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In the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space
- tyingq 9y agoHmm. One of the main plot devices for many "asteroid is about to hit Earth" movies. I had no idea a nuke had been exploded in space before.
- ekianjo 9y agoa nuke would do nothIng to stop any large asteroid at good speed. Like a fly hitting a tank.
- tyingq 9y agoYou might want to inform NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitigate/blast-deflection https://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-grand-challenge/mitiga...
- ekianjo 9y agodo you have the source of the actual study ?
- tim333 9y agoYou wouldn't need to stop an asteroid, just divert it a bit so it misses.
- rpeden 9y agoThere was a great Bad Astronomy post a few years back on the 50th anniversary of Starfish Prime: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/09/the-50th-anniversary-of-starfish-prime-the-nuke-that-shook-the-world/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/09/th...
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- ythn 9y agoI was under the impression H-bombs utilized hydrogen in the atmosphere to feed its fusion reaction. If you send it up to "outer space" it wouldn't have any fuel to fuse?
- Robotbeat 9y agoNot at all. The "hydrogen" in hydrogen bombs is in deuterium (proton plus a neutron) and tritium (proton plus two neutrons), both isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium is stable, but tritium is not. Tritium must either be maintained as it decays (into Helium 3) by topping it off or bred in the nuclear explosion itself from lithium capturing a neutron. In either case, the source material is contained in the bomb itself, so you can initiate the bomb anywhere. Also, the atmosphere contains almost no hydrogen (except a little bit in the form of water vapor).
- lb1lf 9y agoA H-bomb is a BYOH (Bring Your Own Hydrogen) device - the weapon includes a helping of deuterium (hydrogen with an extra neutron). The fusion reaction requires an awful lot of energy to get going, so it basically uses a fission bomb as a detonator.
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- TheAdamist 9y agono, there are hydrogen isotopes in the bomb, deuterium & tritium. Not to mention there is no appreciable amount of hydrogen in the atmosphere anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon http://climate.ncsu.edu/edu/k12/.AtmComposition http://climate.ncsu.edu/edu/k12/.AtmComposition
- InclinedPlane 9y agoHumidity is considered to be separate from "the atmosphere", as it varies from about 0-4%. Humidity contains Hydrogen since water is H2O.
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- pcunite 9y agothe most pressing argument for a military experiment was, "if we don't do it, the Russians will." And, indeed, the Russians did test atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs in space Competition has a way of getting out of hand, no?
- marcosdumay 9y agoI'm sure the possibility of a bomb there blinding missile detectors was pressing enough to do the tests even if there wasn't any competition spirit. And Van Allen was quite possibly thrilled about the possibility of measuring his discover, from strength and shape to stability. (Good thing it is stable, otherwise people would keep probing it.)
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- strongai 9y agoForgive me, but more and more I see the phrase 'outer space' referring to stuff that happens at distances between the Earth and the moon. Is this a thing now?
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt's always been a thing. It's, for instance, the sense used in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. “Outer space” is basically everything outside of some fuzzy demarcation line (often, specifically, the Kármán line) marking the “edge” of Earth's atmosphere.
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoThe term you're looking for is deep space.
- InclinedPlane 9y agoIt's a slightly older form of the term. "Space" is just space, it's everywhere. Your car has space inside it, so does your backpack, so does your living room, it's all just ordinary space. "Outer" space has specifically referred to the space above Earth's atmosphere, to differentiate it from more Earthly kinds of spaces. Over time outer space has become less exotic and so it tends to just be called "space" colloquially these days, with the meaning understood based on context.
- pavement 9y agoYou would prefer simply to say "in space" perhaps? Drop the "outer" part? What else to say instead?
- mlindner 9y ago"Space" is just a shortening of "outer space" in this case. This is opposed to the "inner space", namely the space within Earth's atmosphere. Everything outside of that is "outer space".
- mmmpop 9y agoIt's just a colloquial way of referring to it in a non-science context.
- rdtsc 9y agoWell one thing they didn't mention is that these kind of blasts create enormous EMP pulses. You can EMP blast whole continents with it. It is thought that in case of an all our nuclear attack at high up detonation like that would happen early one to disable as many electronics and communication facilities of the enemy. Then of course countries have been working on EMP hardening military tech. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse says that: --- if the Starfish Prime warhead had been detonated over the northern continental United States, the magnitude of the EMP would have been much larger (22 to 30 kV/m) because of the greater strength of the Earth's magnetic field over the United States, --- Then the Soviets also "played" around with that too: --- The monitored telephone line was divided into sub-lines of 40 to 80 kilometres (25 to 50 mi) in length, separated by repeaters. Each sub-line was protected by fuses and by gas-filled overvoltage protectors. The EMP from the 22 October (K-3) nuclear test (also known as Test 184) blew all of the fuses and fired all of the overvoltage protectors in all of the sub-lines.[15] ---
- mikeash 9y agoThere's an oblique mention of it near the end: "When the bomb burst, people told of blackouts and strange electrical malfunctions, like garage doors opening and closing on their own." The Soviet tests are interesting. They actually managed to burn down an entire electrical power station with the EMP from one of their bombs. Edit: looking into it more, the destruction of the power station is uncertain. There was definitely a fire at the Karaganda power station, but there's only one vague reference to it being destroyed as a result. Interesting how a question like "did this entire power station burn down in the 1960s?" can remain unanswered today.
- jff 9y agoThe typical Soviet response to any accident: "What fire? What power station are you talking about? Why were you there instead of in your home? A photograph? Give it here" rip "What photograph?" Establishing the destruction of that power station today would be extremely difficult, short of American spy photos, I'd wager.
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- tim333 9y agoI rather hope they'll try setting off a nuke near an asteroid as research for preventing meteor strikes on Earth. I guess it would vapourize part of the surface facing the bomb, diverting the thing away from there.
- RobertoG 9y agoAre you sure you want to divert an asteroid with an orbit close to the Earth that is not already in its way to Earth?
- tim333 9y agoWell, there is that issue.
- autokad 9y agoI'm not an expert on any of the topics surrounding that, but i heard it wouldnt make much difference (unless it was very far away) because there is no air
- ridgeguy 9y agoRadiation from the bomb will immediately vaporize a thin layer of material on the portion of the asteroid exposed to the detonation. This happens very fast and imparts an impulse to the asteroid. It's an ablation blow-off event. This will divert the asteroid. How much depends on the mass of the asteroid and the magnitude of the ablation push. The latter is complicated: bomb yield, distance, yield spectrum, asteroid material, etc. If the asteroid is quite fragile (think comet nucleus instead of metal or rocky asteroid), it might break into smaller pieces. In any event, there's no need for intervening air to couple energy from a nuke detonation to an object in space.
- vermontdevil 9y agoWe were sure nuts back then with our atomic toys.
- chiph 9y agoNot just the military toys, either. "I know! We'll make Polonium-filled spark plugs for people's cars!" https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/sparkplugs.htm https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/spar...
- CapitalistCartr 9y agoWe did stranger tests. We dropped three nukes down two natural gas wells to test nuclear fracking. (It doesn't work.)
- c-smile 9y agoSo in the summer of 1962 we've sent clear message to all aliens that we are here, nice. So when they will arrive with who knows what intentions we know whom to blame.
- eeZah7Ux 9y agoIf there's an intelligent lifeform watching us is probably smart enough to stay away from a species that destroys its own planet in many creative ways.
- mathgeek 9y agoI wouldn't call our methods very creative, at least on the creativity scale that any species capable of observing us would operate. We pretty much burn or blow up everything we can to generate energy.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoyeah. i remember this. my garage door opened and closed all by itself. and the weird thing is this: i hadn't even been born yet.
- mathgeek 9y agoWhat's even stranger is that your garage door was a manual. But seriously, I wonder what specifically about the side effects here would cause a garage door opener to not only open the door, but also consequently close it again. Perhaps it completed one full cycle as a result of the blast? Guess we'll never truly know.
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- 13of40 9y agoMy dad watched this detonation and wrote a very detailed letter to his parents about it, which I can't find right now, so I'll summarize from memory: Epic green ball of fire with purple lightning shooting out of it.
- rl3 9y agoFascinatingly, the aftermath of Starfish Prime endangered future space exploration of the era, and created uncertainty surrounding continued human space flight.[0][1] [0] http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2016/01/starfish-and-apollo-1962.html http://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2016/01/starfish-and-... [1] http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/410338.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/410338.pdf