“Regular” bombs, like the ones that were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, work by breaking large atoms, such as uranium and plutonium, into smaller ones.
The hydrogen bomb is even more powerful. It works by combining small atoms to produce larger ones. In this case, hydrogen atoms (or rather some cousins of it with more neutrons) turn into helium. This is also what happens in the Sun.
Radioactivity is a name for microscopic particles that damage the cells that living beings, like us, are made of. After a nuclear explosion, radioactive dust — called fallout — falls on the ground and contaminate water, making life impossible. Fallout is more dangerous than the blast, indeed the big problem is for how long it remains harmful. It is relatively safe to come back to the explosion point after few weeks or months. but you can produce more radioactivity by covering a nuclear device with a metal called cobalt-59. The explosion turns it into cobalt-60, which remains active for 100 years. I’m not sure if such bomb has even been built, but it can certainly make lands uninhabitable for a long time.
It is difficult to get a sense of the power of these weapons. For about twenty five years after the second world war, ever more powerful nuclear bombs were developed and tested. The largest, by the Soviet Union, released so much energy that it would have been enough to power every building and factory in the UK for about ten days! From Einstein’s famous formula E = mc^2, you can work out that this explosion (known in the West as the Tsar Bomba) converted about 2kg of matter into energy.
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Edoardo commented on :
Radioactivity is a name for microscopic particles that damage the cells that living beings, like us, are made of. After a nuclear explosion, radioactive dust — called fallout — falls on the ground and contaminate water, making life impossible. Fallout is more dangerous than the blast, indeed the big problem is for how long it remains harmful. It is relatively safe to come back to the explosion point after few weeks or months. but you can produce more radioactivity by covering a nuclear device with a metal called cobalt-59. The explosion turns it into cobalt-60, which remains active for 100 years. I’m not sure if such bomb has even been built, but it can certainly make lands uninhabitable for a long time.
Harrison commented on :
It is difficult to get a sense of the power of these weapons. For about twenty five years after the second world war, ever more powerful nuclear bombs were developed and tested. The largest, by the Soviet Union, released so much energy that it would have been enough to power every building and factory in the UK for about ten days! From Einstein’s famous formula E = mc^2, you can work out that this explosion (known in the West as the Tsar Bomba) converted about 2kg of matter into energy.