Talk:Tsar Bomba

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  1. /Archive 1 - up to September 2006

Contents

[edit] PD-Soviet

The images on the page are under the PD-Soviet lisence which is being phased out on Commons, so we must find suitable tags and upload them to WP. (TV fair use should work for the images of the bomb explsion they were taken from Discovery Channel program on Tsar Bomba or something like that) --Saint-Paddy 17:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The map

the map shows current borders. Shouldent it show borders at the time of the detenation?

[edit] Unreferenced claim

I removed the following: "Its enormous size made the bomb impractical for warfare purposes, and American historians believe it was constructed primarily for propaganda use in the Cold War." because:

  1. The unreasoned asserion of the first clause seems questionable.
  2. The emphasis on a particular nationalit yof (unnamed) historians seems odd.

Please restore it only if such claims can be substantiated. Thanks. --Guinnog 07:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three-stage devices and fusion tampers

"To limit fallout, the third stage, consisting of a uranium 238 fission tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction), was replaced with one made of lead." This sentence is wrong. First, it implies that three-stage device necessarily means fission-fusion-fission device. It does not. A quote from http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/chemistry/NuclearChemistry/NuclearWeapons/FirstChainReaction/TypesofNuclear/CombinedFission.htm "The fast fission of the secondary jacket in a fission-fusion-fission bomb is sometimes thought of, or referred to, as a "third stage" in the bomb, and it is in a sense. But care must be taken not to confuse this with the true three-stage thermonuclear design in which there is another complete tertiary fusion stage." The Tsar Bomba was a true three-stage device with a complete tertiary fusion stage. I strongly doubt it would be even possible to achieve 50 Mt yield with a single fusion stage without fast fission of the pusher/tamper of that stage. And it was the uranium pusher/tamper of the tertiary stage and possibly the pusher/tamper of the secondary stage which was(were) replaced with one(s) made of lead. The correct term would be fusion pusher/tamper as those stages were fusion stages. Fission tamper means the tamper of the primary stage, the fission trigger. Also the next sentence have to be changed to reflect the plurality of the fusion stages. I suggest someone else edit the article as my English is kinda crappy.130.234.5.136 17:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, yeah, I think you're right on this. --Fastfission 20:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Done a few days ago. Man with two legs 11:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ecology studies

An interesting aspect is what happened with ecology at the site of the explosion. Is any information available? I've heard a strange rumour that 100-megaton bomb wasn't exploded due to it would have caused irreversible extermination of local biosphere. Could it be true? ellol 15:47, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Possibly but I suspect as this article states, they were more concerned about it's effect in the Soviet population Nil Einne 15:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seismic wave

We need to add the info on the size of the seismic wave generated. Currently, it just says it was still detectable after three rounds but doesn't give a figure on the Ritcher scale Nil Einne 15:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Parachute debate

The "small" parachute seen in the article photo (barely larger then the diameter of the bomb casing) is not THE parachute, but only the drag chute! It was opened 2 seconds after releasing bomb from the Tu-95 airplane and served to stabilize the bomb casing nose-first and guide it away from the mother aircraft safely.

After several dozen seconds, this small drag chute separated, pulling out the main parachute, the legendary big one. I saw the film footage of an automatic ground TV zoom camera. At an altitude of 5000 meters the bomb case looked like a ladybug in the middle of a handkerchief, that big was that parachute!

(There are two versions of the Discovery Channel footage on Tsar Bomb, the rarely shown one features a single second of this, where the huge parachute is visible from below).

This is logical. If you consider the 27 metric ton weight of the bomb casing, that smallish drag chute, seen in the current article photo, could not slow the fall of the bomb long enough so that the dropping plane has time to escape while the bomb descends from 10,500 meters to 4,000 meters to detonate. So the parachute industry story is not a hoax. 195.70.32.136 17:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Also you can read in this PDF file that americans were air-dropping 47,000 pound H-bomb dummies using 100ft parachutes back in 1952. The Tsar Bomb was somewhat heavier, so the nylon industry story is plausible. See: http://pdf.aiaa.org/preview/1989/PV1989_880.pdf

[edit] Power output comparison

About the sentence in the chapter "Test", saying: "This is equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun." I think the matter is still not quite clear.

According to the Wikipedia article about the Sun, the energy output of the Sun is 3.8×1026 Watts per second. This is not directly comparable to the total power output of the bomb without doing some time conversions:

The duration of energy release of the Tsar Bomb cited was 3.9×10-8 seconds, during which time the total energy of the bomb was released. However, during this same time, the Sun releases energy in the amount of

3.8×1026 W/s * 3.9×10-8 s = 1.5×1019 W,

which is 35000 times less than the energy released by the bomb (5.3×1024 Watts) in the same amount of time. Now I'm not sure if I'm entirely correct with my calculation, as mathematics is not my strength. Please check the calculation if necessary.

What I wanted to say, however, that the article still needs clarification in the comparison to the Sun.

-Didi7 17:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

No. You misunderstood the Sun article. It says:
"380 yottawatts (3.8×1026 W) or 9.1×1010 megatons of TNT per second"
where the "per second" refers only to the megatons, not to the yottawatts. A megaton is a unit of energy and a watt is a unit of power. Power is energy output per unit of time and in this case watts per second don't make sense.
Perhaps it's the Sun article that need clarifying?130.234.5.136 23:08, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Location

73.85 N 54.50 E is on the North Island of Novaya Zemlya. On the Google Earth satellite imagery of that area, there appears to be a somewhat darkened eliptical area with jagged edges which is some 2,7 km wide and about twice that long, but it could just be valleys lying in the shadow. This area is some 50 km to the northeast of the Mityushikha Bay.

The link to Google Maps, where you can see the "4 km depression" on the satellite image, points to a location about 230 km away from 73.85 N 54.50 E, on the South Island. It is located at 72.00 N 52.06, which is some 175 km south of Mityushikha Bay.

Can anybody resolve these contradictions?--Cancun771 12:16, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Today I deleted the link to the Google map. I have no clue what the geographical feature is that you can see there but in all probability it can't have anything to do with Tsar Bomba. It is hundreds of kilometers away from the coordinates given in the article itself, from the Mityushikha Bay mentioned on http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html, and from the test area called "Sukhoy Nos" where, according to the wiki on Novaya Zemlya, the test took place. In fact, that wiki mentions only three test areas and the location on this Google map wasn't too close to either of them. Also, compare the s ource mentioned on Novaya Zemlya, http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/13_1-2khalturin%20NZ%201-42%20.pdf --Cancun771 11:16, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No source for windows in Finland.

This is highly improbable. Why didn't it break all the windows in the homes of millions of people closer to the blast site than Finland? If this is true, the article needs a source for it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.173.68.215 (talk) 03:15, 16 March 2007 (UTC).

The closest large city to Novaya Zemlya is Murmansk, then a closed Soviet city. There aren't "millions of people closer" than closest part of Finland (also a remote area). The closest "western" settlement to the site, however, is Kirknäs/Kirkkoniemi, Norway.82.181.150.151 20:35, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Satelite navigation on a nuclear weapon?

The article says: "However, the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better, and especially the advent of satellite navigation, made such a design philosophy obsolete" How would this work in a nuclear war? Not for very long I think. 82.181.150.151 20:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That whole section look suspect to me. As the article says near the top, this bomb was about sabre rattling and not a serious weapon. Man with two legs 20:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


An interesting note is that, in addition to reducing fallout, the Soviet government was forced to reduce it to a 40 megaton shell. Why? At 100 megatons there was no platform that could properly carry it. So it was a test of a large bomb. Research and propoganda, but not a practical device.

--Hrimpurstala 18:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not true. It was a 100-megaton bomb design... if fired with fissionable uranium tampers for the second and third fusion stages. It was fired "clean", with lead or tungsten tampers, which reduced the yield by about a factor of two, and the fallout by about a factor of 10. The bomb as it was dropped was clearly impractical to carry; the bomber's bottom had to be partly rebuilt to carry it, half hanging out the bottom of the airframe, and there was no way they could have flown it to the United States to drop it on anything. It was a propaganda project; the researchers already knew enough from smaller weapons to know how it would work, though it did validate their theories. Georgewilliamherbert 19:51, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
There might be crossed wires here: clearly the 100MT version was droppable, but it has been suggested that the aircraft would (a) not be able to carry it far, (b) would get shot down anyway and (c) not have been able to get far enough away before it went off. So whether you two disagree or not is not clear to me. Man with two legs 09:38, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
What was dropped was a 100-megaton version... fired with "clean" non-uranium fusion tampers, at half max yield. The size and weight of the bomb, other components, etc. are identical between the versions, it's just substituting lead or tungsten for uranium in a tamper layer. Georgewilliamherbert 19:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
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