njohnson747
01-26-07, 03:50 PM
Various forms of the GIF below (and the original video) are floating around the 'net with little explaination as to the significance of the event pictured. The original video is from a documentary entitled "Trinity and Beyond" which chronicles US nuclear weapons research from 1945 to the present. Narrated by William Shatner (who does an excellent job by the way) the work is a remastered compilation of top secret US government film which was declassified just one decade ago.
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9576/ncannonex8kg3.gif (http://imageshack.us)
The images from the film are as beautiful as they are terrible - but back to the Nuclear Cannon: it is from the notable US test in the 1950's dubbed "Shot Grable". Shot Grable was the detonation of a relatively small nuclear yeild at an altitude of 500 feet. What is notable about the test is not it's launch from an artillery piece - it is the fact that it caused much more extensive damage to prearranged targets than a larger bomb dropped from the air and detonated at 1,500 feet. So why would a smaller blast cause more damage?
The detonation from the nuclear artillery shell created a blast wave that scientists dubbed a "precurser wave". This waveform slices like a knife into targets within the blast line instead of hitting it head on. As a result the jeeps which had been placed within the blast radius and barely been moved by the larger and higher detonation were thrown 100 feet from their original spot as a result of Shot Grable's precurser wave.
The discovery of this waveform dramatically increased the potential destructive power of the US nuclear arsenal in the event such weapons would be used in combat.
http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9576/ncannonex8kg3.gif (http://imageshack.us)
The images from the film are as beautiful as they are terrible - but back to the Nuclear Cannon: it is from the notable US test in the 1950's dubbed "Shot Grable". Shot Grable was the detonation of a relatively small nuclear yeild at an altitude of 500 feet. What is notable about the test is not it's launch from an artillery piece - it is the fact that it caused much more extensive damage to prearranged targets than a larger bomb dropped from the air and detonated at 1,500 feet. So why would a smaller blast cause more damage?
The detonation from the nuclear artillery shell created a blast wave that scientists dubbed a "precurser wave". This waveform slices like a knife into targets within the blast line instead of hitting it head on. As a result the jeeps which had been placed within the blast radius and barely been moved by the larger and higher detonation were thrown 100 feet from their original spot as a result of Shot Grable's precurser wave.
The discovery of this waveform dramatically increased the potential destructive power of the US nuclear arsenal in the event such weapons would be used in combat.