Posted on 04/19/2016 9:52:47 PM PDT by MtnClimber
5:30 A.M., Monday July 16th, 1945: The day dawned brighter than ever before over the New Mexico desert. But it was not the Sun's soothing rays that set the landscape alight; it was the radiant flash of the very first atomic bomb.
Trinity, the nuclear offspring of the Manhattan Project, detonated with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT. The accompanying fireball reached temperatures of 8,430 degrees Kelvin, hotter than the surface of the sun, and sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and debris soaring more than seven miles into the sky.
That day, every human on the planet was reborn into a nuclear era, one where mankind now held the power to end its existence. Also born that day was an otherworldly, greenish glass, a physical reminder of the cataclysmic explosion. Scientists dubbed the strange material trinitite.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
Giant Ants ! ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!
Does this glass have any practical applications?
Anyone with a science type of mindset happen to know how this ‘atomic bomb’ glass differs from glass produced by lightning strikes - especially when lightning strikes hit sand?
Fulgurites. Should be a word for the day.
Back in the day when it wasn’t illegal to remove a piece of the Trinitite or Atomite etc .... I have a piece I personally picked up about 10 yards from ground zero. Its about the size of a silver dollar and 3 times as thick.
Here is a DOE pdf file on a “official measurement “ in 2010. Hope it helps.
http://permalink.lanl.gov/object/tr?what=info:lanl-repo/lareport/LA-UR-11-03597
Which isotope is that?
The most common isotope, U-238, has a half-life of 4.468 billion years, comparable to the age of the earth, a fact that makes it useful for geologic dating. U-235, the isotope useful for fueling reactors and making bombs, has a half-life of 704 million years.
Supposedly it is ‘safe’ after 93 years.
More like, half as dangerous. Saying something has a half-life of 93 years simply means that half of it is gone after 93 years, 75% gone after 186 years, 87.5% gone after 279 years, etc. (only an eighth as dangerous).
The half life of uraniums shortest lived isotope is about a quarter million years. 235 and 238 are close to a billion and 4.5 billion years respectively. Half of any given isotope decays within its half life period.
So if you started with 10 pounds of 241 Pu, after 50 years you’re good to go with the remaining 3/4 pound?
Giant mutated grasshoppers ... The Beginning of the End (1957) ... Here was a recent showing (unfortunately including an audience):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxj0m2ABQZA&t=5m27s
The heroes lure the truck-sized grasshoppers into Lake Michigan, thereby rendering nuclear cauterization of the Chicago area unnecessary.
I think you’re going to have 49 lbs of lead.
Once upon a long time ago I stayed in a hotel in Tucumcari NM, there was a courtyard that featured the petrified stumps of former trees. Other than those, I’ve only seen small samples of such.
Screw my math.
I meant you’re probably going to have 9lbs of lead.
I have a piece of Libyan desert glass
Interesting stuff
"Glass is a supercooled liquid whose viscosity has become so high that for all practical purposes, it is a solid."
Glass experts know that a glass beam supported at the ends, with a weight hanging from the middle, will become measurably bent after many years due to slow viscous flow due to rearrangement of internal bonds.
Glass formation from thermonuclear melting of silicates is not at all an unexpected result. Compared to metals, molten silicates are very viscous and do not recrystallize very quickly.
Melting of high-purity (quartz) sand is an industry for making glass articles for high-temperature service. The names for this glass are "fused quartz" or "vitreous silica." Its desirability in manufactured articles is that it shows very high resistance to thermal shock breakage because of its very low thermal expansion coefficient.
A sister laboratory and kitchenware product is Corningware's Pyrex (TM) glassware featuring very high silica content, made workable by its boron content.
One of the methods of "disposing" of nuclear waste is by melting the radioactive products with suitable glass-maker compounds to tie up the fissile atoms, then pouring the resultant glass into corrosion-resistant, mechanically strong stainless steel tubes, capping them, and storing these "logs" underground in dry caverns; which can then be protected from access.
"It's A Wonderful Half-life"
The women scientists were eye candy.
Pyrex has been cheapened:
Excellent range of info in a short space. Are you a technical writer?
Only for mothers-in-law and democrat chicks...
Very old church windows have been observed to be thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom: slowly oozing down...
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