8 ms·
Los Alamos is capturing images of explosions at 7 millionths of a second
- LAsteNERD 1y agoFascinating look into the dynamic imaging capabilities at Los Alamos National Lab—essentially, how the U.S. is able to analyze nuclear-level explosive events without actually conducting nuclear tests. The Lab uses multiple systems to image these high-speed events: • pRad uses proton radiography to get 20–40 frames of a detonation, with material-level resolution based on density. • DARHT uses dual-axis x-ray imaging to create 3D snapshots from two angles, ideal for testing whether the computational models built from pRad hold up. • Scorpius (in development) will take this a step further by using subcritical plutonium in a new accelerator at NNSS, capturing multiple high-resolution frames just nanoseconds apart. The fact that they can tailor experiments based on frame-by-frame behavior of individual materials under explosive stress feels like the real-world version of “bullet time” physics modeling. The margins of error come down to billionths of a second.
- josh2600 1y agoThank you for contextualizing this. We are truly living in a wild part of the space time continuum.
- sci-designer 1y agoWow, this is wild. billionths of a second?!
- scrlk 1y agoI'm reminded of Grace Hopper's famous nanoseconds lecture: https://youtu.be/gYqF6-h9Cvg?t=78 https://youtu.be/gYqF6-h9Cvg?t=78
- LosAlamosNerd 1y agoOh, I haven't watched that before.
- HPsquared 1y ago1 ns * c = 1 ft, to put in perspective: 7 μs * c is 1.3 miles. (Protip: just type "7 μs * c in miles" into Google)
- BearOso 1y agoNot quite. The article says hundreds of nanoseconds, which would be in the 10 millionths range. Or if you take the title literally, 143ns per image. That's in line with the fastest CCDs, so not unimaginable.
- mapt 1y ago"Millionths", abbreviated "mths of a second" here for... reasons... Known to the entire world, including American STEM people, as a microsecond.
- bombela 1y agoAnything to avoid using the proper units, you wouldn't want the Americans audience to be enlightened wouldn't you.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dez11de 1y agoPics or it didn’t happen.
- dylan604 1y agoYou could watch it, but you'd die of natural causes before it finished
- LAsteNERD 1y agodepending on the experiment, could be unnatural causes.
- LAsteNERD 1y agohttps://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-stockpile-stewardship#:~:text=arms%20in%20celebration.-,(Left),-From%20top%20to https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
- paradox460 1y agoFor more on this, look at the DAHRT project. It occurred up the hill a bit from LANSCE, in DX instead, but did similar things
- tandr 1y agoPardon for the old meme here, but... "Pics, or did not happened!"?
- cosmicgadget 1y agoYeah I kind of expected explosionpron not camera rig diagrams.
- meager_wikis 1y agoEvery time I read about one of the national labs doing this research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean this output will fade away in time.
- gosub100 1y ago[flagged]
- baxtr 1y agoCan you share any data on your "What ifs"?
- gosub100 1y ago[flagged]
- gameman144 1y ago> Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data. I mean, you're technically right, but that doesn't invalidate anything the parent commenter said. I could equally ask "What if it turned out that turpentine was actually _healthier_ than water?". Like, yeah, if that assertion turned out to be the case and you rejected the new data, you'd be following dogma rather than data. That doesn't mean that the assertion is likely to actually be true though.
- lawlessone 1y ago>What if DOGE savings create more money for important science? >Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data. I've upvoted your comment to give you time to show us your data.
- MeetingsBrowser 1y agoA recent senate report says the government spent >$21 billion in the last 6 months on salaries for people who cannot work because of DOGE. There’s one data point against the original comments assumption or intention
- bombela 1y ago7mths? What unit is that. Did they mean 7μs resolution? How is that special? I see youtubers doing nanoseconds. edit: here is the important information in this article. > Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart. So 0.1μs or 100ns temporal resolution 3D X-ray.
- tngranados 1y agoThe first line of the articles says "seven-millionths of a second", which would be 1/7μs or 0,14μs. They also mention that the camera shot 16 frames in that period, so that would be once every 0,00875μs or once every 8,75ns Youtubers are a couple of magnitudes away from that, AFAIK
- SECProto 1y agoI would say you described "one seven millionth" of a second (1/7,000,000 s) "Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7μs). They take 20 to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given camera might be as low as 1.4μs per frame.
- alberth 1y agoSaying ~140k photos per second would have been a more understanding stat if only the article framed it that way.
- thfuran 1y agoYes, but they said seven-millionths of a second, not seven millionths of a second. Technically they're right that that's what it means, but I'd expect an editor to recommend against that phrasing in favor of the one you used to avoid confusion.
- thaumasiotes 1y agoWell, it's true that the article says "seven-millionths". I would guess it's a lot more likely that this is an editing failure, introducing a hyphen where no hyphen should be, than that they meant to divide a second into seven million equal parts. For one thing, as SECProto alludes to, English would normally require you to say "less than a seven-millionth of a second" if that was what you meant. There's no such thing as saying "less than weeks". You have to specify less than how many weeks. less than (seven) (millionths of a second) ordinary grammar, ordinary unit choice less than (seven millionths of a second) improper grammar, bizarre unit choice.
- throwaway290 1y agoError 404.
- cco 1y agoWhy are science communicators so consistently missing the mark? Is it not obvious that if you're writing an article proclaiming to capture _explosions_ at 7mths of a second, people want to see some pictures of said explosions? Clearly they're understanding that explosions are a hook to grab the reader's attention, but then they just don't include any of the resulting pictures? C'mon y'all! We need to do better here!
- LAsteNERD 1y agohttps://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
- junon 1y ago404 for me in Germany.
- qingcharles 1y agohttps://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-stockpile-stewardship https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
- LosAlamosNerd 1y agohttp://bit.ly/45hDNnK http://bit.ly/45hDNnK
- ooterness 1y agoPage not found :(
- qingcharles 1y agohttps://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-stockpile-stewardship https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
- nxobject 1y agoI imagine this falls under the remit of "nuclear warhead research without actual warheads".
- rtkwe 1y ago> When it’s ready, experiments at Scorpius will be similar to DARHT but with the added complexity of using subcritical amounts of plutonium instead of surrogate materials. They basically explicitly say that without just coming out and saying it. This kind of hyper fast explosion analysis and photography is a big part of making implosion bombs work properly. edit: actually they just say it, they don't have to be coy everyone knows the US and other countries study this and it doesn't violate the NTBT because it's sub critical. > essential to the Lab’s stockpile stewardship mission because it helps scientists test and understand the fundamental characteristics of materials and explosive events to inform computational models and analyses without ever detonating an actual weapon.
- getpost 1y agoIt's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but I'm reminded of the ~10^12 fps (1.7 ps exposures) demonstrated in work at MIT[0], which was for a completely different application. [0] https://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/ https://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/ EDIT: Video with explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk
- avodonosov 1y agoAre the images available?
- amelius 1y agoDo the images match the simulations?
- zenmac 1y agoCan we see some these pictures?
- noobermin 1y agoSoon to be defunded too I suppose.
- LAsteNERD 1y agoDiscussion continues, with more on dynamic imaging and the labs, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44876919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44876919