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Those WW2 era photos are interesting, and I like the story about Taylor's analysis, but what really spooks me from early atomic bomb tests are the Rapatronic ph

Those WW2 era photos are interesting, and I like the story about Taylor's analysis, but what really spooks me from early atomic bomb tests are the Rapatronic photos by Edgerton. He took high-speed photography to the ultimate limits, at exposure times of 10^-8 seconds, and the pictures are absolutely eerie looking. Some are like gaping skulls of pure energy, like this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Tumbler_Snapper_rope_tricks.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Tumbler_... http://petapixel.com/2014/03/05/rapatronic-camera-atomic-blast-captured-11000000000th-second/ http://petapixel.com/2014/03/05/rapatronic-camera-atomic-bla...

agumonkey 10y ago
I didn't know Edgerton name, nor how many things he shot at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspK_Bi0aoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspK_Bi0aoQ
SamReidHughes 10y ago
From the article: "This is 1/100,000,000th of a second after the first photo." A 100 millionth of a light-second is about 10 feet, the tower was 100 feet. So that couldn't have been the time between exposures, and they used multiple cameras anyway. The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera says the exposure times were several microseconds.
- deleted 10y ago
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- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  I don't think that's the first image in the sequence, just the most famous one. They took a lot of images in sequence. Here they are edited together into a sequence (several series, presumably from multiple tests, unfortunately looks a bit incomplete): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQp1ox-SdRI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQp1ox-SdRI
mirimir 10y ago
I gather that some of the lumpiness is caused by imperfections in the strength and time synchronization of the implosion. Ideally, you'd see spheres. There are also bumps caused by flanges, ports, etc in the casing.

agumonkey 10y ago

I didn't know Edgerton name, nor how many things he shot at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspK_Bi0aoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspK_Bi0aoQ

SamReidHughes 10y ago

From the article: "This is 1/100,000,000th of a second after the first photo." A 100 millionth of a light-second is about 10 feet, the tower was 100 feet. So that couldn't have been the time between exposures, and they used multiple cameras anyway. The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera says the exposure times were several microseconds.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lobster_johnson 10y ago
I don't think that's the first image in the sequence, just the most famous one. They took a lot of images in sequence. Here they are edited together into a sequence (several series, presumably from multiple tests, unfortunately looks a bit incomplete): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQp1ox-SdRI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQp1ox-SdRI

mirimir 10y ago

I gather that some of the lumpiness is caused by imperfections in the strength and time synchronization of the implosion. Ideally, you'd see spheres. There are also bumps caused by flanges, ports, etc in the casing.