Recording of the first hydrogen bomb
Scientific recordings of the blast wave from the first hydrogen bomb test have been rediscovered in a formerly-classified safe at Columbia University.
On November 1, 1952, physicists created the second fusion explosion the solar system has ever known.
The first, by the way, occurred around 4.5 billion years ago and ignited the the sun.
The second, the Ivy Mike experiment, was detonated on an atoll in the South Pacific.
This ten-megaton blast was five times more powerful than all the explosives used in World War II combined, including the nuclear-fission bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The blast set off a low-frequency sound wave beneath the human hearing range, which was recorded halfway around the world at special listening stations designed by the Lamont Geological Observatory in Palisades, New York, for monitoring just such an event.
The microbarographs measured changes in atmospheric pressure, and were particularly well-suited to detecting a nuclear explosion. As the wave passed, the ink-filled needles of the instruments scribbled on paper rolling around a drum.
It was the first time a nuclear explosion had been detected from such a long distance and it marked the beginning of international test monitoring.
The recordings were swiftly marked "classified" and stuffed in a vault at Lamont. And there they sat for more than 50 years before a clear out unearthed the data.
Weird Science Factoid: India used to be the richect country in thw world until the British invasion in the early 17th Century. Sorry about that, old chaps.
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
The recordings were swiftly marked "classified" and stuffed in a vault at Lamont. And there they sat for more than 50 years before a clear out unearthed the data.
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