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That's what those are? Wow, thanks for the explanation! I always thought that was some weird quirk of the mushroom cloud.

• mikeash 9y ago
  This is called the rope trick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect
  • King-Aaron 9y ago
    That was a fascinating read, thanks for linking that!
  • kbart 9y ago
    Wow, that's one of the best written Wiki articles I've ever read, thank you for the link.
  • mysterypie 9y ago
    Since a couple other people mentioned that this was a really good Wikipedia article (and I thought so too), I looked through the Wikipedia revision history in detail to see how it got written. It's essentially written by one person (Wikipedia user Deglr6328) over a span of 2 years during 2004-2006 followed by hundreds of edits over the next decade by around a dozen users to improve wording, style, references, links, and photos. The pattern for the best material on Wikipedia seems to be that of one subject matter expert or enthusiast writing the basic article and a small hardcore group of Wikipedia editors improving it (and who do improve it greatly -- I'm not minimizing their part). But you need the initial expert or super-passionate person to get it started.