Hi all, I was reading a book and they mentioned this Nuclear testing in the Van Allen belt, I first thought that it must be made up BUT, no it’s true!
F L Y B Y N E W S,
A Very Scary Fireworks Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR
Are Human Beings really that crazy to play around with nature and our future???
Peace
Yes. There are treaties to put a stop to that particular brand of craziness now, though.
Isn’t this like asking if we could stop a hurricane with a nuclear bomb?
We didn’t do anything at all to nature. Nature is far vaster than any little explosion humans can set off. All we can do is hurt ourselves. And we do that every day.
I suspect it had little to do with research.
It was aimed (pun intended) at the Russians - to show our ICBM prowess.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about this before, but if you think Starfish Prime was crazy, you should read up about Operation Argus. That was an earlier test series (August and September 1958) in which the U.S. detonated not one but three atomic bombs in space (admittedly much lower yield than Starfish Prime, “only” 1.7 kilotons vs. 1.4 megatons for Starfish Prime), and in Operation Argus, the U.S. set off nuclear bombs in space–secretly! (This was less than a year after Sputnik, so it wasn’t like everyone had swarms of satellites beep-beeping around all over the place up there, and the rockets for Argus were launched from a ship sailing in a remote area of the South Atlantic. Even so, the secrecy didn’t last; the story wound up in the New York Times less than a year later.)
The purpose of Argus wasn’t just “Hey, y’all, what would happen if we set off some of them A-bombs in Outer Space?” “Gee, I dunno–hold my beer and let’s find out!” Rather, it was expressly intended to “create artificial Van Allen belts” around Earth, which in turn was done because they thought it might be militarily useful to do so–such artificial radiation belts could be used to fry enemy missiles or satellites. As the second link notes, they were being fairly amazingly cavalier about basically running a physics experiment involving nuclear weapons on the entire planet Earth–that first link even calls the head scientist behind the whole project, Nicholas Christofilos, “brilliant but eccentric”, which I assume is a polite way of saying “Mad? Mad?!? You FOOLS!!! I’ll show you–I’ll show you all!!!”–but that’s Atomic Testing in the Fifties for you.
I came in here figuring that Starfish Prime was the first starfish before the kids cut off its regenerating arms.
That is actually not the case. There are two relevant treaties, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits “stationing” nuclear weapons in space, such as in orbit. However it does not prohibit nuclear weapons transiting through space (e.g, ICBM) or detonating them in space: Outer Space Treaty - Wikipedia
The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has never been enacted: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty - Wikipedia
Even if the 1996 treaty was viewed as being enacted, it only applies to areas under the “jurisdiction and control” of the nation testing the weapon. Obviously outer space is not under any single nation’s jurisdiction. Ironically the 1967 treaty specifically states this – that outer space is not subject to claims of sovereign control.
I was thinking of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
But yeah, there was a moratorium for a few years, then other later treaties and such.
Literally read, the Partial Test Ban Treaty also only prohibits nuclear weapon testing at places under the signatory’s jurisdiction or control. It then states space, but space is not under the jurisdiction or control of any nation, and that was made clear in the 1967 treaty.
The common practice and interpretation is these treaties prohibit nuclear testing in space, but the actual literal wording does not exactly state that.
This shows how confusing and slippery words can be. E.g, the official title of the 1963 treaty is “Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water”. However they can call it whatever they want, what counts is the actual wording of the treaty. That wording is: “Each of the Parties to this Treaty undertakes…not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion…at any place under its jurisdiction or control…”
“Control” probably means in the military sense, and if you can launch a missile through it, then that part of space is indeed under your military control.
So in the case of a large ICBM exchange when hundreds missiles are flying through a limited region of space in opposite directions, under whose control is that part of space?
I recently found a collection of my brothers old British ‘Eagle’ comics from the 1980’s, while actually pretty decent the blatant and crude anti-nuclear propaganda which featured in quite a few stories made me wince. One of the best/worst was the space hero Dan Dare threatening to resign because the government was going to send the Earths radioactive waste to be destroyed in the sun and he (and by extension the writers) was worried that dropping nuclear material into it could cause a reaction which would destroy it and the Earth.
Of course you could easily drop the entire Earth into the Sun and it would barely notice…
People have some really weird ideas when it comes to anything to do with nuclear issues.
[QUOTE=People have some really weird ideas when it comes to anything to do with nuclear issues.[/QUOTE]
Maybe that’s because it is a very creepy and silent Killer…
Radiation does not smell, show or allow you to feel it when you encounter it, anybody that makes fun of our fear of this “Stuff” should think twice about it…
Have a look here, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=801797
Peace
That’s one of the perks of having a PhD: You can never be crazy after that, only “eccentric”.
And not only would dumping nuclear waste into the Sun have no effect on it whatsoever, but it would also be incredibly wasteful on multiple grounds: It’s literally easier to send something out of the Solar System entirely, never to return, than it is to dump it into the Sun, and that’s even assuming that we want to get rid of something as valuable as nuclear waste to begin with.
To give a little perspective…
I grew up in the 1970s, and by that time nuclear weapon delivery via H-bomb tipped MIRV ICBMs was what would happen. Which meant that a nuclear war wasn’t really worth thinking too much about because it would all be over in about 45 minutes.
But before that, all thru the 50s and 60s this was not the case. World War III would look a lot like WWII except with bombers dropping nukes instead. It would still probably be over pretty quickly, but in weeks or months not minutes. Consequently the testing and preparations for a potential nuclear war with Russia made sense. Testing nukes in space was a responsible and necessary contingency as we certainly knew the Soviets would be or already were doing it. EMP was not well understood at all back then and these tests provided a wealth of knowledge that was previously unknown. Both in terms of the disruption it would cause to electronic systems & power grids as well as whether this could be harnessed and used to destroy the missile systems of an incoming nuclear strike.
Militaries assume, plan, prepare and practice for every possibility. To do otherwise is extremely reckless. There is nothing crazy or evil about fully investigating these options.
Ummm…I started that thread…
And nuclear energy (in whatever form) should certainly be respected, but its not magic. I’m not making fun of anybody, I’m saying people are really ignorant about it and that gives them some very strange ideas, which actually just end up scaring people more.
I actually just read the reason behind that a few days ago, and its even more difficult to send something to the sun from Mercury which is closer, all very counter-intuitive, but that’s why its so interesting.