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To: chimera
So, you explain this one smart guy.

The general outline of the fission-fusion bomb has been out there for quite a long time. The details may be missing, but we currently have SEVERAL nations with sufficient knowledge of that process to have made successful bombs.

BTW, it's an ENGINEERING PROBLEM. Most of the physics was worked out and published back in the 1930s.

5 posted on 02/07/2012 6:02:00 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
The general outline of the fission-fusion bomb has been out there for quite a long time.

Modern weapons use a three-stage fission-fusion-fission process.

BTW, it's an ENGINEERING PROBLEM. Most of the physics was worked out and published back in the 1930s.

No, the physics of the "classical Super" were suggested by Teller and others during the Manhattan Project. The 1930s was basic research into the fission process, measuring cross-sections, etc. There was insufficient data on cross-sections to suggest that even a fission weapon was possible until the early 1940s.

What makes modern thermonuclear weapons possible is the concept of radiation implosion. Teller signed off on the first definitive study of the physics of this process, also known as the Teller-Ulam method, in the LAMS-1230 report of April, 1951. It took about a year to implement, but even Ivy Mike in Nov. 1952 was still a kind of physics test since it used liquid deuterium instead of the lithium deuteride which forms the "fuel" in contemporary staged thermonuclear weapons.

6 posted on 02/07/2012 6:48:46 AM PST by chimera
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