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GeekNights Monday - Nuclear Weapons
Tonight on GeekNights, in light of the recent (likely boosted fission) nuclear test by North Korea, we talk about the mechanics, science, and engineering around nuclear weapons. In the news, there are solid rumors of a small iPhone 6c or 7c, the loss of TRS jacks from the iPhone 7 seems all but certain, and your Nvidia video card is keeping your incognito tabs around.
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I can't be the only person who read Toyfare magazine back in the 90's, right?
That means the next version of lightning headphones won't need a built in DAC, that will still be inside the phone. The lighting connector on the end of the headphone cable could be as dumb as TRRS.
Also: I also can usually get through a day on one iPhone charge, but not when traveling. For this next trip I've bought myself a Smart Battery Case. I tested it out for a while and I really, really love it. I have an external battery pack already, but I have to think about it, and carry separately, and charge it separately, and all that stuff. The Smart Battery Case is truly smart, in ways that other cases and packs just don't manage.
It also works much better with the lens kit I have for my iphone too, which is a handy bonus.
Once on the cruise ship, I'll use my normal case.
Then when I'm out and about in a city for a full day, using internet, fitness tracking, playing audio, recording videos, chatting, calling, etc, I can use the smart case again. Normally when traveling I have to take the external battery pack and a cable... and then sometimes not even nee to use it. The smart case is a use-and-forget thing, but if I want the lighter smaller phone, I still have that option (not if the bigger battery was built in like the 6plus).
Still, it's a new thing, so maybe it won't work out in the long run. But from my testing over the last two weeks, I think it's a big step in the right direction.
I presume the answers to this are as secret as the tech, so no answer is likely. But I'm still curious.
I also wonder if the development of the modern thermonuclear bomb is responsible for other advances in tech. Obviously delivery systems for them led to the space race which led to many advances. But I would believe you if you said modern ultra precision cnc manufacturing, or computer chip fabrication or some other sort of ultra tight tolerance work was a direct result of the tech required to build the bomb. But maybe not the case.
As it is, North Korea doesn't need full blown fusion bombs to be effective. If they had even nothing but stockpiles of gun-type bombs it would be enough to start a massively bad time. Having boosted fission weapons is a not good thing on top of that, because those can easily do enough damage that it could effectively end south Korea or parts of Japan, with a stockpile that they can probably actually manage.
And what would the response be? Conventional forces that might also be nuked? Conventional bomber strikes that may or may not do anything significant to their program? Counter nukes?
I'm not particularly worried that NK's leadership is actually dumb enough to go on a murder suicide run with nuclear weapons. But I imagine there must be some level of contingency on all sides.
What is impossible is testing them without anyone noticing. If you don't test them, how do you know what you've made will actually work and won't just be a useless lump of Plutonium? If you test them, the explosion is so big that everyone on earth who is paying attention will know you set one off.
If you do it above ground, everyone can see it with their eyeballs. If you do it in space, it can also be seen. If you do it under the sea, it will still be seen. That's a lot of dead fishies. You have to do it under the earth.
Ok, so now every country that is paying attention sees you did it on their seismographs. They know exactly where you did it because they share data and triangulate. What are you going to do? Say it was an earthquake? It looks a lot different than an earthquake on the seismograph. Experts can tell. Are you really going to set it off near a fault line in your own country to make it more believable? How are you going to hide the radiation that everyone can detect? Even if you could, are you going to test just once? Nobody will believe in more than one earthquake.
To test them without anyone knowing, you would need:
a) A secret base in space somewhere that nobody on earth could detect what you are doing.
b) A container on earth so ridiculously strong that you can test devices in it. The container would need sensors and other equipment inside of it that could detect the fact that the device worked, or didn't work. The container would have to be strong enough to contain the explosion, absorb the shock so that it doesn't shake the earth, and contain the radiation enough that nobody else could detect it. Obviously, this is even more impossible than hiding it.
c) A vast conspiracy involving all the people on earth who are monitoring to keep their mouths shut.
d) Make your first test a live test on your enemies. Good luck!
There is a strong argument that the testing performed by the US and Russia is the sole reason the engineering challenge was solved. It is likely impossible for any nation to develop a thermonuke without similar testing. It is a credit to the world that we agreed to just fucking stop testing everywhere forever and (except for India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel, and North Korea) abided by that decision.
India's weapon was a simple show of force. Pakistan's weapons program appears to be the primary source of the material and intelligence for other countries' attempts (like Iran and NK). Neither was more than a simple mass criticality weapon.
The thermonukes were only really in play when SLBMs and ICBMs became feasible, at least initially.
I would also be up for having a pre-arranged detonation of a nuke in a designated zone every year or every ten or whatever, mostly to keep people aware of what these are, and occasionally provide a chance to experiment with blasts of that magnitude for science reasons.
All the nuke tests went on a while ago now. We could collect some serious data and awesome photos with modern detonation while also reminding people thst these bombs are huge deals. I imagine that in 50 years almost no one alive will have first hand experience with such explosions and that might lead to people forgetting why we stopped. As Rym mentions the generals saw Castle Bravo and realized these things were fucked up. Will our children just take our grandparent's word for it?
Frankly, I believe we shouldn't test them at all primarily because the less data there is available, the less likely it is that anyone will ever independently derive them again.
We have plenty of photos. We also have the still-living memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The argument that if we don't have constant reminders through use, we'll forget, doesn't really hold water. Genocide has continued in many places after World War 2, and yet there are STILL people who deny that it ever happened.
The whole book is an argument against the notion that such trips are a sound, practical, or even humane idea... but the orion drive tech is not a concern anyone takes up. This ship having a huge supply of tiny thermonuclear bombs is just as much a potential problem as if it had stores of traditional fuel and it's automated so no one has to think about it much.
I don't know if the sealing Pandora box method is going to work long term either. Barring someone who has clearance turning sides and divulging design details: is it not hypothetically possible that any determined group with the computer tech of today and especially that of 2060 could simulate the physics enough to develop a bomb without going off of 100 year old plans?
Of course we always have the data from the early bombs and even the most basic reporting was enough for independent scientists to calculate yields and assume construction methods with simple math so I get that new detonation even if used in soace-based big blast projects might yield useful data for badguy bomb dev.
It still results in what keeps getting brought up: these devices aren't subtle to build or test even with full blueprints. Without strong technical background and resources advanced nukes are next to impossible to build. I'm sure plans for the ulam teller and other such devices have already leaked to people who would like to make one, but know they can't because they aren't a global superpower.
Outside of Orion drives, and some kind of last resort asteroid shover, are there any potential future applications for nuclear devices sans a weapon?
Maybe if we had to adjust the Earth's Orbit to push ourselves further away from an expanding sun?
Valuse
There is no practical purpose to that technology other than the initiation of uncontrolled fusion reactions designed to in turn trigger further uncontrolled fission reactions.
Are you thinking of small "nuclear power" devices? Because they have little practical use outside of certain space and marine applications due to their high weight and relatively low power output. They're grossly inefficient, and also have no real relation to nuclear weapons.
I gave non-explodey things as an example of useful nuclear energy, but Swat had excluded those from his question.
Anyway, still not sure of a useful explodey device. One problem is that they put out a ton of unfocused energy. Suppose you had a conventional warhead that big. What could you use it for, besides bombing?
Maybe slam a ton into Venus to terraform it via cooling.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/new-york-village-votes-to-keep-logo-that-shows-man-choking-native-american-1.2733381
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/713/nuclear-war