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Regarding #1, it pains me to see so much hype about this feat. To restate it. We were able to simulate the implosion of the secondary stage of a thermonuclear

by jboy55 3y ago

Regarding #1, it pains me to see so much hype about this feat. To restate it. We were able to simulate the implosion of the secondary stage of a thermonuclear device in a lab by the means of lasers, to the point that this simulation has ~ 0.001% the efficiency of a real device. We also probably learned a lot about the amplification of x-rays by the casing material that would have been useful during the SDI days of the early 80s. tldr; It was a weapons test, by a weapons lab.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> It was a weapons test, by a weapons lab Beyond a certain point, every energy system is a weapon first. Uncontrolled precedes controlled.
- psmirnov 3y ago
  Interestingly, controlled nuclear fission preceded the weapons tests (Chicago Pile 1), at least chronologically.
  - jboy55 3y ago
    And that's the only "energy system", that I can think of, that is also part of a weapon.
- jboy55 3y ago
  I'm not sure I follow, if I were to define "Energy System" as a system to create or utilize energy, I can think of a half dozen that never were weapons. Solar, Wind, Natural Gas, Coal, Hydro. If you define energy systems to mean nuclear energy systems, then we only have one, which is fission. But in the end, this test was specifically designed to test the nuclear weapons stockpile by feeding real data about implosions, by means of ablation by x-rays, back into the computer simulations that have been developed in the last couple of decades. In review, implosion by ablation of a material by x-rays is the mechanism speculated that the primary fission nuclear device triggers the secondary fusion device in an H-bomb. So, they are not trying to figure out how to produce power or even understand fusion, but they are modeling the characteristics of a specific part of a bomb, so they can know how to test a 50 year old h-bomb without setting one off.

by jboy55 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> It was a weapons test, by a weapons lab Beyond a certain point, every energy system is a weapon first. Uncontrolled precedes controlled.

psmirnov 3y ago
Interestingly, controlled nuclear fission preceded the weapons tests (Chicago Pile 1), at least chronologically.
- jboy55 3y ago
  And that's the only "energy system", that I can think of, that is also part of a weapon.
jboy55 3y ago
I'm not sure I follow, if I were to define "Energy System" as a system to create or utilize energy, I can think of a half dozen that never were weapons. Solar, Wind, Natural Gas, Coal, Hydro. If you define energy systems to mean nuclear energy systems, then we only have one, which is fission. But in the end, this test was specifically designed to test the nuclear weapons stockpile by feeding real data about implosions, by means of ablation by x-rays, back into the computer simulations that have been developed in the last couple of decades. In review, implosion by ablation of a material by x-rays is the mechanism speculated that the primary fission nuclear device triggers the secondary fusion device in an H-bomb. So, they are not trying to figure out how to produce power or even understand fusion, but they are modeling the characteristics of a specific part of a bomb, so they can know how to test a 50 year old h-bomb without setting one off.