like and Sub! I'm only adding the additional info bc, well, it needs to get some use/might prove useful and hope someone finds it as such! Or it'll bore ppl to death! 🤓Power!
That's the most nuclear era idea ever: "We were worried we might run out of Tritium to make our nuclear bombs, so what if we set off some nuclear bombs to make the Tritium that we can use for even more bombs!"
It's not quite as counter-intuitive as it might seem at first The original A-bombs, aka "little boy" or "fat man", did not need any tritium. These were basic fission weapons, using cores made from either plutonium or enriched uranium - 80% U-235 or greater. The "bomb-assisted tritium supply" idea would only use low-yield A-bombs, so would not consume any tritium, but could produce a great deal of surplus tritium. The general idea was to mix lithium-6 into asphalt or concrete, which would stop it being blasted all over the place by the A-bomb detonation, and would contain any tritium generated, allowing it to be extracted later. So why did other types of weapon need tritium? A fusion-boosted weapon was an A-bomb with a twist: The core is surrounded by a depleted uranium (U-238) shell, which would normally act as only an inertial tamper, holding the core together for slightly longer before the supercritical fission chain reaction can blow it apart. A boosted weapon has some fusion fuel (tritium and deuterium) inside the core, creating a small fusion reaction. This contributes some energy directly, though usually not more than 20% of the total yield. More importantly, the fusion reaction rapidly generates a large number of extremely fast neutrons, which have enough energy to fission some of the U-238 surrounding the core. So the depleted uranium is no longer just a tamper, it actually gets involved in the reaction, releasing energy in a more efficient manner than the core itself. Hence the fission weapon yield is boosted by the fusion reaction. The other type is the H-bomb. This also uses an A-bomb as the trigger or catalyst, generating sufficiently high temperatures and pressures to ignite a fusion reaction. The main difference was that far more fusion fuel (again tritium and deuterium) was used, so at least 80% of the yield would be directly from the fusion reaction. The most efficient bomb of this type was actually the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which yielded 50 megatons, with 97% of that energy coming from the fusion reaction. This leads onto another type of weapon, which combines both effects, and is directly related to the Tsar Bomba design. The actual bomb which was tested had an inertial tamper made of lead, which did not produce any nuclear reactions and thus served only as a tamper. However, the original design had a conventional depleted uranium tamper, like most other fission cores. If this had been used, the fast neutrons from the large fusion reaction would have caused most of the U-238 tamper to fission, in a similar manner to a fusion-boosted weapon, albeit on a much larger scale. This would have roughly doubled the yield up to 100 megatons, with 51.5% of its energy from fission, 48.5% from fusion, making it more powerful but also far more dirty, generating a ludicrous amount of fallout from fission-products.
@@lloydevans2900 The other place that tritium is used is in the pulsed neutron generator used as a trigger. The early weapons used a polonium/beryllium initiator, but later weapons use essentially a miniature particle accelerator that use tritium as part of the process to generate a shower of neutrons to trigger the weapon.
That photo was shortly after he uttered the more famous quote, while these men were settling the bet as to how much of New Mexico would be destroyed by the test. The crumbled tower was apparently replaced by a small monument.
You would think so from popular depictions of the bomb but its far from a certain death situation and most deaths will tend to be from avoidable or mitigatable secondary effects.
Actually, this was a valid fear especially as the Soviet 7 days to the Rhine plan required launching tactical nukes and then following them with an invasion. Much better to have troop available to fight than having troops declared Kia by a tree.
@@anananandsdsdsds3486 Actually the trick is that you make the rope stand up high, the magician climbs up, the assistant climbs up, both out of view of the audience, they start arguing, start fighting, the magician has a sword and chops up the assistant, body parts fall to the ground. Then the magician climbs down, apologizes for the unplanned mess, puts the pieces of his assistant in a box, does some magic, and the assistant emerges fully reassembled and healed from the box. That is the full version. It is a difficult to perform trick and has only been done a few times.
@@TIMEtoRIDE900 Dot. It's one of those mystical things from the orient that attained some popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and the US.
wow, in about 30 to 60 seconds towards beginning, you answered so many tiny questions of initial blast that I never bothered to look into. Thank you so much!
Given how important ablation is in igniting the secondary of a two-stage weapon, basic studies like this probably helped direct the design of later missile warheads.
no, like xray vaporizing the steel because its opaque, then that steel heating up so much it starts sending out xrays to vaporize the next bit of steel.
I’d thought I’d seen all the footage of bomb tests, but this is a lot of new stuff to me. Thank you for this video. I’m mesmerized at atomic weapons as well. The raw power, just so many questions. Thanks!
3:19 *Rope trick effect,* interesting. I've seen the footage you're showing and always wondered what those little "legs" were, I had a feeling it had something to do with the cables holding the tower up, but thought it seemed kinda silly. Thanks for sharing!
Yes intense light from the explosion travels much faster than the fireball itself (at the speed of light, go figure) so the cable becomes superheated from the light rather than the fireball
@@AlexandervanGessel Yes, they actually experimented that guy wires painted pitch black would enhance the rope trick effect while white-painted or reflective guy wires would almost eliminate the effect entirely, proving that it was driven by thermal radiation.
Amazing! Thank you for doing this and talking about what's happening in the images. I always wondered why the wires transferred the energy of the explosion slightly faster. There's an excellent book of photographs of these explosions called '100 Suns.'
You need to do a video describing how the Rapatronic camera works with it’s magneto-optical shutter I think your subscribers would really enjoy that video! Doc Edgerton’s rope tricks would have never been filmed without this amazing piece of 40s tech!
Roundshot cannonballs are no longer considered secret weapons, having been used by all militaries in the 100 years before declassifying these tests of nuclear gunpowder
Well the report and the photos of the balls are declassified, but I think we can assume that Lew Allen's actual solid steel balls are somewhere kept safe from the public.
"There was one guy called Lou Allen. This guy had big balls." Just when the video was getting serious. Thanks for the video Scott, making science entertaining as always!
@RTG RE: Robert Openheimer: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" During a TV interview in 1957, Oppenheimer said that after the TRINITY detonation, he was REMINDED of that Hindu quotation. What he actually SAID was, "Well, the Gadget works." NOTE: The Gadget was the nickname given by the scientists to the "physics package" of the TRINITY device.
The fireball you see is actually the shockwave formed by the fissile material decomposing and recoiling. The shockwave is what is causing the majority of the heating in the fireball. The xrays only add a fraction to the heating effect, they mostly propagate away from the bomb and penetrate the debris cloud, as x rays are wont to do. They cause the bright flash of visible light at the moment of detonation; the x-rays lose energy from Compton scattering and appear as visible light.
my father was on military service is Kazakhstan near Semipalatinsk that was a classified nuclear test site back then. they exploded thousands of bombs under ground. they were not told of any dangers regarding radiation poisoning. some of his friends used to swim in lakes formed by underground explosion craters. he didn't, luckily.
When I toured the Atomic museum in Albuquerque, I asked the tour guide how re-bar from the tower could still be there, considering they said the heat from the bomb was hotter than the sun. He said the intense heat (the vaporizing heat) only lasted for a fraction of a second. So thick steel would absorb a lot of intense heat before it vaporized. Another question was if there was trinitite from the first explosion there must be a lot of trinitite from the hundreds of explosions in Nevada. As it turns there was a lot of sand at Trinity but just dirt at the other sites.
Im curious how they can be standing at the wreckage of the tower considering it was the epicentre of the blast. Did they end up getting severe radiation poisoning?
If that was the first Trinity test, they took after-radiation a little less seriously in those days. What they were wary of was the pure plutonium and the initial blast.
@@Björn_Schnabel That was the Trinity test - the world's first nuclear explosion - July 16th 1945. Oppenheimer was dead by 1967. And in case you're still confused, the '80s came a while later.
Scott, I always wondered bout where they found a forest in the Nevada desert, till I read abut the concrete planters. When I toured the Nevada test site around 2005 what impressed me was the bowed beam on the railroad overpass and the hundreds of depression craters from all the underground testing and of course the spectacular Sedan crater. Once saw a photo of a fluorescing shot cab, microseconds before the fireball developed in an article about Dr. Harold Edgerton, very cool photo.
2:43 I had always (erroneously) associated the absurdly short exposure times from rapatronic cameras with their frame rates, so it's kinda surprising to hear that the frame rate for capturing a nuclear fireball is as low as 2400 fps!
That caught my attention too. The exposure time was 1/millionth of a sec. So at 2400 FPS the whole sequence with 10 cams would be 10/2400 sec? So basically 4/thousands of a sec for the entire sequence?
Its interesting that from pages 36-39 the removal of material was pretty much uniform around the entire surface of the spheres. Just as much material came off the spheres in the area directly facing the blast as did on the side that was completely in the shadow.
@@scottmanley thanks, that's one of the coolest subjects i have ever seen on UA-cam, not that i care about bombs. are these places still radioactive? it must be very very very bright, considering the shadow of people and object is still visible on objects and surfaces in japan. does the ground melt?
@Why Not No, outside my house used to be a U.S. ignition system plant. It was closed in the 80s after massive protests, but that is what they assembled there. I know some people who worked there, but then died from radiation exposure. A tiny device creating a nuclear explosion that would then expand inside of the bomb, causing the rest of the material to compress, and therefore ignite. The fat man was set off by a bunch of TNT, it is just more efficient to use actual nukes instead of TNT to set plutonium off.
Another gem in the series! Old (by internet spacetime), but Gold! You nail so many subtle side effects, and in some cases benefits, and the research and economics that comes out of these is fascinating... Where is a good place to go looking for this data and dig around material that's just been declassified or is about to...? This would be an interesting area of research essentially meta-analysing data that was previously inaccessible but can have important implications for future civil and commercial applications. Really great series! And just what I was looking for since school, as being from Kyiv - which is next to Chernobyl - my schoolmates in the UK generally hypothesised would be my on my list of extracurricular interests, or hobbies so to speak. They were probably right :)
assuming you don't die from lead poisoning muhahahahahahaha but lead is not that strong so if they fridge gets crushed by the shock wave your still dead boy
Dude buddy thank you so much for telling me about the nuclear jellyfish legs.... I remember noticing those years ago and really wondering what the inconsistency in the fireball was now I know because of you thanks again my man 🤘🏼🤘🏼 appreciate you 🤘🏼🤘🏼
@@johndododoe1411 Science is examining the world rationally, to figure out how things happen the way they do. There's no room for make-believe friends in science.
Okay, idea for a new test: build a sloped tunnel, put a nuke at the far end, and stuff a bunch of these steel spheres in on top. World's most badass shotgun.
5:27 These guys seem underdressed for standing in the middle of where a nuclear bomb has just gone off. I wonder what level of radiation they're being exposed to.
The worries about radiation came up only in late 50s, when they discovered that the women in the watch factory had radiation sickness, since they were applying the r-active glow paint by paint brush. To make them pointy they put them in the mouth - including the rest of the paint.
Well if the bomb detonate in the air or on a tower the air it self takes away alot of that neutron Flux (so the dirt do get mutated to nasty isotopes and the heat will gather almost all of the fission products from the bomb and send them in to the stratosphere down the wind in Taktikal use of nukes it is a bit different because they will hit almost directly over a bunker etc and a lot of dirt get mutated but even this is not as bad because the really bad stuff hasn't long lifespans
Define "just went off". That photo is likely days after the blast and the radiation levels were low enough for a short visit. Also notice they are wearing rad badges. The guy in the white hat is Dr. Oppenheimer, basically the chief inventor of the bomb. You can trust he knew what he was doing. (Besides, everybody smoked in those days, so you can flip a coin as to what was going to kill them first).
Mr Manley Talking one of the two existential threat of human civilization ( nuclear bomb and global warming) in fascinated and cheerful tone is.... Just testifying
Those fireball pix that show effects of earlier structure before this 'big bang'' remind me of the Cosmic Background Radiation Map whose features are there because of earlier conditions just after the 'big bang'.
The intro is from operation Teapot - Turk camera 28112 (just enter it in search) Edit: LLNL got loads of footage, much high speed from different tests and angles
Nice. I'm thinking the most likely thing that threw the spheres a couple hundred meters was ablation of the steel surface by x-rays. I wonder if this was part of what gave Ulam the idea to use ablation for nuclear implosion fusion weapons.
@@cantthinkofnameyeah7249 Yeah, the plasma length is the visible length. The x-rays will go a bit further but they are quickly absorbed by the air anyway.
Fascinating concept , there is something so beautiful about a nuclear explosion.I like the symmetry in the mushreoom cloud the way it spirals up and glows.
"Yes, this is my Bowling-Bunker. Even when eventually a Nuclear Bomb goes off inside the bowling alley, your Balls will be save and the Pin arrangement gets saved off site and in a Black-Bowling-Ball-Box. You can just play where you left it, while the rest of the world tries to rebuild Civilization. Soo... How many do you want?"
Petition for testing to begin again so they can be filmed with modern 8k slow-motion cameras. The US ministry of Offence would have s terribly popular youtube channel 😂 Who's with me. . 🤷♂️
High end slow motion cameras are restricted as munitions because they can be used to film nuclear bomb tests. They really don't want Mr Kim to repeat this research.
@@sawyernorthrop4078 It will be interesting to see if there is a significant reduction in new cancers as the adults and children of the "above ground testing era" die off. That fallout drifted right up across the dairy states!
Apparently at one of these tests, where GIs were involved, one disibeyed orders to not look, and peeked with one eye Now blind in one eye, an optometrist observing says he had an inverted mushroom cloud etched in his fovea.
With the recent updates on Starliner, would you please do a video on the results of the investigation with appropriate impact of the results? Thank you.
Thanks Scott, I needed this reminder. I've recorded many of these videos and written much of this down for several years after I learned my 40 yr old daughter is a science doubter/denier, to teach her a few things hopefully. I'm shocked my kid could deny science!
I read about one test which was a “fizz” in which the core failed to fission. The problem was that there was a 120m tower still partially standing - this was supposed to be vaporised so they weren’t expecting to have to demolish it.
I got the chance to see the NNSS test site during some trainings. I saw one of the houses which remained from one of the tests, and got to stand directly, "under," where one of the tests towers stood. Really cool experience. Edit: @7:55 the bottom right one looks like a pained, screaming face. Kind of appropriate.
Man, I still think one of the wildest nuclear test footage is watching the paint on the house burn off completely by the heat blast before getting hit by the shockwave and splintering the house.
Thank you for this video Mr. Manley. I have since a long time looking for the effects of an atomic bomb against a military tank, but I could find nothing. This is the first material I find of what this weapon can do to a war tank.
I feel like you could do an entire video on the high-speed photography and the rope trick effect, respectively. Both are fascinating subjects. Where did you source the early slow mo vids from? They seem to be of higher quality than copies I have seen before.
Regarding the rope trick effect, it isn't thermal radiation vaporizing the guy wires holding up the towers. It's actually very high intensity visible light. They determined this by coating the wires with highly reflective paint. Coated wires wouldn't generate the same effect..
9:10 "remember kids, the only difference between science and screwing around, is writing stuff down"
Mythbusters!
And don't forget to ensure that you live long enough to write the stuff down
Yup....write shit down and you’ll become an “A” student and maybe one day get to test the effects of your own nuclear bomb.
- Adam Savage
Huh, better write this down...
AFAIK Due to Newton’s impact depth laws: in a vacuum (space) an atomic bomb can only vaporize (near) it’s own mass in material if completely surrounded. This means that even at a relatively close distance even paint won’t be removed. This is why the Orion plus propulsion can get away without destroying the pusher plate.
If the radiation pressure was enough to push the pusher plate you can be sure it would be enough to remove paint!
nagualdesign nope; only a thin layer vaporizing is needed to transfer the momentum. I think I’m going to do a video on this at some point to explain why.
@@theCodyReeder how are the plants and mushrooms doing, Cody? 🙂
@@theCodyReeder In the vicinity of a nuclear explosion, close enough to vapourize a thin layer of steel, what sort of paint do you think would survive? 😕
Nice to see our boy Cody dropping knowledge bombs!
8:20 Notice how the nuclear blast changed the aluminium, as Scott Manley calls it, into aluminum, the American form of the 13th element. The intense heat of the fireball literally blasted away a letter 'i' from the aluminium.
Very funny!
The original element name is aluminum, the i was added much later. Know your history.
We have a saying in the USA, It is better to stay quiet and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.
I'm disappointed that no mention was made of the tests on lead-lined refrigerators, as shown in the documentary _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull._
Indy survived the blast because the Holy Grail gave him supernatural durability and healing.
@@carlost856 Wow, you just redeemed that absurdity.
@Ron Maimon it's still absurd.... Simply the force put on him when the fridge hits the ground would turn a person to a pulp, the acceleration would also kill him
If the box is too close he'll crawl out with a crispy rash.
@Ron Maimon Hello. Please rewatch the scene and observe how the fridge overtakes the car that is speeding away from the explosion AT FULL SPEED. The instantaneous acceleration for that movement alone would have killed him several times over not to talk about the impact of the landing.
Kid: I don't wanna clean my room!
Mom: If you don't, it could burst into flames from a nuclear bomb hitting nearby.
Kid: Guess I'll do my part for the country, then.
I've seen that film. It's a bit surreal. It was a women's group that came up with the idea (I want to say something like 'American Women's Institute' ?) They wanted to know how different furnishings, decor and fittings would be affected by nuclear weapons, what would have the best chance of surviving? At the time it was accepted nukes would be used in war and
@@ptonpc From the woman's magazine Better Homes & Nukes.
@@ptonpc Wow, my mother bought light, nearly white, fiberglass curtains. And for the fireplace, she picked light, nearly white, refractory brick. She also hounded me to keep my bedroom clean. Now it all makes sense! Ironically, she eventually died of liver cancer as a result of viewing a nuclear test as a teenager. She was a very curious gal.
@@d.jensen5153 Reminds me of some of the Fx near the end of Special Bulletin. Creepy stuff.
Some balls are held for charity
And some for fancy dress
But when their held for science, They're the balls that I like best.
But Lou Allen has got the biggest balls of them all
You just won the internet for the day.
"BALLS OF STEEL!!!"
Jeokes!
And I'm just itching to tell you about them
Oh we had such wonderful fun
Upshot Knothole, Cresset, TeaPot...
It's moments like this when I really miss Mythbusters
It's videos like this when I really appreciate Scott.
Cant really test this myth lol
Not in a moral manner anyway
@@imagineaworld think that's the joke
It is back but its not the hosts isnt the same people
2:18 Put your goggles on - radiation can cause cancer but just to make sure smoke a cigarette while you are watching the blast! What different world that was..
145 Ponderosa Pine Trees. Operation Upshot-Knothole; Encore Shot (27kt) A Weapons Effect Test. The trees were "planted" ~1980 m from GZ and as it was an Air-Burst, the Hypocentre. Along with other objects and Troops, this Shot, like other Operations & Shots (Tests) e.g. Priscilla, Grapple and Annie, tested the various structures and hardening/shielding materials, as well as preparing Troops for Real-life Nuclear Warfare.
The "E" used for the name "Encore" = indicates it's an "Effects" test.
The trees simulated a woodland environment, as likely encountered during a conflict, and would house foxholes etc. covering troops and or general cover. The test also demonstrated the Static Overpressure, Positive Phase, Dynamic Pressure, Negative Phase (Afterwinds) and Stagnant Pressures (the Blast Front pushes the away, extinguished the initial fires, before "pulling" them towards the Hypocentre, with many breaking during this phase) Oh yeah, the measurements of the Second Thermal Pulse are also gleaned from said tests on vegetation.
Great video! Cheers for the interesting premise! Well Earned like and Sub! I'm only adding the additional info bc, well, it needs to get some use/might prove useful and hope someone finds it as such! Or it'll bore ppl to death! 🤓Power!
Dod the T in Teapot stand for Test?
That's the most nuclear era idea ever: "We were worried we might run out of Tritium to make our nuclear bombs, so what if we set off some nuclear bombs to make the Tritium that we can use for even more bombs!"
“Mr. President, the bomb program is a crucial component of the bomb program.”
@@ericssmith2014 Without bombs, we would not have bombs!
It's not quite as counter-intuitive as it might seem at first The original A-bombs, aka "little boy" or "fat man", did not need any tritium. These were basic fission weapons, using cores made from either plutonium or enriched uranium - 80% U-235 or greater. The "bomb-assisted tritium supply" idea would only use low-yield A-bombs, so would not consume any tritium, but could produce a great deal of surplus tritium. The general idea was to mix lithium-6 into asphalt or concrete, which would stop it being blasted all over the place by the A-bomb detonation, and would contain any tritium generated, allowing it to be extracted later.
So why did other types of weapon need tritium? A fusion-boosted weapon was an A-bomb with a twist: The core is surrounded by a depleted uranium (U-238) shell, which would normally act as only an inertial tamper, holding the core together for slightly longer before the supercritical fission chain reaction can blow it apart. A boosted weapon has some fusion fuel (tritium and deuterium) inside the core, creating a small fusion reaction. This contributes some energy directly, though usually not more than 20% of the total yield. More importantly, the fusion reaction rapidly generates a large number of extremely fast neutrons, which have enough energy to fission some of the U-238 surrounding the core. So the depleted uranium is no longer just a tamper, it actually gets involved in the reaction, releasing energy in a more efficient manner than the core itself. Hence the fission weapon yield is boosted by the fusion reaction.
The other type is the H-bomb. This also uses an A-bomb as the trigger or catalyst, generating sufficiently high temperatures and pressures to ignite a fusion reaction. The main difference was that far more fusion fuel (again tritium and deuterium) was used, so at least 80% of the yield would be directly from the fusion reaction. The most efficient bomb of this type was actually the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which yielded 50 megatons, with 97% of that energy coming from the fusion reaction.
This leads onto another type of weapon, which combines both effects, and is directly related to the Tsar Bomba design. The actual bomb which was tested had an inertial tamper made of lead, which did not produce any nuclear reactions and thus served only as a tamper. However, the original design had a conventional depleted uranium tamper, like most other fission cores. If this had been used, the fast neutrons from the large fusion reaction would have caused most of the U-238 tamper to fission, in a similar manner to a fusion-boosted weapon, albeit on a much larger scale. This would have roughly doubled the yield up to 100 megatons, with 51.5% of its energy from fission, 48.5% from fusion, making it more powerful but also far more dirty, generating a ludicrous amount of fallout from fission-products.
@@lloydevans2900 The other place that tritium is used is in the pulsed neutron generator used as a trigger. The early weapons used a polonium/beryllium initiator, but later weapons use essentially a miniature particle accelerator that use tritium as part of the process to generate a shower of neutrons to trigger the weapon.
"Yo dawg, I heard you like nooks..."
"I am become death, destroyer of towers"
Tremble in fear!
That photo was shortly after he uttered the more famous quote, while these men were settling the bet as to how much of New Mexico would be destroyed by the test. The crumbled tower was apparently replaced by a small monument.
"...destroyer of balls" except of course they just vaporized.
Luc Timmerman - bow towers bow or I shall vaporize all of you! BOW NOW!
and irradiated.
*Topple in fear
1:15 I think dangerous trees are the least of your worries if they're dangerous because of a nuclear explosion.
Not if you are inside a steel cylinder designed based on their blast resistance in the other experiment.
You would think so from popular depictions of the bomb but its far from a certain death situation and most deaths will tend to be from avoidable or mitigatable secondary effects.
you could've been hiding behind some hill, close to ground
you'll survive the light, survive the blast wave
and you'll die by falling burning branch
Well it's worth knowing if you can turn a whole forest into a wood chipper aimed at your enemies
Actually, this was a valid fear especially as the Soviet 7 days to the Rhine plan required launching tactical nukes and then following them with an invasion. Much better to have troop available to fight than having troops declared Kia by a tree.
If you asked me before this video what the “Indian rope trick” is, I never would have guessed.
Outside a nuclear test context, it refers to an illusionists' trick, making a rope stand up on end so's it can be climbed.
@@anananandsdsdsds3486 Actually the trick is that you make the rope stand up high, the magician climbs up, the assistant climbs up, both out of view of the audience, they start arguing, start fighting, the magician has a sword and chops up the assistant, body parts fall to the ground. Then the magician climbs down, apologizes for the unplanned mess, puts the pieces of his assistant in a box, does some magic, and the assistant emerges fully reassembled and healed from the box. That is the full version. It is a difficult to perform trick and has only been done a few times.
@@kurtilein3 Dot or Feather ??
@@TIMEtoRIDE900 Dot. It's one of those mystical things from the orient that attained some popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and the US.
@@kurtilein3 i liked the nuclear context better
wow, in about 30 to 60 seconds towards beginning, you answered so many tiny questions of initial blast that I never bothered to look into. Thank you so much!
all my childhood questions answered in one video!
"This guy had big balls, big steel balls"
I see what you did there Scott
you could say they nuked his balls lol
No foolin’ you.
i instantly thought of the juggler playing the piano... with his balls xD
@@narmale perfectly
The names Scott. Bon Scott, and I hear you like big balls.
Given how important ablation is in igniting the secondary of a two-stage weapon, basic studies like this probably helped direct the design of later missile warheads.
8:22 So, like the Leidenfrost effect, but in a nuclear explosion.
Yup
Mihir Gadgil More like spacecraft ablative shields during reentry.
More like ablative heat shields on spacecrafts.
no, like xray vaporizing the steel because its opaque, then that steel heating up so much it starts sending out xrays to vaporize the next bit of steel.
@@sudazima you really think the steel can heat up so much to send X rays ?
I’d thought I’d seen all the footage of bomb tests, but this is a lot of new stuff to me. Thank you for this video. I’m mesmerized at atomic weapons as well. The raw power, just so many questions. Thanks!
3:19 *Rope trick effect,* interesting. I've seen the footage you're showing and always wondered what those little "legs" were, I had a feeling it had something to do with the cables holding the tower up, but thought it seemed kinda silly.
Thanks for sharing!
Once they figured out the rope trick, they even started coating the guy wires to stop it from happening.
Yes intense light from the explosion travels much faster than the fireball itself (at the speed of light, go figure) so the cable becomes superheated from the light rather than the fireball
I thought it was the shaped charges inside.
@@AlexandervanGessel Yes, they actually experimented that guy wires painted pitch black would enhance the rope trick effect while white-painted or reflective guy wires would almost eliminate the effect entirely, proving that it was driven by thermal radiation.
But how far away would you need to put a pizza for the heat to cook it perfectly?
🤣
Just depends on how radioactive you want it
200km
From the Nevada nuclear test site?
Montana seems about right for thin crust. Idaho for deep dish.
If there's no meat on the pizza I'm all for being close, just a nanosecond of exposure so it all radiates from the most outer layer of cheese.
Amazing! Thank you for doing this and talking about what's happening in the images. I always wondered why the wires transferred the energy of the explosion slightly faster. There's an excellent book of photographs of these explosions called '100 Suns.'
This is what happens when you have plenty of firepower to use, just use it to experiment everything you want!
Lets get to work getting Scott some nuclear weapons
sweet corn comes from nuclear testing
To hell with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty!
This is how Project Orion and Project Medusa came to be
My God I'm really shocked by how much excitement you guys shown by a weapon of mass destruction that ruins the environment
You need to do a video describing how the Rapatronic camera works with it’s magneto-optical shutter I think your subscribers would really enjoy that video! Doc Edgerton’s rope tricks would have never been filmed without this amazing piece of 40s tech!
I've watched tons and tons of videos on explosives and nuclear bombs that I've learnt more in this one episode then all of those videos combined
!!
Lew Allen’s solid steel balls were declassified!
Roundshot cannonballs are no longer considered secret weapons, having been used by all militaries in the 100 years before declassifying these tests of nuclear gunpowder
There's even photos of them online! Gross!
Well the report and the photos of the balls are declassified, but I think we can assume that Lew Allen's actual solid steel balls are somewhere kept safe from the public.
@@johnladuke6475 Unless he has habbits resembling president Johnson that would frequently show off his ditto.
"There was one guy called Lou Allen. This guy had big balls." Just when the video was getting serious. Thanks for the video Scott, making science entertaining as always!
I'm surprised that you missed the opportunity to make a"nuclear strike" bowling joke. Usually you are keen on weaponized puns, and droll jokes.
Robert Openheimer: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds"
Scott Manley "Fabulous(ly hot)"
@RTG
RE: Robert Openheimer: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds"
During a TV interview in 1957, Oppenheimer said that after the TRINITY detonation, he was REMINDED of that Hindu quotation. What he actually SAID was, "Well, the Gadget works." NOTE: The Gadget was the nickname given by the scientists to the "physics package" of the TRINITY device.
"I'VE GOT BALLS OF STEEL!"
-Duke Nuken
Hail to the king, baby!
Oppenheimer: I am Death destroyer of Balls!
Allen: My hardened spheres are impervious to your nuclear fireball.
Science - LETS TEST!
Can this be used as gunpowder? Lets test it...
@@johndododoe1411 the real question is - can it be used to propel other charges?...
Enrico Fermi bet that the atmosphere would catch fire and destroy the planet. How did he plan on collecting if he won?
@@model7374 He would be granted the "I told you so" award for 1945, posthumously. :)
Time to grab that vacuum cleaner in case of a nuclear bomb, got to make sure the house is safe.
I'm a little teapot
short and stout
here is my handle
here is my *KABOOM*
As I read the last line of that, there was a rumble of thunder right outside...
@@dominichines9996 Nice!
I'd blow a steel bowling ball up to get some rain right now.
@Michael Bishop Don't forget commercial sector sponsorship to defray the costs... "Verizon Wireless presents: Operation Hello Kitty"
The fireball you see is actually the shockwave formed by the fissile material decomposing and recoiling. The shockwave is what is causing the majority of the heating in the fireball. The xrays only add a fraction to the heating effect, they mostly propagate away from the bomb and penetrate the debris cloud, as x rays are wont to do. They cause the bright flash of visible light at the moment of detonation; the x-rays lose energy from Compton scattering and appear as visible light.
my father was on military service is Kazakhstan near Semipalatinsk that was a classified nuclear test site back then. they exploded thousands of bombs under ground.
they were not told of any dangers regarding radiation poisoning. some of his friends used to swim in lakes formed by underground explosion craters. he didn't, luckily.
Awesome video Scott! Ive never heard about this experiment before and it is pretty satisfying! Cheers.
"I am become death, destroyer of towers" - I love that so much.
lol
When I toured the Atomic museum in Albuquerque, I asked the tour guide how re-bar from the tower could still be there, considering they said the heat from the bomb was hotter than the sun. He said the intense heat (the vaporizing heat) only lasted for a fraction of a second. So thick steel would absorb a lot of intense heat before it vaporized. Another question was if there was trinitite from the first explosion there must be a lot of trinitite from the hundreds of explosions in Nevada. As it turns there was a lot of sand at Trinity but just dirt at the other sites.
Im curious how they can be standing at the wreckage of the tower considering it was the epicentre of the blast. Did they end up getting severe radiation poisoning?
I had this same thought, wouldn't that be a pretty awful spot to be?
I had the same question
Jes, they did. But it was the eightys and people are stupid. Also probably they were ordered to do so by they'r boss.
If that was the first Trinity test, they took after-radiation a little less seriously in those days. What they were wary of was the pure plutonium and the initial blast.
@@Björn_Schnabel That was the Trinity test - the world's first nuclear explosion - July 16th 1945. Oppenheimer was dead by 1967. And in case you're still confused, the '80s came a while later.
So many questions answered. Love this channel.
Ah, yes. Exactly the question that was boggling my mind before sleep
Good work Scott! Your content never fails to teach me something.
Didn’t test big brass balls? I heard those are even more impressive...
Well because it removes mass not thickness I would go with lead coated it's cheap and heavy
Only when they're on a brass monkey.
Scott, I always wondered bout where they found a forest in the Nevada desert, till I read abut the concrete planters. When I toured the Nevada test site around 2005 what impressed me was the bowed beam on the railroad overpass and the hundreds of depression craters from all the underground testing and of course the spectacular Sedan crater. Once saw a photo of a fluorescing shot cab, microseconds before the fireball developed in an article about Dr. Harold Edgerton, very cool photo.
2:43 I had always (erroneously) associated the absurdly short exposure times from rapatronic cameras with their frame rates, so it's kinda surprising to hear that the frame rate for capturing a nuclear fireball is as low as 2400 fps!
There are rapatronic photos, but not movies more than 10 frames or so. They had one camera per frame.
That caught my attention too. The exposure time was 1/millionth of a sec. So at 2400 FPS the whole sequence with 10 cams would be 10/2400 sec? So basically 4/thousands of a sec for the entire sequence?
@4.30
There's something really beautiful about this one...wish it was in HD and colour.
As a great man once said, "the only difference between messing around and science is writing it down!" -Mythbusters
Its interesting that from pages 36-39 the removal of material was pretty much uniform around the entire surface of the spheres. Just as much material came off the spheres in the area directly facing the blast as did on the side that was completely in the shadow.
"Outdoor nuclear test" - now show me the madlad that does an indoor nuclear test :D
Most tests were carried out undergound.
@@scottmanley I know. It just struck me as a funny phrase to term atmospheric tests and outdoors :)
@@scottmanley thanks, that's one of the coolest subjects i have ever seen on UA-cam, not that i care about bombs. are these places still radioactive?
it must be very very very bright, considering the shadow of people and object is still visible on objects and surfaces in japan.
does the ground melt?
@@scottmanley Could a bomb potentially be made small enough to be tested in laboratory conditions?
@@scottmanley They just produced Ultracite and Scorchbeast Queens, so they are still classified :D
Congratulations on 1 million subscribers! I know I'm a little late but I love your videos ❤️
10:07 Using nuclear bombs to create more nuclear bombs? This has to be an idea from the USA.
To increase the MPG !
stonk 📈
Sort of related: Nuclear bomb ignition systems are nukes themselves, just much, much smaller.
@Why Not No, outside my house used to be a U.S. ignition system plant. It was closed in the 80s after massive protests, but that is what they assembled there. I know some people who worked there, but then died from radiation exposure. A tiny device creating a nuclear explosion that would then expand inside of the bomb, causing the rest of the material to compress, and therefore ignite. The fat man was set off by a bunch of TNT, it is just more efficient to use actual nukes instead of TNT to set plutonium off.
And?? Its the American way: create, destroy and improve
Finally, an answer to the question I never had: who would win? a metal ball or one explody boi?
If metal bol is smol then the explody boi wins
if metal bol Bigg then bol win
But now I need to know if a steel ball will survive megaton yields!
Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyy when the fireball is miles wide you are not going to find anything that was twenty-five meters away.
You would need a bigger ball
As always Scott....Thanks very much...!
My wife’s meatloaf would hold up pretty well.
Another gem in the series! Old (by internet spacetime), but Gold!
You nail so many subtle side effects, and in some cases benefits, and the research and economics that comes out of these is fascinating...
Where is a good place to go looking for this data and dig around material that's just been declassified or is about to...? This would be an interesting area of research essentially meta-analysing data that was previously inaccessible but can have important implications for future civil and commercial applications.
Really great series! And just what I was looking for since school, as being from Kyiv - which is next to Chernobyl - my schoolmates in the UK generally hypothesised would be my on my list of extracurricular interests, or hobbies so to speak. They were probably right :)
Fool, all you need is a lead lined fridge and you can survive anything XD
(apologies for the terrible unoriginal joke)
At least lead based paint on said fridge.
...plus a mixture of good luck. Who knows, maybe we can get our first real-life "Fallout Universe Ghoul."
@@ChadSimplicio And then you rescue that kid in the fridge in Fallout 4.
Whats the joke? It's a reference
assuming you don't die from lead poisoning muhahahahahahaha
but lead is not that strong so if they fridge gets crushed by the shock wave your still dead boy
Thank you for this video! Love learning about such weird experiments
Last time I was this early, Falcon 1 was still flying
Dude buddy thank you so much for telling me about the nuclear jellyfish legs.... I remember noticing those years ago and really wondering what the inconsistency in the fireball was now I know because of you thanks again my man 🤘🏼🤘🏼 appreciate you 🤘🏼🤘🏼
Science?! My lawyer told me that writing it down was ‘evidence.’
Science is doing things precisely to gather evidence regarding Gods laws.
@@johndododoe1411 Science is examining the world rationally, to figure out how things happen the way they do. There's no room for make-believe friends in science.
Always as informative. Thank you for your great work.
You have my full attention.
I came for the nukes, I stayed for the ball jokes. This was a fun one, thanks Scott. 7:17 had me rolling.
Who else thinks they should have set up some pins as well?🤔😂🤣😂🤣..Oh look Oppie needs to pick up the spare..Load her up again boys!😂🤣😂😂🤣
Okay, idea for a new test: build a sloped tunnel, put a nuke at the far end, and stuff a bunch of these steel spheres in on top. World's most badass shotgun.
"I wish I had big steel balls" Johnie, on his way to the rodeo.
He eventually got one after Valentine killed Gyro. Dontchya remember???
Annnnnnnd this is why I love your channel. It’s always interesting as hell!
5:27 These guys seem underdressed for standing in the middle of where a nuclear bomb has just gone off. I wonder what level of radiation they're being exposed to.
Like the signs say in Fallout. Radiation is not to be feared! But is should be respected.
The dust they're inhaling may have some interesting properties 😐
The worries about radiation came up only in late 50s, when they discovered that the women in the watch factory had radiation sickness, since they were applying the r-active glow paint by paint brush. To make them pointy they put them in the mouth - including the rest of the paint.
Well if the bomb detonate in the air or on a tower the air it self takes away alot of that neutron Flux (so the dirt do get mutated to nasty isotopes and the heat will gather almost all of the fission products from the bomb and send them in to the stratosphere down the wind in Taktikal use of nukes it is a bit different because they will hit almost directly over a bunker etc and a lot of dirt get mutated but even this is not as bad because the really bad stuff hasn't long lifespans
Define "just went off". That photo is likely days after the blast and the radiation levels were low enough for a short visit. Also notice they are wearing rad badges. The guy in the white hat is Dr. Oppenheimer, basically the chief inventor of the bomb. You can trust he knew what he was doing. (Besides, everybody smoked in those days, so you can flip a coin as to what was going to kill them first).
Mr Manley
Talking one of the two existential threat of human civilization ( nuclear bomb and global warming) in fascinated and cheerful tone is.... Just testifying
2:30 - TIL that a nuclear explosion starts out looking like the head of a gigantic insect.
Those fireball pix that show effects of earlier structure before this 'big bang'' remind me of the Cosmic Background Radiation Map whose features are there because of earlier conditions just after the 'big bang'.
I'm only :30 in but I have to know where that atomic bomb footage during the intro came from. I need it like Kerbals need moar boosters!
The intro is from operation Teapot - Turk camera 28112 (just enter it in search)
Edit: LLNL got loads of footage, much high speed from different tests and angles
spretcher
How did they even get all this footage, wouldn't the cameras be vaporized.
@@livethefuture2492 Cameras are far away and the fireballs are quite large. Though they did have a problem with some cameras having the film burned.
I’m 38 crazy how you have grey in your beard 🧔
@@spretcher Great, thanks! The LLNL UA-cam channel has literally hundreds of videos - sweet.
Nice. I'm thinking the most likely thing that threw the spheres a couple hundred meters was ablation of the steel surface by x-rays. I wonder if this was part of what gave Ulam the idea to use ablation for nuclear implosion fusion weapons.
Given that this was 3 years after first H bomb demonstration.... no
3:48 So, what you means is that if you make an X-ray laser saber you can adjust the saber length by changing the power output?
Visible saber length not actual saber length
No.
@@cantthinkofnameyeah7249 Yeah, the plasma length is the visible length. The x-rays will go a bit further but they are quickly absorbed by the air anyway.
@@williamcampbell9859 X-rays can penetrate at least several meters of air which is far too much. But please don't destroy my dreams ^^
How else do you think jodas saber was shorter?
Fascinating concept , there is something so beautiful
about a nuclear explosion.I like the symmetry in the mushreoom cloud
the way it spirals up and glows.
"Yes, this is my Bowling-Bunker. Even when eventually a Nuclear Bomb goes off inside the bowling alley, your Balls will be save and the Pin arrangement gets saved off site and in a Black-Bowling-Ball-Box. You can just play where you left it, while the rest of the world tries to rebuild Civilization.
Soo... How many do you want?"
And if all the pins get knocked down first time, would that be a nuclear strike?
Thats among the best science videos I've ever seen.
Thank you.
"I am become death. The destroyer of towers." - J. Robert Oppenheimer (Inventor of Angry Birds)
Wow incredibly informative content thank you sir
"Fabulously hot, high pressure fireball" was the name of my band in high school.
You and every other nerd band!
"unorthodox way of launching bowling balls." PMSL! Thanks, Scott.
Petition for testing to begin again so they can be filmed with modern 8k slow-motion cameras. The US ministry of Offence would have s terribly popular youtube channel 😂
Who's with me. . 🤷♂️
High end slow motion cameras are restricted as munitions because they can be used to film nuclear bomb tests. They really don't want Mr Kim to repeat this research.
I would love to see this!
Oh I'm sure they already do... they just won't share it with you.
@@johndododoe1411 I don't think Phantoms or those open source high speed cams are classified as weapons, everyone can order one.
I wanted to say that this idea offends me, but I guess that would be the Ministry of Offence's whole deal and would, thus, be considered a success.
Full blown historical science education ... and better than anything the History channel has put out in a decade. Excellent video!
er.. two decades, at least ;P
I've heard that you can see your bones if you put your hands between the nuclear explosion and your eyes
If you're too close it's the last thing you see.
@@scottmanley how elevated would your cancer risk be in that situation if you could somehow survive the shockwave and being flash cooked?
@@sawyernorthrop4078 It will be interesting to see if there is a significant reduction in new cancers as the adults and children of the "above ground testing era" die off. That fallout drifted right up across the dairy states!
Apparently at one of these tests, where GIs were involved, one disibeyed orders to not look, and peeked with one eye
Now blind in one eye, an optometrist observing says he had an inverted mushroom cloud etched in his fovea.
@@bcubed72
No doubt an urbomb legend.
No, I don't need to be escorted out...
With the recent updates on Starliner, would you please do a video on the results of the investigation with appropriate impact of the results? Thank you.
Dang, I was really hoping you were gonna try this yourself
Shhhhh, don't give him ideas lol
Thanks Scott, I needed this reminder. I've recorded many of these videos and written much of this down for several years after I learned my 40 yr old daughter is a science doubter/denier, to teach her a few things hopefully. I'm shocked my kid could deny science!
It's hard to explain how much I love the aesthetics of the cover page at 7:30.
Scott Manley how do you find such topics?!! Amazing wonderful video!!
I read about one test which was a “fizz” in which the core failed to fission. The problem was that there was a 120m tower still partially standing - this was supposed to be vaporised so they weren’t expecting to have to demolish it.
Nice explanation. Spherical shapes do tend to hold together better than other shapes with heat and overpressure.
"and this guy has big balls... Big metal balls" - scott manley July 10, 2020
Great video, really enjoyed it. Subscribed.
I had no desire to know this information until I saw your video, and now I realize I ALWAYS needed to know this just because.
I got the chance to see the NNSS test site during some trainings. I saw one of the houses which remained from one of the tests, and got to stand directly, "under," where one of the tests towers stood. Really cool experience.
Edit: @7:55 the bottom right one looks like a pained, screaming face. Kind of appropriate.
Man, I still think one of the wildest nuclear test footage is watching the paint on the house burn off completely by the heat blast before getting hit by the shockwave and splintering the house.
Thank you for this video Mr. Manley. I have since a long time looking for the effects of an atomic bomb against a military tank, but I could find nothing. This is the first material I find of what this weapon can do to a war tank.
imagine how humbling it would be to see a modern day above ground nuclear test in full HD.
I feel like you could do an entire video on the high-speed photography and the rope trick effect, respectively. Both are fascinating subjects. Where did you source the early slow mo vids from? They seem to be of higher quality than copies I have seen before.
He also discover the Lew Allen belt.
The belt strong enough to hold-up his steel balls.
Regarding the rope trick effect, it isn't thermal radiation vaporizing the guy wires holding up the towers. It's actually very high intensity visible light.
They determined this by coating the wires with highly reflective paint. Coated wires wouldn't generate the same effect..