The half-life being shorter means that radioactive decay is more intense. Barium-141 has the most intense decay radiation in the list shown, but it's a threat for less time. This is why you should stay indoors after a nuclear strike for as long as possible: it reduces contact with the short half-life radioisotopes in the environment until several half-lives, meaning that a significant portion of the radioisotopes have decayed away into more stable, less dangerous elements.
@darkscienceyt Additional information, a "half-life" means it's the time period during which half of the remaining material will decay away. During the next half-life, you have a quarter of the remaining amount, and so on. It's possible for more or less of it to *actually* decay during the period, and a detectable amount of radiation isn't necessarily life-threatening. The key elements of dealing with a radioactive environment are time, distance, and shielding in order to control your radiation dose. This means limiting your exposure time, as well as factoring in decay time, and putting distance or shielding (or both) between yourself and the radiation source.
So unless you’re somehow capable of staying in a shelter for 29 years, I guess strive to get to 8 days at least before making short trips only if necessary?
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor know that mate, I just didn't put much effort to build proper message BTW thanks for explanation, to be more precise it's high energy wave
I am getting so tired of longer RUclips videos that give you the complete history of whatever they’re talking about before they get to the point. I like this video a lot!
Great vid overall. important clarification: the incandescent light from the initial flash is not caused by excited electrons. While all the matter in the initial flash is excited plasma, the heat is caused by the electromagnetic separation of the daughter nuclei being accelerated away from one another at extreme speeds. These nuclei then crash into the surrounding matter and superheat it as well. While the electrons are also at extremely high temperatures and ionized, they have extremely low mass when compared to the nuclei of the matter around them. As such, the majority of the incandescent light radiated in the initial flash is from the super-heated nuclei rather than atomic emission from excited electrons. Also, being incandescent light, the emitted wavelengths cover the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to long-wave infrared and microwaves. However, at first, the most intense radiation is in the shortest end of the spectrum.
I've read that high-speed photos of the gamma photons emitted by the event heating the tower guy wires to incandescence (before the fireball expanded enough to consume them) is what gave Teller/Ulam the idea of how to use that radiation flux to compress the fusion fuel in the "super". Pure genius. Pure, evil genius.
This short video contains some of the most striking images I've ever seen documenting the explosion process. I suggest the content creator consider re-working the video to break out the process for fission based atomic explosions vs. thermonuclear explosions (two-stage hydrogen weapons utilizing fusion) so the viewer can understand the difference between the two
Footage from the Operation Greenhouse shot "Dog" gives some sense of scale thanks to having been exploded at ground level and vegetation contrasting against the fireball
There are a couple effects that go with the Fireball segment, though they only pertain to the visuals rather than the destructive effects: 1) The double-pulse. It's caused by superheating of air directly surrounding the fireball, which causes it to become opaque. This leads to a short period where the shockwave obscures the light of the fireball before it cools down enough to become transparent again. 2) The rope-trick effect. The "sparks" and "spikes" seen in nuclear blast footage is created by solid matter, whether it be the bomb casing or the tower that the bomb cab sits on (as well as the guy wires stabilizing it). Solid matter transfers heat a lot faster than air and water, which causes said matter to vaporize faster than the shockwave itself.
The x-rays and UV waves coming from the initial chain reaction and the SUPER high-temperature actually cause the air itself to become incandescent and emit light. If you can wrap your head around what would make the air you breathe emit light then you're one up on a lot of people. 😉👍#physics
The rope trick effect is caused by solids yes. It however has nothing to do with heat transfers rate. It's just more opaque to the radiation, therefore it eats up a larger portion of the energy of that flash and so heats up faster.
For the blast - an important component of the shock wave is the mach stem which is created from the initial blastwave expansion combined with the blast reflection off the ground.
This is why weapons planners calculate the optimum blast height of the ordnance they plan on using against particular targets. Depending on the vulnerability of particular targets to blast effects, it may be better maximizing blast effects over the largest area possible. On the other hand, if you're going after hardened targets -- often underground -- a surface or subsurface burst may be warranted, as the fireball's expansion shoves aside the earth around it. It also creates greater shockwaves in the ground, potentially crushing underground facilities not close to the detonation.
1:04 - "When a radioactive nuclei is struck with a neutron ...." 2:47 - "The heat from splitting a radioactive nuclei is over 100 million degrees Fahrenheit." Come on, DS .... the singular of "nuclei" is "nucleus."
@@AE-yp8ty in as much as temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of atoms. It is thought that the speed of the recoiling nuclear fragments is roughly 8000 miles per Second. That velocity is associated with this temperature
It is not correct to compare the Chernobyl accident to a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl explosion can be compared to the pulverization of a large amount of long-radiating radioactive material: a so-called dirty bomb. Chernobyl has become an uninhabitable area for millennia, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt and have become flourishing cities again.
teller light... "So, this is an image of Teller light from a nuclear detonation, the flash of light is actually not an explosion as you would think of it, and the bombs casing is still fully intact. The rectangle being illuminated is the actual device in the shot cab. What is happening here is the sheer amount of xrays coming off the collapsing core is superheating the air to the point of incandescence. After this initial burst, the air will return to transparent, and you will see the flash of the actual bomb bursting. This is what leads to the distinctive double flash that nuclear weapons are known for, and one way we tracked nuclear weapon testing early on."
Yeah but this video was a little misleading. It made out like the longer the half life is, the more deadly and concerning the fallout product. In reality, it's a tradeoff. The longer the half life, the less radioactivity it has at any given time, so therefore, generally speaking, the less dangerous it is. When working with uranium, your primary concern is usually the chemical toxicity, rather than the radioactivity. It just isn't so much of a radioactive hazard like Sr90 is.
That's Uranium 235. Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. Keep in mind there are a lot of naturally occurring radioactive elements in our rocks and soil, including uranium. Small amounts of radiation including background sources generally don't cause health problems.
The U-238 (that is only about 10% of the uranium in a bomb) has a half-life of 4.5 billion years - the age of the Earth, and its is exceeded by a good many other isotopes. See Wikipedia, search for "isotopes by half-life".
Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Since the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, the amount of Uranium-238 that had existed at the time of the earth's birth has now reduced to half.
3:09 Kudos to the manufacturer of the camera for being able to record and keep the quality of filming even when the paint from the cars is being vaporized by the blast.
Actually the largest US test, Castle Bravo was kind of failure, because 2½ times larger than estimated yield simply destroyed so much of equipment meant to record data. Along with causing lots of damage to base structures of testing operation in other end of atoll supposedly safe from major damage. (though evacuated) ruclips.net/video/PvDvN5oYoZw/видео.html
One of my only problems with Oppenheimer is the the explosion was portrayed as yellow orange and boiling when I think it’s more white/blue and more smooth in appearance at least at first
The first flash is sure more blueish, both from the temperature (wien law) and for the ionizing of nitrogen (blue) and Oxygen (green/cyan). The burning cloud is more red/orange/white
My FAVORITE episode!! I've sat and watched the footage on Atomic Central's channel so many times - it's amazing to me that a vision of the most destructive forces man has created can be so scary and beautiful at the same time. The shock wave footage is particularly interesting to me, but the whole explosion is amazing to watch. I'm glad the steps were dissected and explained in such detail too. My favorites are the detonations over the ocean of H Bombs
Some people think that Dead and Decomposing Bodies are Beautiful too ... That's why they will make and detonate such disgusting Bombs or go shooting rampages ...
No no no, fission bomb. As far as I know, we are still working on atoms fusing themselves with one another, which would be much, much more powerful than fission based bombs. Atoms normally stay together due to some force to make an object, but are still independent of one another. We never got two atoms to fuse, become one so to speak, as it requires tremendous amount of energy to do so. In the Large Hadron Collider scientists make atoms move at or near the speed of light and as the name suggests, collide atoms with one another. So far they've been able only to break atoms apart into a host of smaller elements, a zoo of never seen before elements as one scientist described it. I don't know if it's quarks or something even smaller, but as you can see, even to this day they are working on atom fusion, which would change our world (and bills for energy) forever, or we already did it, but they're keeping it from us, the general public, just like the Manhattan Project, GPS and the internet before (which was all made for the military; it is said the US army is ahead of the world some 30-50 years, which seems like a stretch, but who really knows).
@@belladonnahigh9206 I'm no physicist, but quite a few sources I've read describe a thermonuclear bomb (or H-Bomb) as a 2 stage bomb utilizing fission for the primary detonation, to create a FUSION reaction for the secondary - which creates the vast bulk of the explosion. I know (a tiny) something of the mammoth high speed centrifuge type collider you're talking about - and from what I remember only in the past 2 years have there successfully been a fusion reaction achieved as it pertains to atomic energy for civilian use. This is something in which I have quite a bit of interest, but you seem to have a much better depth of understanding on all this. Pl take a look at the Wikipedia article "Thermonuclear Weapon" and lmk what you think
@@monto39 I'm no physicist either, I just heard in a documentary, that what we call real fusion has never been achieved, but I heard a long time ago, so things might have changed. I only know that fusion is much, much more powerful than fission, and I just checked a video about (how they're generally called) atom bombs and in it they claim that indeed Hydrogen bombs utilize fusion, hence it is so powerful. I also read about Castle Bravo specifically, or rather listened, where it was 2x stronger than it was supposed to be, stronger than scientists have anticipated, as they thought only (it's general, I can be completely wrong) some material will be utilized in the explosion, while the rest, before it can react, will be vaporized by the explosion. Well, they were wrong, much more of the substance/material took part in the chain reaction and the explosion was much bigger (2x, maybe more, writing this as I recall it). Afterall it was an experiment, which was very costly in human lives. Maybe if they calculated it right there wouldn't be any casualties. OR... it is all a big lie (you don't know if anything they say is real) and they absolutely knew how big of a fireball it would be, they just needed human test subjects, to know the aftereffects. Vietnam war was started on a false premise, two Vietcong boats attacking a US destroyer, how convenient. We know it's a lie, cause even the president at the time stated so "for all I know, they were shooting at whales" or something to that effect. There were never any boats. Just like no evidence of WMD in Iraq, a country that did not pose ANY threat to America, and no evidence of Bin Laden ever being killed, just a statement from the president, which conveniently enough happened during the election season. No picture of the body, buried at sea (sure), and no interviews with the commandos taking part in the op (who I heard, don't know if true, mysteriously died one by one), big nothing. That's also probably, in my opinion, a lie, a lie that helped Obama get reelected. You have a gov. full of liars, cheaters and ppl who generally don't give af about the population, they want total control and riches, and only one person was a thorn in their side, so they completely assassinated his character, accused of things they do themselves, bc he was an outsider, who was very liked before becoming the president. Anyway, that's my take as an European. I gave all those examples, to show you how the explanation for Castle Bravo could be the same thing, a big lie. Not how it works, but the alleged miscalculation. Trivia: Sponge Bob (never watched) happens in the exact place where the bomb went off. Also Japan has its own name for it (third bombing or something).
In a nuclear detonation, the energy released can be classified as electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays) or kinetic energy of the fission products. The kinetic energy results from the mutual repulsion of protons in the nucleus. At the short distances, the Coulomb repulsive forces are enormous, and accelerate the fission fragments to a speed that is a considerable fraction of the speed of light. These accelerated fragments form a spherical, expanding shockwave, which is the fireball. The shock quickly heats up to hundreds of millions of degrees forming the fireball, or more correctly, a fire bubble.
There's a few mistakes for such a short video. a) initial flash is not electrons relaxing from more energetic states. The nuclear reaction itself shoots out photons. Foolproof way to check: the ionization energy of the particles involved are lower than gamma ray's energy. It doesn't matter how much energy you feed the electrions, it'll ionize before it gets enough energy for a gamma ray spontaneous emission. b) the "so much energy that it excites electrons into releasing gamma rays" is pure nonsense. The amount of total energy has nothing to do with the wavelegnth of the EM radiation. A tiny amount of fission producing less energy per second than a light bulb will still emit the same high frequency EM radiation. Also, as mentioned before, it's not electrons relaxing that releases the gamma rays in the first place. c) the shockwave does not travel at 780 mph. That's the speed of sound in normal atmosphere. Shockwave is, *by definition* , a disturbance that goes faster than the sound speed of whatever medium it's traveling in, and that distinction is actually relevant. There's a lot of weird phenomenons in shockwaves that's not present in subsonic perssure waves. These are just what immdeiately jumped out at me. There's parobably a lot more I missed.
That high altitude test was Housatonic, one of my favourites. The last air-dropped nuke by the US and the most accurate detonation, within 100 feet of the intended target. At over 9 megatons, it's thermal pulse goes on for many seconds. It was basically a re-do of the Androscoggin test that failed, because the secondary was a fizzle.
Nice work describing how differences in density create the mushroom cloud shape --- I've watched more than a few videos like this over the years, and that's one bit of information I'd never come across until now. Thanks!
6:41-6:45: Footage from CHERNOBYL (2019) is based on a real tragedy. Of spectators who welcomed fallout from the destroyed reactor at Chernobyl, none survived.
I would consider adding stage 6a (or stage 7). The absorption of longer lived isotopes into living creatures. Strontium is absorbed (and deposited) like Calcium, by plants and animal bones. Iodine will accumulate in Thyroid glands. Only treatment is to "FLOOD" you system with "clean" Calcium and Iodine, preventively.
Quantum physics and fission/fusion is a fascinating topic. Years ago, I couldn't believe when I heard it for the first time that there are natural nuclear reactors occuring on the Earth's surface being active for hundreds of years. With all the needed parts to keep the balance, like moderators, cooling, water and the uranium. Isn't that fascinating.
ask Wikipedia for Natural nuclear fission reactor (Geological situation in Gabon leading to natural nuclear fission reactors). Natural nuclear fission reactors are only known in two uranium deposits in the world, the Oklo and Bangombédeposits of the Franceville basin: Gabon. Since 1982, five new reactor zones have been discovered in these deposits and studied since 1989 in a cooperative European program @@blndjamesblndParis
Oklo, Gabon. It was originally discovered by the French who seperated and refined the uranium from the mine. They were expecting a certain ratio of Uranium 238 to Uranium 235 and the numbers were "off". there was much less U235 than they expected and it was a concern that maybe someone was diverting some of the U235 from their production facilities. The difference was between 0.72% that they expected and 0.717% that they were extracting. After investigating they found an increase in non-radioactive decay products in the mineral samples. (things like radium and uranium will naturally decay down to lead that is non-radioactive). Looking at the geology they found that around 1.7 billion years ago there was an area of high Uranium concentration that was functioning as a natural reactor. Uranium can be water soluble and it formed deposits. Water in the uranium ore acted as a natural moderator (it slows down neutrons and increases their capture cross-section). When the rock was wet the reactor would turn itself on. When the rocks got hot and it drove out the water the reactor would turn itself off. It did this for a few hundred-thousand years.
One thing that continues to hauntingly impress me is that humans figured out and unlocked the power of the universe and can harness that power at will. It seems to me that the universe should have guarded this secret a little more. Humans are the most unique organisms ever to live on earth, for good or ill. What other living thing can come close to unlocking this power?
One thing, tho - critical mass can be easily achieved without compressing anything. It was designed like that for Fat Man for one reason - the other firing mechanism, a gun-type used in Little Boy, was impractical with a plutonium core. It would be too big or have too high risk of predetonating, not in a sense of exploding aboard the plane but in a sense of fizzling, creating a very small yield which wouldn't do more damage than a normal bomb. Also there was no "neutron gun" in any of these designs. Both plutonium and uranium, when decaying, emit their own neutrons. Critical mass is when every split event makes exactly one new split event - in a subcritical this is below one, and in supercritical mass this is above one (which makes it a chain reaction we need). So to fire those things they've had to invent a way of bringing a subcritical mass to a supercritical one - which can be achieved in many ways: by adding a neutron reflector around a subcritical mass (neutrons leaving the mass bounce back into it, raising the chance of making them split another atom), adding two subcritical masses (gun-type firing system used in Little Boy) or changing the geometry of subcritical mass, because geometry plays a role as well (this was done by compressing the plutonium sphere in Fat Man).
This is true, but Little Boy was a very inefficient design. The implosion design became the standard one for all fission weapons to include the hydrogen bomb's fission stage.
@@dmac7128 yep, gun-type is not efficient, but for the fissile U-235 it's pretty much the only way to go, as this metal is not as easily compressible as the Pu-239. It was also simpler to design than implosion type, but thus less safe.
I am a Baby Boomer 67 Yrs old (born in 1956), We Boomers lived under a nuclear threat from Kindergarten until just before the fall of the Soviet Union. We were taught Duck and Cover drills, had neighborhood nuclear attack sirens that were tested daily ( during the 1960's) and were advised to always know where our closest fallout shelter was. I came to believe that it would be better to be vaporized in an a attack, than endure the very real horror of living a post nuclear apocalypse. @@babycarrotz32
Where did you get the source for the diagram at 1:32? I've been researching nukes recreationally for a long time, but this is the first ive heard of the little neutron gun being a part of the implosion type design.
I didn't find the diagram, I made it in adobe illustrator. The diagram is not an accurate depiction of the implosion device. The neutron gun is placed off to the side to help illustrate how the implosion sequence works. I believe the neutron gun is placed in the middle of the charges, behind the plutonium core.
The zipper initiator was used starting in about 1955 in the Teapot series. It is a linear accelerator that frees neutrons by spallattion. It's not aimed; the neutrons go in every direction. They are outside the explosion material since neutrons can travel through normal matter essentially freely.
@@sam2902it’s totally healthy that I often fall asleep to Matt Bunn’s “How Nuclear Bombs Work” lectures, right? Surely that’s some kind of mental health red flag, but those lecture videos manage to translate something that begets unimaginable horror & violence into an unobtrusive, almost ASMR-like documentary I can reliably snooze to.
Things I learned from this video: 1. That old footage of the paint flying off of vehicles is a result of vaporization caused by heat from the initial flash, which occurs before the shockwave hits. I had previously thought it was the result of the shockwave hitting, but shockwaves don't arrive in stages like that- they're inherently plosive, so they arrive all at once with an immediate "attack." That's why in the footage of the house being struck, you can see the paint flying off right *before* the shockwave arrives and starts to tear the structure apart. 2. I had previously thought that the initial flash of light and ionizing radiation was emitted from the atomic nucleus. I had no idea that it's black body radiation- the same way that animals glow in the thermal infrared spectrum, or a hot iron glows red hot, or an even hotter iron glows white or blue hot... these explosions essentially "glow gamma ray hot," X-ray hot, UV hot, blue hot, white hot, red hot, etc. Things that I already knew about which I think the video slightly misrepresented: 1. Radioactivity and half-life are directly and inversely proportional. This means that the isotopes which have short half-lives (anywhere from fractions of a second, to a few weeks) are VERY radioactive, but at least they decay quickly. They basically dump *all* of their energy in a very short time span. This is why potassium iodide is distributed in places with fallout... the video kinda makes it sound like iodine-131 isn't much of a threat- in reality it's a relatively short-term threat, but a very serious one. Isotopes with super long half-lives (hundreds of millions of years or more) are not very harmful at all, because they emit their energy so gradually. Billions of years of half-lives, might as well not be radioactive at all (For example, thorium-232's half-life is slightly longer than the current age of the universe, , and bismuth-209's half-life is billions of times the current age of the universe, and in the case of bismuth it wasn't even *known* to be radioactive until a few years ago, for this very reason). It's the ones that have medium-length half-lives (anywhere from a few years to tens of thousands of years) that really render places uninhabitable for long periods of time, because they're in that sweet spot of being both still pretty radioactive, but also having longevity with regards to timescales relevant to human life and human settlements. Especially if they're absorbed by plant life and contaminate the food chain (cesium-137 and strontium-90), these are particularly devastating for habitability. Whereas something like plutonium, while it does sit in that sweet spot, it's not exactly absorbed into the biosphere the same way.
this was really interesting. i would suggest, though, that you don't fade to black on video & audio so fast between each stage. let some visual or audio linger a bit more
I never realized until just now the when it went off at the very first time. There were bolts of electricity shooting from the ground to this clouds above it. Did you see that it happens very fast? Watch it at the very beginning, right when it explodes, you'll see. Massive bolts of electricity arking up and hitting the clouds above it. I've never seen that before
The decay of xenon atoms is extremely rare because it occurs on such an incredibly long timescale. Only one atom out of 10^22 atoms decays in a year, which is like finding a needle in a haystack of haystacks, 10 times in a row. The only nuclear-decay process in the universe with a longer half-life than xenon-124 is the decay of tellurium-128, which has a half-life 2.2 septillion years, or around 160 trillion times the age of the universe. However, this vanishingly rare event has only been calculated on paper.
As nuggetospaghetto said, the rings are clouds being pushed by the shockwave and heat. People weren't blown up by Fat Man and Little Boy, they were either vaporized or burned. The shadow you're referencing is scorched or "bleach" concrete, wood etc. from the pulse of radiation from the detonation. The same thing happens when you wear a shirt and get sunburned. The areas that are covered have no burn marks, but exposed skin (forearms, neck) do as they were exposed. The "shadows" aren't actually shadows, just spots where the backdrop was covered by a person or object and therefore not scorched by the radiation.
As for shadows, they are shadows "of" pepole. The fireball vaporized them, and created a human shaped shadow on a wall. Of the people who died, they were the "lucky" ones, if you can call it that.
Longer half-life means less radioactive particles emitted in a unit of time. Half-life of 700 million years sounds scary, but you need to literally eat this stuff for it to have any effect.
You're outdated on this, as far as materials and devastation goes, but, the basic physics and mechanics are the same. I always feel like people don't understand just how horrific nukes really are. It ain't no joke, folks!
If you want the "complete" explanation, get the book "Blast Wave," by Hans Bethe, et al. The first chapter is written by Bethe and explains the sequence of events from the moment of detonation through shock waves at different distances. After that - you need a really good understanding of mathematics for the remaining chapters to make sense. Another book (which can be difficult to find) is, "The Effects of Atomic Weapons," - Los Alamos National Laboratory (Samuel Glasstone, Executive Editor).
Re the emission of light - it's not just ecited electronic orbitals but one nucleus becoming two tears the orbitals of the orignal Pu nucleus to bits and the electrons then have to settle into orbitals around two separate nucleii. Some of the orbitals will be really "deep" and emit extremely high energy photons. One notable feature of the multi-frame timelapse photos taken of the Trinity test is the appearance of a bubble around the explosion in which a sea of stars appears. I'm guessing that the highly compressed air forms a lens which greatly distorts and diffracts light from the stars in the night sky.
The fireball is more correctly a fire bubble. The interior is pretty much a vacuum, since the fission products and vaporized bomb structure form a fast moving shock. The vacuum sucks up the dirt from the ground to form the stem of the mushroom cloud.
It's like standing in a 4-foot swimming pool. You push your hands down sharply into the water. You create a sharp disturbance that caves the water in (explosion). In a second, the displaced water rushes up into the air. The shock wave reaches back across the pool, as the water gets sucked in to replace what you just pushed down. This is why, on films, you see an explosion, immediately followed by a sucking reversal of the air. It's the reversal of airflow that pulls all the shit up into the atmosphere, then it just gently falls down over the Dollar General. Damn; I wanted that Hamburger Helper.
The fireball is superheated air and under extreme pressure, not a vacuum. Once the shockwave travels outward, the air becomes less dense than the surrounding air, creating a buoyancy effect. This creates the famous stem of the mushroom cloud that sucks material up from the ground.
@@charliefoxtrot5001 i disagree....the fireball is not a virial mass. When fission occurs the fragments of the nucleus recoil from each other, and this kinetic energy is directed outwards at relativistic speeds. This forms a thin spherical shock composed of the fission products and bomb debris. A bubble. And very low pressure on the interior. The shock, in turn, slams into the surrounding atmosphere and heats it up to x-ray temperatures. That, and the decay of unstable fission products forms the fire ball, or more correctly fire bubble. It is this low pressure bubble that sucks up the debris from the ground.
@@user-cr5yy4te3i Disagree all you want, but physics is physics. Fission releases an enormous amount in energy within a few microseconds in the form of electromagnetic and ionizing radiation. Most of it is x-rays. Soft x-ray radiation superheats the surrounding air in a matter of microseconds, creating the fireball. The fireball is hot plasma, which ain't vacuum. The shock wave from the exploding bomb travels from the bomb within the fireball and then exiting the fireball, at which point it temporarily obscures the fireball. This is the famous double flash effect with nuclear detonations. Once the shockwave has passed, the superheated air is simply so less dense than the surrounding air that it travels upward, creating the mushroom cloud. By the way, all large explosions create a mushroom cloud, as explosions are nothing but superheated gases that are suddenly created. www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/fireball.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud
Plutonium is more poisonous and carcinogenic because of its chemistry than because of it's radioactivity. The half life is therefore not the issue with exposure.
The segment on isotope half-lives begs a certain question, regarding the unspent uranium and plutonium in the war bombs: If their half-lives make them so dangerous, then how is it that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt, repopulated, and are now far larger and more active than they were during the war...? The answer is fairly simple for those who studied the history. Remember that there are three main groups of radioactive particles: Alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha particles are the most dangerous as they emit the highest levels of radiation poisoning, but they cannot penetrate just anything; even a sheet of ordinary paper can stop alpha particles. Beta particles give off less poisoning than alpha, though still dangerous to human life; and they can penetrate light barriers, but heavier barriers can stop them (e.g., wood or concrete). Gamma particles give off the lowest degree of radiation poisoning but can penetrate anything save for very heavy materials like lead. The 98.3% of U-235 in Little Boy and the 86% of Pu-239 in Fat Man that did not undergo fission were converted into dust, or *alpha* particles. That made it possible to sweep up (so to speak) the mess they caused and permit the two cities to be rebuilt and repopulated. Essentially, the woeful inefficiency of those two bombs *saved* those cities from becoming dead wastelands. On the other hand, Bikini Atoll cannot be inhabited again for a very long time because the "hydrogen" bombs detonated there triggered far more thorough reactions in the fission materials used in them (which amounted to quite a lot), close to 100% efficiency, creating far greater quantities of strontium, cesium, barium, and iodine isotopes and scattering them all across the island chain. It will still take many decades before the decay of those isotopes reaches a point that the chain is safe for rehabilitation again...though maybe not millenia or megayears, as would be the case with unspent uranium or plutonium.
Too bad this video wasn't released before Christopher Nolan had the wise idea of trying to recreate the Trinity explosion with fully practical effects. Including, evidently, a simple gas explosion of a small tower, pyrotechnics played in reverse (yes, I kid you not), and a fireball that looks less like a mushroom cloud than it does a termite mound. Considering it was the climax of a deadly serious movie, it was just embarrassing to watch.
So a few months of sitting indoors should minimize the risk once you survived the blast. But, if you want to be perfectly safe from ionizing radiation stay in the bunker for a little over two billion years.
If only a small amount of plutonium underwent fission, how come Hiroshima and Nagasaki not dangerously radioactive nowadays? Despite having long half-life.
It had its effect even mentioned in video, on the other hand its only 60 kg distributed on a very big area + long half life means it decays very slowly.
Because of the long half life of Plutonium, it does not decay very quickly and therefore is not all that radioactive. The main radiation hazard from the detonation of a fission bomb comes from the fission products that are produced in the explosions. Many short lived isotopes are produced, that account for the overwhelming majority of the produced radiation for the first few months or years after detonation. All of these have half lifes shorter than 90 years, so are mostly decayed by now. There's only 7 isotopes with half lifes over 90 years (they're all over 211.100 years). Because they are comparatively stable, they don't decay as frequently and thus aren't all that radioactive, just like Plutonium-239 with a half life of 24.110 years. The main isotope to worry about after the more short lived isotopes have decayed is Iodine-129, which, despite not being all that radioactive and only being produced in small amounts, poses a health risk because it accumulates in the thyroid gland and causes thyroid cancer. But it is roughly 1 billion times less radioactive than the short lived Iodine-131 that in return decays by half in just 8 days.
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both essentially air bursts. Much of the vaporized plutonium or uranium was disbursed over a very wide area. Ground bursts are much nastier.
@@larrybell726 Yes, that is also an important factor to consider. A ground burst kicks up a lot of dust and other particles into the air that become contaminated with radioactive material and rain down as fallout. An airburst in contrast doesn't create a lot of fallout.
I have read in previous analysis that the Little Boy, Gun type, burned only 1 gram of plutonium and maybe a Pound of Uranium, the rest was as indicated vaporized and scattered causing most of the Fall out. The Fat Man, Implosion, was much more efficient than the Little boy giving more yeild for the same amount fissionable Material. AS the efficiency climbed in weapons development and eventually the H-Bombs the amount of material need dropped to now a 1.5MT 2stage and 3 Stage weapons are in the 10s of lbs not including the safeguards, triggering and shielding. The US and likely the Russian current weapons like the B61, W76, B80 series are less then 700 lbs including the airframe or re-entry vehicles. The weapons 2 day are in the high end 1.5MT to 3MTs down to 40kt weapons. Suitcase devices are between 1.5kt to 5kt and are likely gun type, enough to destroy major buildings from the inside. What is not published much is the warheads in US Cruise missiles, those are rumored to be in the 300 pound total package and yields are from 10Kt to 1MT depending on target. Cruise missile Nuclear Warheads are extremely advanced/efficient because of the need to save weight. Some claim the US Cruise missile Warhead are the size of a large Thermos bottle and in the 30 lb or less weight range. The safety, triggers and shielding make up the bulk of the 300 lbs.
The gun-type device, Little Boy, didn't had Plutonium. It was a Uranium bomb. Less than 1 kg of the overall 64 kg of Uranium underwent fission. Fat Man was the implosion device and had a Plutonium core and a Uranium tamper. About 1 kg of the 6 kg Plutonium underwent fission. Some of the Uranium tamper underwent fission as well. The implosion device is more efficient as it needs significantly less fissionable material. The gun-type device needs more than the critical mass, while the implosion device can do with less.
0:35 Stage 1: Detonation
1:49 Stage 2: The Flash
3:43 Stage 3:: The Fireball
4:14 Stage 4: The Blastwave
5:10 Stage 5:The Mushroom Cloud
6:32 Stage 6: The Fallout
Thanks! Pinned.
stage 7: the mooshroom cloud, made of mushrooms produced by mooshrooms from mushroom island
@@darkscienceyt put it into the description field to create clickable chapters in the video
Umm, Stage 1
... The A$$holes responsible ... and ALL the Stages of Death, Destruction, Misery, Mutations, Cancers 🔥
@@Potatoeheadz123
... Potatoe Head speaks Volumes !!!
The half-life being shorter means that radioactive decay is more intense. Barium-141 has the most intense decay radiation in the list shown, but it's a threat for less time. This is why you should stay indoors after a nuclear strike for as long as possible: it reduces contact with the short half-life radioisotopes in the environment until several half-lives, meaning that a significant portion of the radioisotopes have decayed away into more stable, less dangerous elements.
I didn't know this. Thanks for the additional information!
@darkscienceyt Additional information, a "half-life" means it's the time period during which half of the remaining material will decay away. During the next half-life, you have a quarter of the remaining amount, and so on. It's possible for more or less of it to *actually* decay during the period, and a detectable amount of radiation isn't necessarily life-threatening. The key elements of dealing with a radioactive environment are time, distance, and shielding in order to control your radiation dose. This means limiting your exposure time, as well as factoring in decay time, and putting distance or shielding (or both) between yourself and the radiation source.
Screw that! I'll go out whenever I please, thank you.
So unless you’re somehow capable of staying in a shelter for 29 years, I guess strive to get to 8 days at least before making short trips only if necessary?
basically, stay at least 3 days before going outside after we blow each other up
And if you are wondering; the lines beside the nuclear explosion is smoke rockets to show the shockwaves.
i used to think it was some sort of effect from the nuke itself. i was so disappointed to realize i was wrong 😭
Science is cool, but dark science is cooler.
To create light it have to emitt more energy - obvious.
@@filipek7553 People coming to a channel called Dark Science obviously need light science explained a little more thoroughly.
@@ateacherwhogames8893 it was about Infrared radiation, heat ;)
@@filipek7553infrared radiation is light, but it heats things up and is generated by heat
@@BisexualPlagueDoctor know that mate, I just didn't put much effort to build proper message
BTW thanks for explanation, to be more precise it's high energy wave
This channel is great. To the point, without bullshit. 👍👍
That’s rude!
I am getting so tired of longer RUclips videos that give you the complete history of whatever they’re talking about before they get to the point. I like this video a lot!
@@thedolt9215 that’s disrespectful!
Yes and it will be much better if they use SI units...
@noswim: or hideous background music
Can't grasp the full scale of that Activate Windows watermark.
based af
Great vid overall. important clarification: the incandescent light from the initial flash is not caused by excited electrons. While all the matter in the initial flash is excited plasma, the heat is caused by the electromagnetic separation of the daughter nuclei being accelerated away from one another at extreme speeds. These nuclei then crash into the surrounding matter and superheat it as well. While the electrons are also at extremely high temperatures and ionized, they have extremely low mass when compared to the nuclei of the matter around them. As such, the majority of the incandescent light radiated in the initial flash is from the super-heated nuclei rather than atomic emission from excited electrons. Also, being incandescent light, the emitted wavelengths cover the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to long-wave infrared and microwaves. However, at first, the most intense radiation is in the shortest end of the spectrum.
I've read that high-speed photos of the gamma photons emitted by the event heating the tower guy wires to incandescence (before the fireball expanded enough to consume them) is what gave Teller/Ulam the idea of how to use that radiation flux to compress the fusion fuel in the "super". Pure genius. Pure, evil genius.
teller light
This short video contains some of the most striking images I've ever seen documenting the explosion process. I suggest the content creator consider re-working the video to break out the process for fission based atomic explosions vs. thermonuclear explosions (two-stage hydrogen weapons utilizing fusion) so the viewer can understand the difference between the two
4:46 Bruh it says "Activate Windows" at the bottom lmfao
I'd rather see that than people paying money for Windows
you're laughing because he's smart enough to know you can use windows for free... so what, you're smarter than him because you are paying for it??
I know, right? Just completely changed all the info made available. Who can possibly trust the content now?
this is why Oppenheimer was pretty much a horror movie for me, knowing all of this happened and can happen again with more force is terrifying
😢
I really need to watch that movie. Is it streaming anywhere?
Since the first time I know it back in school I couldn't sleep well.
You SUCK dude
@@babycarrotz32 Basically everywhere on piracy streaming sites
You can never really grasp the full scale of these explosions from a video.
You can if a nuclear detonation occurs while you're watching the video! 🤣
Footage from the Operation Greenhouse shot "Dog" gives some sense of scale thanks to having been exploded at ground level and vegetation contrasting against the fireball
Maybe try it live😎
And how would you know? You pretentious twat.
@@marcse7en HA HA BEZD JOKE IN ALL WURLD
nuclear bombs are the coolest thing that I never wanna see used
Straight to the point, thats the good thing about this channel
There are a couple effects that go with the Fireball segment, though they only pertain to the visuals rather than the destructive effects:
1) The double-pulse. It's caused by superheating of air directly surrounding the fireball, which causes it to become opaque. This leads to a short period where the shockwave obscures the light of the fireball before it cools down enough to become transparent again.
2) The rope-trick effect. The "sparks" and "spikes" seen in nuclear blast footage is created by solid matter, whether it be the bomb casing or the tower that the bomb cab sits on (as well as the guy wires stabilizing it). Solid matter transfers heat a lot faster than air and water, which causes said matter to vaporize faster than the shockwave itself.
Thanks...always wondered what caused these.
Spikes aren't caused by heat conduction in/through material, which is absolutely piss poor slow method of transferring heat:
ruclips.net/video/51bwzEO8XCw/видео.html ruclips.net/video/OR8u__Hcb3k/видео.html
They're caused by extreme radiation intensity of fireball literally vaporizing surfaces.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect
The x-rays and UV waves coming from the initial chain reaction and the SUPER high-temperature actually cause the air itself to become incandescent and emit light. If you can wrap your head around what would make the air you breathe emit light then you're one up on a lot of people. 😉👍#physics
Not to mention that due to the high gamma emission, even with your eyes closed and hands covering your face you would see the light. =/
The rope trick effect is caused by solids yes. It however has nothing to do with heat transfers rate.
It's just more opaque to the radiation, therefore it eats up a larger portion of the energy of that flash and so heats up faster.
For the blast - an important component of the shock wave is the mach stem which is created from the initial blastwave expansion combined with the blast reflection off the ground.
This is why weapons planners calculate the optimum blast height of the ordnance they plan on using against particular targets. Depending on the vulnerability of particular targets to blast effects, it may be better maximizing blast effects over the largest area possible.
On the other hand, if you're going after hardened targets -- often underground -- a surface or subsurface burst may be warranted, as the fireball's expansion shoves aside the earth around it. It also creates greater shockwaves in the ground, potentially crushing underground facilities not close to the detonation.
1:04 - "When a radioactive nuclei is struck with a neutron ...."
2:47 - "The heat from splitting a radioactive nuclei is over 100 million degrees Fahrenheit."
Come on, DS .... the singular of "nuclei" is "nucleus."
Came here to say that bugged me too. Otherwise a great video though! ⚛️
@@AE-yp8ty in as much as temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of atoms. It is thought that the speed of the recoiling nuclear fragments is roughly 8000 miles per Second. That velocity is associated with this temperature
what
@@vladivosdog What did I say that confused you?
I applaud, a simple and informative video how a nuclear bomb works. However there's a mistake, -35F is -37.2C not 1.7C
Indeed, as -40 is the same value in both units
Hey guys, don't get mad but that is an accurate conversion and you don't know that -40 C is not -40 F
-40 F is 0 C
Some shit like that, -1.7 C
@@dsxa918 No, 0C is 32F, the freezing point of distilled water at sea level. -40C is the same temperature as -40F.
It is not correct to compare the Chernobyl accident to a nuclear explosion. The Chernobyl explosion can be compared to the pulverization of a large amount of long-radiating radioactive material: a so-called dirty bomb. Chernobyl has become an uninhabitable area for millennia, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt and have become flourishing cities again.
teller light... "So, this is an image of Teller light from a nuclear detonation, the flash of light is actually not an explosion as you would think of it, and the bombs casing is still fully intact. The rectangle being illuminated is the actual device in the shot cab. What is happening here is the sheer amount of xrays coming off the collapsing core is superheating the air to the point of incandescence. After this initial burst, the air will return to transparent, and you will see the flash of the actual bomb bursting. This is what leads to the distinctive double flash that nuclear weapons are known for, and one way we tracked nuclear weapon testing early on."
Plutonium's half life wasn't a surprise for me, but they 700 Mill from Uranium is insane. It literally cannot fathom that
Yeah but this video was a little misleading. It made out like the longer the half life is, the more deadly and concerning the fallout product. In reality, it's a tradeoff. The longer the half life, the less radioactivity it has at any given time, so therefore, generally speaking, the less dangerous it is.
When working with uranium, your primary concern is usually the chemical toxicity, rather than the radioactivity. It just isn't so much of a radioactive hazard like Sr90 is.
@@kzm1934 perfectly said.
That's Uranium 235. Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. Keep in mind there are a lot of naturally occurring radioactive elements in our rocks and soil, including uranium. Small amounts of radiation including background sources generally don't cause health problems.
The U-238 (that is only about 10% of the uranium in a bomb) has a half-life of 4.5 billion years - the age of the Earth, and its is exceeded by a good many other isotopes. See Wikipedia, search for "isotopes by half-life".
Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Since the earth is about 4.6 billion years old, the amount of Uranium-238 that had existed at the time of the earth's birth has now reduced to half.
3:09
Kudos to the manufacturer of the camera for being able to record and keep the quality of filming even when the paint from the cars is being vaporized by the blast.
4:44
Those are amazing, considering the paint isn't the only thing to disappear in the light.
theres another video showing how they did that.... used mirrors i think
@@jairomendoza238The mirror manufacturer definitely has some insane build quality also lol
The cameras were installed in bunkers underground and used periscopes with quartz glass IIRC.
Actually the largest US test, Castle Bravo was kind of failure, because 2½ times larger than estimated yield simply destroyed so much of equipment meant to record data.
Along with causing lots of damage to base structures of testing operation in other end of atoll supposedly safe from major damage. (though evacuated)
ruclips.net/video/PvDvN5oYoZw/видео.html
One of my only problems with Oppenheimer is the the explosion was portrayed as yellow orange and boiling when I think it’s more white/blue and more smooth in appearance at least at first
The first flash is sure more blueish, both from the temperature (wien law) and for the ionizing of nitrogen (blue) and Oxygen (green/cyan).
The burning cloud is more red/orange/white
@@Familia_nepal_nepal_do_mal12 Interesting! It just seemed to me like they went overboard trying to show how hot and boiling and scary it was lol
This was actually really educational. The concept of nuclear bombs has always been super fascinating to me so
Even better the second time around
XD
My FAVORITE episode!! I've sat and watched the footage on Atomic Central's channel so many times - it's amazing to me that a vision of the most destructive forces man has created can be so scary and beautiful at the same time. The shock wave footage is particularly interesting to me, but the whole explosion is amazing to watch. I'm glad the steps were dissected and explained in such detail too. My favorites are the detonations over the ocean of H Bombs
Nuclear Vault channel has an hour long video on Operation Ivy, the first fusion bomb made and exploded. It's very informative.
Some people think that Dead and Decomposing Bodies are Beautiful too ...
That's why they will make and detonate such disgusting Bombs or go shooting rampages ...
No no no, fission bomb. As far as I know, we are still working on atoms fusing themselves with one another, which would be much, much more powerful than fission based bombs.
Atoms normally stay together due to some force to make an object, but are still independent of one another. We never got two atoms to fuse, become one so to speak, as it requires tremendous amount of energy to do so. In the Large Hadron Collider scientists make atoms move at or near the speed of light and as the name suggests, collide atoms with one another. So far they've been able only to break atoms apart into a host of smaller elements, a zoo of never seen before elements as one scientist described it. I don't know if it's quarks or something even smaller, but as you can see, even to this day they are working on atom fusion, which would change our world (and bills for energy) forever, or we already did it, but they're keeping it from us, the general public, just like the Manhattan Project, GPS and the internet before (which was all made for the military; it is said the US army is ahead of the world some 30-50 years, which seems like a stretch, but who really knows).
@@belladonnahigh9206 I'm no physicist, but quite a few sources I've read describe a thermonuclear bomb (or H-Bomb) as a 2 stage bomb utilizing fission for the primary detonation, to create a FUSION reaction for the secondary - which creates the vast bulk of the explosion.
I know (a tiny) something of the mammoth high speed centrifuge type collider you're talking about - and from what I remember only in the past 2 years have there successfully been a fusion reaction achieved as it pertains to atomic energy for civilian use.
This is something in which I have quite a bit of interest, but you seem to have a much better depth of understanding on all this. Pl take a look at the Wikipedia article "Thermonuclear Weapon" and lmk what you think
@@monto39 I'm no physicist either, I just heard in a documentary, that what we call real fusion has never been achieved, but I heard a long time ago, so things might have changed.
I only know that fusion is much, much more powerful than fission, and I just checked a video about (how they're generally called) atom bombs and in it they claim that indeed Hydrogen bombs utilize fusion, hence it is so powerful.
I also read about Castle Bravo specifically, or rather listened, where it was 2x stronger than it was supposed to be, stronger than scientists have anticipated, as they thought only (it's general, I can be completely wrong) some material will be utilized in the explosion, while the rest, before it can react, will be vaporized by the explosion. Well, they were wrong, much more of the substance/material took part in the chain reaction and the explosion was much bigger (2x, maybe more, writing this as I recall it). Afterall it was an experiment, which was very costly in human lives. Maybe if they calculated it right there wouldn't be any casualties.
OR... it is all a big lie (you don't know if anything they say is real) and they absolutely knew how big of a fireball it would be, they just needed human test subjects, to know the aftereffects. Vietnam war was started on a false premise, two Vietcong boats attacking a US destroyer, how convenient. We know it's a lie, cause even the president at the time stated so "for all I know, they were shooting at whales" or something to that effect. There were never any boats. Just like no evidence of WMD in Iraq, a country that did not pose ANY threat to America, and no evidence of Bin Laden ever being killed, just a statement from the president, which conveniently enough happened during the election season. No picture of the body, buried at sea (sure), and no interviews with the commandos taking part in the op (who I heard, don't know if true, mysteriously died one by one), big nothing. That's also probably, in my opinion, a lie, a lie that helped Obama get reelected. You have a gov. full of liars, cheaters and ppl who generally don't give af about the population, they want total control and riches, and only one person was a thorn in their side, so they completely assassinated his character, accused of things they do themselves, bc he was an outsider, who was very liked before becoming the president.
Anyway, that's my take as an European. I gave all those examples, to show you how the explanation for Castle Bravo could be the same thing, a big lie. Not how it works, but the alleged miscalculation.
Trivia: Sponge Bob (never watched) happens in the exact place where the bomb went off.
Also Japan has its own name for it (third bombing or something).
as horrific as they are as weapons, they indeed posess a certain beauty...
Almost mesmerizing...😮
"Destruction is always more abrupt and enticing than creation" Anthony Burgess
Nothing beautiful about Cancer !!!
That almost sounds like "Dr. Strangelove" (A Movie from the 1960's, starring Peter Sellers, and others).
@@blndjamesblndParis Probably not much fun in being vaporized either.
It feels like new year when i see new vids in this channel
In a nuclear detonation, the energy released can be classified as electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays) or kinetic energy of the fission products. The kinetic energy results from the mutual repulsion of protons in the nucleus. At the short distances, the Coulomb repulsive forces are enormous, and accelerate the fission fragments to a speed that is a considerable fraction of the speed of light. These accelerated fragments form a spherical, expanding shockwave, which is the fireball.
The shock quickly heats up to hundreds of millions of degrees forming the fireball, or more correctly, a fire bubble.
Regardless of the technical brilliance of such a weapon, nothing good can ever come from such an insidious human creation.
Well, I guess if it stops us destroying each other when applying the M.A.D doctrine, then it's not all bad
There's a few mistakes for such a short video.
a) initial flash is not electrons relaxing from more energetic states. The nuclear reaction itself shoots out photons. Foolproof way to check: the ionization energy of the particles involved are lower than gamma ray's energy. It doesn't matter how much energy you feed the electrions, it'll ionize before it gets enough energy for a gamma ray spontaneous emission.
b) the "so much energy that it excites electrons into releasing gamma rays" is pure nonsense. The amount of total energy has nothing to do with the wavelegnth of the EM radiation. A tiny amount of fission producing less energy per second than a light bulb will still emit the same high frequency EM radiation. Also, as mentioned before, it's not electrons relaxing that releases the gamma rays in the first place.
c) the shockwave does not travel at 780 mph. That's the speed of sound in normal atmosphere. Shockwave is, *by definition* , a disturbance that goes faster than the sound speed of whatever medium it's traveling in, and that distinction is actually relevant. There's a lot of weird phenomenons in shockwaves that's not present in subsonic perssure waves.
These are just what immdeiately jumped out at me. There's parobably a lot more I missed.
This comment needs to be pinned up.
Just happen to catch your program on a random popup. Very informative and to the point. Thank You.
That high altitude test was Housatonic, one of my favourites. The last air-dropped nuke by the US and the most accurate detonation, within 100 feet of the intended target. At over 9 megatons, it's thermal pulse goes on for many seconds. It was basically a re-do of the Androscoggin test that failed, because the secondary was a fizzle.
I've been waiting for a video on nuclear weapons. Thank you. I've been looking for this.
Nuclear Vault channel has an hour long video on Operation Ivy, the first fusion bomb made and exploded. It's very informative.
I'll check it out!@@iancanuckistan2244
This was as beautiful as well as informative.
Nice work describing how differences in density create the mushroom cloud shape --- I've watched more than a few videos like this over the years, and that's one bit of information I'd never come across until now. Thanks!
it's fascinating and Scary at the same time.
Great Video.
Great video again
boom
thanks!
Fav part is the activate windows watermark lol
6:41-6:45: Footage from CHERNOBYL (2019) is based on a real tragedy. Of spectators who welcomed fallout from the destroyed reactor at Chernobyl, none survived.
Very good video, great work. Nukes are so impressive and scary.
4:18 this footage is incredible.
Sickening !!!
Air bust shock wave hits the ground the bounces back into the fireball
This gives me an idea for a paint stripping business.
yo dark science activate your window!
I would consider adding stage 6a (or stage 7). The absorption of longer lived isotopes into living creatures. Strontium is absorbed (and deposited) like Calcium, by plants and animal bones. Iodine will accumulate in Thyroid glands. Only treatment is to "FLOOD" you system with "clean" Calcium and Iodine, preventively.
Quantum physics and fission/fusion is a fascinating topic. Years ago, I couldn't believe when I heard it for the first time that there are natural nuclear reactors occuring on the Earth's surface being active for hundreds of years. With all the needed parts to keep the balance, like moderators, cooling, water and the uranium. Isn't that fascinating.
Where ?
ask Wikipedia for Natural nuclear fission reactor (Geological situation in Gabon leading to natural nuclear fission reactors).
Natural nuclear fission reactors are only known in two uranium deposits in the world, the Oklo and Bangombédeposits of the Franceville basin: Gabon. Since 1982, five new reactor zones have been discovered in these deposits and studied since 1989 in a cooperative European program @@blndjamesblndParis
@@blndjamesblndParis Look up the Oklo Reactor or Oklo Mines in Gabon in Africa.
Oklo, Gabon. It was originally discovered by the French who seperated and refined the uranium from the mine. They were expecting a certain ratio of Uranium 238 to Uranium 235 and the numbers were "off". there was much less U235 than they expected and it was a concern that maybe someone was diverting some of the U235 from their production facilities. The difference was between 0.72% that they expected and 0.717% that they were extracting. After investigating they found an increase in non-radioactive decay products in the mineral samples. (things like radium and uranium will naturally decay down to lead that is non-radioactive). Looking at the geology they found that around 1.7 billion years ago there was an area of high Uranium concentration that was functioning as a natural reactor. Uranium can be water soluble and it formed deposits. Water in the uranium ore acted as a natural moderator (it slows down neutrons and increases their capture cross-section). When the rock was wet the reactor would turn itself on. When the rocks got hot and it drove out the water the reactor would turn itself off. It did this for a few hundred-thousand years.
That was a cool description. Thanks. 😎
thanks for the info
One thing that continues to hauntingly impress me is that humans figured out and unlocked the power of the universe and can harness that power at will. It seems to me that the universe should have guarded this secret a little more. Humans are the most unique organisms ever to live on earth, for good or ill. What other living thing can come close to unlocking this power?
God I love this channel so much!
Thanks!
Bomb.
Bomb!
Bomb.
Why do you screen record instead of downloading footage from youtube using a browser extension or something like that?
Fr this is some lazy tiktok shit
Solid!
Top KEK!
Peace be with you.
One thing, tho - critical mass can be easily achieved without compressing anything. It was designed like that for Fat Man for one reason - the other firing mechanism, a gun-type used in Little Boy, was impractical with a plutonium core. It would be too big or have too high risk of predetonating, not in a sense of exploding aboard the plane but in a sense of fizzling, creating a very small yield which wouldn't do more damage than a normal bomb.
Also there was no "neutron gun" in any of these designs. Both plutonium and uranium, when decaying, emit their own neutrons. Critical mass is when every split event makes exactly one new split event - in a subcritical this is below one, and in supercritical mass this is above one (which makes it a chain reaction we need).
So to fire those things they've had to invent a way of bringing a subcritical mass to a supercritical one - which can be achieved in many ways: by adding a neutron reflector around a subcritical mass (neutrons leaving the mass bounce back into it, raising the chance of making them split another atom), adding two subcritical masses (gun-type firing system used in Little Boy) or changing the geometry of subcritical mass, because geometry plays a role as well (this was done by compressing the plutonium sphere in Fat Man).
This is true, but Little Boy was a very inefficient design. The implosion design became the standard one for all fission weapons to include the hydrogen bomb's fission stage.
@@dmac7128 yep, gun-type is not efficient, but for the fissile U-235 it's pretty much the only way to go, as this metal is not as easily compressible as the Pu-239. It was also simpler to design than implosion type, but thus less safe.
Great video! This is indeed the darkest dark science topic.
It's really dark think about this could happen about any day now, and how destructive it is. That's what makes this really dark for me.
I am a Baby Boomer 67 Yrs old (born in 1956), We Boomers lived under a nuclear threat from Kindergarten until just before the fall of the Soviet Union. We were taught Duck and Cover drills, had neighborhood nuclear attack sirens that were tested daily ( during the 1960's) and were advised to always know where our closest fallout shelter was. I came to believe that it would be better to be vaporized in an a attack, than endure the very real horror of living a post nuclear apocalypse. @@babycarrotz32
Where did you get the source for the diagram at 1:32? I've been researching nukes recreationally for a long time, but this is the first ive heard of the little neutron gun being a part of the implosion type design.
I dont think its a neutron gun as much as it is a neutron generator,
Matt bunn talks about them in the belfer institute lectures
I didn't find the diagram, I made it in adobe illustrator. The diagram is not an accurate depiction of the implosion device. The neutron gun is placed off to the side to help illustrate how the implosion sequence works. I believe the neutron gun is placed in the middle of the charges, behind the plutonium core.
The zipper initiator was used starting in about 1955 in the Teapot series. It is a linear accelerator that frees neutrons by spallattion. It's not aimed; the neutrons go in every direction. They are outside the explosion material since neutrons can travel through normal matter essentially freely.
@@sam2902it’s totally healthy that I often fall asleep to Matt Bunn’s “How Nuclear Bombs Work” lectures, right? Surely that’s some kind of mental health red flag, but those lecture videos manage to translate something that begets unimaginable horror & violence into an unobtrusive, almost ASMR-like documentary I can reliably snooze to.
You might want to read Tom Clancy's novel, "The Sum of All Fears". About a nuclear terrorist attack.....
We vaporized so much into the atmosphere in general
Things I learned from this video:
1. That old footage of the paint flying off of vehicles is a result of vaporization caused by heat from the initial flash, which occurs before the shockwave hits. I had previously thought it was the result of the shockwave hitting, but shockwaves don't arrive in stages like that- they're inherently plosive, so they arrive all at once with an immediate "attack." That's why in the footage of the house being struck, you can see the paint flying off right *before* the shockwave arrives and starts to tear the structure apart.
2. I had previously thought that the initial flash of light and ionizing radiation was emitted from the atomic nucleus. I had no idea that it's black body radiation- the same way that animals glow in the thermal infrared spectrum, or a hot iron glows red hot, or an even hotter iron glows white or blue hot... these explosions essentially "glow gamma ray hot," X-ray hot, UV hot, blue hot, white hot, red hot, etc.
Things that I already knew about which I think the video slightly misrepresented:
1. Radioactivity and half-life are directly and inversely proportional. This means that the isotopes which have short half-lives (anywhere from fractions of a second, to a few weeks) are VERY radioactive, but at least they decay quickly. They basically dump *all* of their energy in a very short time span. This is why potassium iodide is distributed in places with fallout... the video kinda makes it sound like iodine-131 isn't much of a threat- in reality it's a relatively short-term threat, but a very serious one.
Isotopes with super long half-lives (hundreds of millions of years or more) are not very harmful at all, because they emit their energy so gradually. Billions of years of half-lives, might as well not be radioactive at all (For example, thorium-232's half-life is slightly longer than the current age of the universe, , and bismuth-209's half-life is billions of times the current age of the universe, and in the case of bismuth it wasn't even *known* to be radioactive until a few years ago, for this very reason).
It's the ones that have medium-length half-lives (anywhere from a few years to tens of thousands of years) that really render places uninhabitable for long periods of time, because they're in that sweet spot of being both still pretty radioactive, but also having longevity with regards to timescales relevant to human life and human settlements. Especially if they're absorbed by plant life and contaminate the food chain (cesium-137 and strontium-90), these are particularly devastating for habitability. Whereas something like plutonium, while it does sit in that sweet spot, it's not exactly absorbed into the biosphere the same way.
this was really interesting. i would suggest, though, that you don't fade to black on video & audio so fast between each stage. let some visual or audio linger a bit more
I peed myself a little.
I never realized until just now the when it went off at the very first time. There were bolts of electricity shooting from the ground to this clouds above it. Did you see that it happens very fast? Watch it at the very beginning, right when it explodes, you'll see. Massive bolts of electricity arking up and hitting the clouds above it. I've never seen that before
The decay of xenon atoms is extremely rare because it occurs on such an incredibly long timescale. Only one atom out of 10^22 atoms decays in a year, which is like finding a needle in a haystack of haystacks, 10 times in a row.
The only nuclear-decay process in the universe with a longer half-life than xenon-124 is the decay of tellurium-128, which has a half-life 2.2 septillion years, or around 160 trillion times the age of the universe. However, this vanishingly rare event has only been calculated on paper.
What's the the white ring that forms around the stem of some nukes? Also, why do nukes cause shadows on people when blowing up?
I think the white ring are clouds being pushed away by the shockwave, but what do you mean with "shadows on people"?
As nuggetospaghetto said, the rings are clouds being pushed by the shockwave and heat. People weren't blown up by Fat Man and Little Boy, they were either vaporized or burned. The shadow you're referencing is scorched or "bleach" concrete, wood etc. from the pulse of radiation from the detonation. The same thing happens when you wear a shirt and get sunburned. The areas that are covered have no burn marks, but exposed skin (forearms, neck) do as they were exposed. The "shadows" aren't actually shadows, just spots where the backdrop was covered by a person or object and therefore not scorched by the radiation.
As for shadows, they are shadows "of" pepole. The fireball vaporized them, and created a human shaped shadow on a wall. Of the people who died, they were the "lucky" ones, if you can call it that.
It was probably a typo when he said on not of.
bro ngl i just reminded you 10 minutes ago and . BANG. you upload a new video
i swear . thease coincidences are wild
Great video, thank you
This video... it is.... magnificent.
What a wonderful video! 👍
I agree 👍
Nothing like a bit of doom, gloom, death, and disaster for raising the spirits? 👍🤣
@@marcse7en yep!
I love dark science, but honestly i kind of miss the sarcastic humor you had in your older vids.
Spontaneous emission is nothing to be ashamed of.
Longer half-life means less radioactive particles emitted in a unit of time. Half-life of 700 million years sounds scary, but you need to literally eat this stuff for it to have any effect.
What are the white vertical stripes/lines seen in some of the detonations?
Smoke trails from rockets to see effects of the shockwave right after detonation
not it's not. it's obviously chemical smoke trails that the government uses to turn the frogs gay. @@darkscienceyt
You're outdated on this, as far as materials and devastation goes, but, the basic physics and mechanics are the same. I always feel like people don't understand just how horrific nukes really are. It ain't no joke, folks!
Tell that to Kim Jong Putin! 🤣
I feel like I can speak for most people when I say, "Let's just not and say we did".
Very informative, Thank You
I wonder why you censored the word 'bomb' at the beginning? It's uncensored at the end.
The red playbutton man works in confusing ways.
The gamma and x rays come from nuclear decay, not electrons
Gamma rays and hard x-rays originate from the nucleus. Soft x-rays comes from the k-shell electrons
The most complete explanation I've seen of what happens.
If you want the "complete" explanation, get the book "Blast Wave," by Hans Bethe, et al. The first chapter is written by Bethe and explains the sequence of events from the moment of detonation through shock waves at different distances. After that - you need a really good understanding of mathematics for the remaining chapters to make sense. Another book (which can be difficult to find) is, "The Effects of Atomic Weapons," - Los Alamos National Laboratory (Samuel Glasstone, Executive Editor).
Re the emission of light - it's not just ecited electronic orbitals but one nucleus becoming two tears the orbitals of the orignal Pu nucleus to bits and the electrons then have to settle into orbitals around two separate nucleii. Some of the orbitals will be really "deep" and emit extremely high energy photons.
One notable feature of the multi-frame timelapse photos taken of the Trinity test is the appearance of a bubble around the explosion in which a sea of stars appears. I'm guessing that the highly compressed air forms a lens which greatly distorts and diffracts light from the stars in the night sky.
Hopefully, I will never see this in person
You hope! ... Kim Jong Putin may have different ideas? 🤣
@@marcse7en Yes, this is why!
The fireball is more correctly a fire bubble. The interior is pretty much a vacuum, since the fission products and vaporized bomb structure form a fast moving shock. The vacuum sucks up the dirt from the ground to form the stem of the mushroom cloud.
It's like standing in a 4-foot swimming pool. You push your hands down sharply into the water. You create a sharp disturbance that caves the water in (explosion). In a second, the displaced water rushes up into the air. The shock wave reaches back across the pool, as the water gets sucked in to replace what you just pushed down. This is why, on films, you see an explosion, immediately followed by a sucking reversal of the air. It's the reversal of airflow that pulls all the shit up into the atmosphere, then it just gently falls down over the Dollar General. Damn; I wanted that Hamburger Helper.
The fireball is superheated air and under extreme pressure, not a vacuum. Once the shockwave travels outward, the air becomes less dense than the surrounding air, creating a buoyancy effect. This creates the famous stem of the mushroom cloud that sucks material up from the ground.
@@charliefoxtrot5001 i disagree....the fireball is not a virial mass. When fission occurs the fragments of the nucleus recoil from each other, and this kinetic energy is directed outwards at relativistic speeds. This forms a thin spherical shock composed of the fission products and bomb debris. A bubble. And very low pressure on the interior. The shock, in turn, slams into the surrounding atmosphere and heats it up to x-ray temperatures. That, and the decay of unstable fission products forms the fire ball, or more correctly fire bubble. It is this low pressure bubble that sucks up the debris from the ground.
@@user-cr5yy4te3i Disagree all you want, but physics is physics. Fission releases an enormous amount in energy within a few microseconds in the form of electromagnetic and ionizing radiation. Most of it is x-rays. Soft x-ray radiation superheats the surrounding air in a matter of microseconds, creating the fireball. The fireball is hot plasma, which ain't vacuum.
The shock wave from the exploding bomb travels from the bomb within the fireball and then exiting the fireball, at which point it temporarily obscures the fireball. This is the famous double flash effect with nuclear detonations. Once the shockwave has passed, the superheated air is simply so less dense than the surrounding air that it travels upward, creating the mushroom cloud.
By the way, all large explosions create a mushroom cloud, as explosions are nothing but superheated gases that are suddenly created.
www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/fireball.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud
You really don't have to worry about long lived isotopes (like 700m years)... like keep in mind they dig it out of the ground.
Is the plutonium core before implosion, solid or hollow? If it is solid, then by how much does the density increase as a result of the implosion?
After what? After youtube demonitisation?
wow
indeed
Tremendous video.
Plus the added fallout from the tamper
Wow
What would a worker at Chernoble have been exposed to? Reserve soldier cleaning up debris.
Plutonium is more poisonous and carcinogenic because of its chemistry than because of it's radioactivity. The half life is therefore not the issue with exposure.
1:04 *There are many radioactive isotopes that are unsuitable for fission. Just being radioactive isn't enough.*
Correct. The video narrator should have used the term fissile rather than radioactive.
Boom
The shorter the half life, the more radioactive the isotope. If it happens to be in or on your body that can be extremely bad.
The segment on isotope half-lives begs a certain question, regarding the unspent uranium and plutonium in the war bombs: If their half-lives make them so dangerous, then how is it that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt, repopulated, and are now far larger and more active than they were during the war...?
The answer is fairly simple for those who studied the history. Remember that there are three main groups of radioactive particles: Alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha particles are the most dangerous as they emit the highest levels of radiation poisoning, but they cannot penetrate just anything; even a sheet of ordinary paper can stop alpha particles. Beta particles give off less poisoning than alpha, though still dangerous to human life; and they can penetrate light barriers, but heavier barriers can stop them (e.g., wood or concrete). Gamma particles give off the lowest degree of radiation poisoning but can penetrate anything save for very heavy materials like lead. The 98.3% of U-235 in Little Boy and the 86% of Pu-239 in Fat Man that did not undergo fission were converted into dust, or *alpha* particles. That made it possible to sweep up (so to speak) the mess they caused and permit the two cities to be rebuilt and repopulated. Essentially, the woeful inefficiency of those two bombs *saved* those cities from becoming dead wastelands. On the other hand, Bikini Atoll cannot be inhabited again for a very long time because the "hydrogen" bombs detonated there triggered far more thorough reactions in the fission materials used in them (which amounted to quite a lot), close to 100% efficiency, creating far greater quantities of strontium, cesium, barium, and iodine isotopes and scattering them all across the island chain. It will still take many decades before the decay of those isotopes reaches a point that the chain is safe for rehabilitation again...though maybe not millenia or megayears, as would be the case with unspent uranium or plutonium.
Can we get a video on how testosterone works?
4:57 activate windows XD
Too bad this video wasn't released before Christopher Nolan had the wise idea of trying to recreate the Trinity explosion with fully practical effects. Including, evidently, a simple gas explosion of a small tower, pyrotechnics played in reverse (yes, I kid you not), and a fireball that looks less like a mushroom cloud than it does a termite mound. Considering it was the climax of a deadly serious movie, it was just embarrassing to watch.
So a few months of sitting indoors should minimize the risk once you survived the blast. But, if you want to be perfectly safe from ionizing radiation stay in the bunker for a little over two billion years.
If only a small amount of plutonium underwent fission, how come Hiroshima and Nagasaki not dangerously radioactive nowadays? Despite having long half-life.
It had its effect even mentioned in video, on the other hand its only 60 kg distributed on a very big area + long half life means it decays very slowly.
Because of the long half life of Plutonium, it does not decay very quickly and therefore is not all that radioactive. The main radiation hazard from the detonation of a fission bomb comes from the fission products that are produced in the explosions. Many short lived isotopes are produced, that account for the overwhelming majority of the produced radiation for the first few months or years after detonation. All of these have half lifes shorter than 90 years, so are mostly decayed by now. There's only 7 isotopes with half lifes over 90 years (they're all over 211.100 years). Because they are comparatively stable, they don't decay as frequently and thus aren't all that radioactive, just like Plutonium-239 with a half life of 24.110 years. The main isotope to worry about after the more short lived isotopes have decayed is Iodine-129, which, despite not being all that radioactive and only being produced in small amounts, poses a health risk because it accumulates in the thyroid gland and causes thyroid cancer. But it is roughly 1 billion times less radioactive than the short lived Iodine-131 that in return decays by half in just 8 days.
@@zockertwins wow thanks
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both essentially air bursts. Much of the vaporized plutonium or uranium was disbursed over a very wide area. Ground bursts are much nastier.
@@larrybell726 Yes, that is also an important factor to consider. A ground burst kicks up a lot of dust and other particles into the air that become contaminated with radioactive material and rain down as fallout. An airburst in contrast doesn't create a lot of fallout.
Activate windows!
someday...
I have read in previous analysis that the Little Boy, Gun type, burned only 1 gram of plutonium and maybe a Pound of Uranium, the rest was as indicated vaporized and scattered causing most of the Fall out. The Fat Man, Implosion, was much more efficient than the Little boy giving more yeild for the same amount fissionable Material. AS the efficiency climbed in weapons development and eventually the H-Bombs the amount of material need dropped to now a 1.5MT 2stage and 3 Stage weapons are in the 10s of lbs not including the safeguards, triggering and shielding. The US and likely the Russian current weapons like the B61, W76, B80 series are less then 700 lbs including the airframe or re-entry vehicles. The weapons 2 day are in the high end 1.5MT to 3MTs down to 40kt weapons. Suitcase devices are between 1.5kt to 5kt and are likely gun type, enough to destroy major buildings from the inside. What is not published much is the warheads in US Cruise missiles, those are rumored to be in the 300 pound total package and yields are from 10Kt to 1MT depending on target. Cruise missile Nuclear Warheads are extremely advanced/efficient because of the need to save weight. Some claim the US Cruise missile Warhead are the size of a large Thermos bottle and in the 30 lb or less weight range. The safety, triggers and shielding make up the bulk of the 300 lbs.
The gun-type device, Little Boy, didn't had Plutonium. It was a Uranium bomb. Less than 1 kg of the overall 64 kg of Uranium underwent fission.
Fat Man was the implosion device and had a Plutonium core and a Uranium tamper. About 1 kg of the 6 kg Plutonium underwent fission. Some of the Uranium tamper underwent fission as well.
The implosion device is more efficient as it needs significantly less fissionable material. The gun-type device needs more than the critical mass, while the implosion device can do with less.
Hope this one doesn’t get age restricted like the mustard gas video
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