They then interact with other electrons in the region to accelerate them to higher speeds or push them into Earth’s upper atmosphere. These waves are created by electrons spiraling along magnetic field lines around Earth. NASA’s Van Allen Probes recorded these chorus waves in space above Earth. They were subsequently named Van Allen belts after James Van Allen, the University of Iowa scientist who discovered them. Just two years earlier, America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, accidentally discovered that Earth is encircled by donuts of intense radiation held in place by its magnetic field. Scientists and military figures were keen to know what would happen if a nuclear explosion were set off in space, especially how it might interact with Earth’s magnetosphere. There was even a plan, which ultimately fizzled, to set off a nuclear blast on the moon. The Department of Defense was in the midst of a separate project to put 500 million copper needles into orbit to try to reflect radio waves and help long-distance communication. military didn’t have many qualms about sending almost anything into space. The space race was in its infancy back then, and the U.S.
It was set off in October 1961, about 13,000 feet above an island in the Arctic Circle.
had broken from a voluntary moratorium, with the Soviets conducting 31 experimental blasts, including Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated. After three years of no testing, the Soviet Union and the U.S. Cold War heats upĪ year before, in 1961, international negotiations to ban nuclear testing had taken a turn for the worse. “I told my dad years later, ‘You know, if I knew I was going to become a nuclear weapon physicist, I would have paid more attention,’” he says.
The memory of that day stuck with Spriggs, who is now a weapons scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where he works preserving and analyzing archival nuclear test footage. But the results of Starfish Prime serve as a warning of what might happen if Earth’s magnetic field gets blasted again with high doses of radiation, either from another nuke or from natural sources such as the sun.
Atom bomb free#
signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and outer space has been H-bomb free for almost 60 years. The following year, the U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. An accompanying electromagnetic pulse washed out radio stations, set off an emergency siren, and caused streetlights to black out in Hawaii. “It looked as though the heavens had belched forth a new sun that flared briefly, but long enough to set the sky on fire ,” according to one account in the Hilo Tribune-Herald. For as long as 15 minutes after the initial explosion, charged particles from the blast collided with molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, creating an artificial aurora that could be seen as far away as New Zealand. Starfish Prime exploded at an altitude of 250 miles, at about the height where the International Space Station orbits today. Official photograph of the Office of Chief of Engineers, now in the collections of the National Archives.“When that nuclear weapon went off, the whole sky lit up in every direction. Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Enola Gay, returns after the strike Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Image: 77-BT-91: Tinian Island, August 1945. Four days later, Japanese submarine, I-58, sank Indianapolis, northeast of Leyte.Ī replica of Little Boy can be found at " In Harm's Way: Pacific" exhibit area in the National Museum of the Navy, Bldg. Previously, on July 26, the bomb, along with " Fat Man" was transported to Tinian Island by USS Indianapolis (CA-35) for final assembly. A U-235 projectile fired down a gun barrel collided with a stationary element, causing a mass increase leading to nuclear fission. Nuclear fission was achieved by the collision of two parts of active material (Uranium-235). The gun-type weapon possessed the power of 26,000,000 pounds of high explosives. The bomb weighed 9,000 pounds and had a diameter of only 28 inches. The bomb was dropped by a USAAF B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, piloted by U.S. The atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, was "Little Boy".
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