What exactly is a nuclear bomb fireball?

originally posted by: LABTECH767
indeed that is why in sci fi movies like for example Deep Impact the atom bomb has to be placed inside the asteroid because placing it along side it would have negligable effect, it would melt some of the surface and create a small amount of thrust as Neutron's then impacted and vaporised a small amount of surface material but other than that it would create only the small amount of thrust this would induce to the asteroidal body.

In fact, that surface ablation is the preferred way of deflecting an asteroid with nuclear weapons if it is not feasible to land a thruster. Blowing up from the center is a horrible idea as it makes multiple dangerous and untracked rocks.

a reply to: 3danimator2014

Don't touch it, its hot!

this is an old avi of mine.



couple more, notice the trees/ground underneath.





creepy.

As for the geometry being part of it... Looking back at that mouse-trap example, notice how it's scattered about fairly random? Sometimes the balls miss. Now what if you arrange those mouse traps so you know the ball hits another trap 90% of the time rather than the baseline random amount? That's why certain arrangements of nuclear material as they reach criticality can be dangerous. Basically the emitted energy can be focused by shaping. (In cases like the bomb they also purposely put in reflectors and tampers to purposely shape the reaction. And in a reactor, they put in a moderator material that effectively absorbs the "balls" so it's possible to throttle or bring the reaction back down to it's lowest natural baseline.)

I'm so sorry, i have been AWOL for a few days since i posted the thread. I just wanted to say thank you to all who provided info. Super heated plasma. I DID think it was that, but what confused me is the photos of ground zero at Hiroshima, there was still structure there, even if low on the ground. I would have expected a miniature "sun" to have vaporised everything, which wasnt the case.

Like someone else said in the thread, nuclear bombs are an incredible achievement of mankind.

I agree. Awful as they are, for us to be able to create devices like this shows how we are learning to master the sub atomic world. There is far more involved in a nuclear bomb than i ever knew, i am currently reading about a material called FOGBANK.

But that's for another thread

The science nerd in me gets giddy at the thought of a Pu pit being consumed in a millionth of a second. We tend to think of any reaction as being something we can see and easily measure, but of course, nuclear fission and fusion will happen and spread at the speed of light or very near so. How can anyone not love physics?

originally posted by: burgerbuddy
this is an old avi of mine.

couple more, notice the trees/ground underneath.

creepy.

The rapatronic images are super creepy. I love the fact that the ground is illuminated underneath. By the way, the lines emanating from below are the guy wires holding the tower in place vapourising and the mottling in the fireball comes from the bomb casing and any structure that was around the bomb being shoved away and vapourising.

No trees though, these were all done in the desert. I'm not sure what those are.