Mankind had never seen anything like it.
When it was unleashed on people in an effort to stop a war, all people saw was
a blinding light followed by complete darkness and destruction. it was August 6
1945. It was the most powerful weapon ever created by mankind.
it's shockwave turned everything in a one-mile radius into rubble.
It unleashed energy and radiation that killed a hundred and forty thousand
people in the industrial city of Hiroshima Japan. As powerful as this bomb was, mankind has since invented a weapon that is hundreds of times more powerful.
Today, we have thermonuclear weapons, also called the hydrogen bomb. To give you an
idea of its power, if the original Hiroshima bomb was dropped in New York
City, it would destroy everything in a one-mile radius. But if a hydrogen bomb
was dropped there, heaven forbid, it would not just destroy everything in a
one-mile radius, it would make into rubble everything in
a ten-mile radius. This would be a total calamity. The world now has over 10,000
such bombs capable of easily destroying every single person on our planet many
times over. What makes these weapons so powerful? How do they actually work?
That's coming up right now. The bomb on Hiroshima released an energy equivalent
of 15,000 tons of TNT. The first hydrogen bomb released the energy equivalent of
10 million tons of TNT. While the atomic bomb like the one that
was dropped on Hiroshima worked on the principle of releasing energy through
the splitting of atoms, also called fission - see my video on that - a
hydrogen bomb does something that releases even more energy - and that is it
fuses atoms together. Fusion is even more powerful than fission. It is the same
process that powers our Sun. And when fission is combined with fusion in a
hydrogen bomb, it creates energy orders of magnitude higher than fission alone, making
the hydrogen bomb hundreds to thousands of times more powerful than atomic bombs.
How does fusion work? The fusion portion of the bomb creates energy
by combining two isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium to create
helium. Unlike a natural hydrogen atom that is made of one electron orbiting
around one proton, these isotopes have extra neutrons in their nuclei. A large
amount of energy is released when these two isotopes fuse together to form
helium, because a helium atom has much less energy than these two isotopes
combined. This excess energy is released. One of the main problems with creating
the hydrogen bomb was obtaining the Tritium. Scientists found that they could
generate this on the spot inside the hydrogen bomb with a compound
combining Lithium and Deuterium. The result was a dry, solid, stable powder
called Lithium Deuteride. So this is what most hydrogen bombs today use as their
fuel. But how does the process of fusion actually occur? Ordinarily the nuclei of
two atoms cannot be combined because these nuclei have strong positive
electrical charges and repel each other. This is why scientists chose hydrogen as
the best candidate for fusion because it has only one proton and thus would have
less electrical charge than atoms with multiple protons in their nuclei. But if
the nuclei repel each other, how do they fuse? It turns out that if you increase
the temperature by millions of degrees, it is possible to combine nuclei
together. As the temperature increases the atoms speed up. But an extraordinary
increase in speed of the atoms is needed in order to give them a chance to
overcome their natural repulsion. The temperatures needed are astronomical,
higher than even that at the center of our Sun - 100 million degrees Celsius. The
center of the Sun is 15 million degrees Celsius. At this temperature the isotopes
become a form of matter called plasma. This is when the electrons orbiting the
nuclei are stripped away from the nucleus, and the nuclei and electrons are
floating around freely in a kind of high temperature soup. At this temperature, the
nuclei can get very close to each other. And when they get as close as one times
ten to the negative 15 meters apart, then the strong nuclear force which is
present only at very close distances, and is responsible for keeping protons and
neutrons glued together, takes over and combines the protons and neutrons together to form a Helium nucleus and a free neutron. But
how is a temperature of 100 million degrees achieved? This is where the
fission or atomic bomb inside the hydrogen bomb enclosure comes into play. The
purpose of the fission bomb is to provide the energy needed to heat up the
fusion reaction to this 100 million degrees. So how do they work together? A
hydrogen bomb is actually three bombs in one. It contains an ordinary chemical
bomb, a fission bomb like the one dropped on Nagasaki, and a fusion bomb. All three
work in concert. The chemical bomb initiates the fission bomb, which
initiates the fusion bomb. To understand how the fission and fusion bombs work
together, it's important to understand how the bomb is put together. In a
ballistic missile the bomb is usually located at the top, inside the cone
portion of the missile. Here is where the hydrogen bomb vessel sits. The casing of
the bomb is lined with beryllium. This acts as a mirror to reflect the neutrons
back into the casing rather than allowing them to escape the vessel. A
small atomic bomb is located at the top of the casing. It's shaped like a sphere.
The top of the sphere contains conventional chemical explosives
surrounding a sphere of beryllium mirror casing, inside of which is a small
uranium or plutonium sphere, about four to six inches in diameter. Below this
atomic bomb is the hydrogen or fusion bomb. It consists of a cylinder made of
Uranium. The fuel for the fusion reaction, Lithium Deuteride sits inside the
cylinder. And at the core of the cylinder sits a rod of Plutonium. In between the
fission and fusion bombs is an encasing made of styrofoam. And here is how it all
works together. First the fission bomb is detonated by exploding conventional
chemical bombs in sequence. This forces the sphere of plutonium 239 our uranium
235 to implode on itself. The implosion or compression of this material creates
a critical mass which results in a chain reaction of neutron splitting atoms
apart and creating more neutrons, which split more atoms apart. The chain
reaction results in an atomic explosion. This fission explosion creates high
energy gamma rays and x-rays which heat up the styrofoam and turns it into
plasma. This plasma reflects off the beryllium-lined walls and focuses its
energy on the fusion cylinder. These x-rays travel at the speed of light, so
they can reach the hydrogen fuel sooner than the physical shockwave from the
atomic bomb. This is important because if the shock wave reached there first, then
the fusion bomb would be blown apart before it could create fusion reactions.
The heat and pressure of the plasma compresses the fusion cylinder causing
the lithium deuteride to react. This releases Tritium. The Tritium and
Deuterium fuse to form helium and more neutrons. the neutrons cause the Uranium
casing and Plutonium rod to undergo more fission reactions. This causes more
pressure on the Lithium Deuteride, not only from the outside in but also from
the inside out. This produces more fusion which releases more neutrons, which causes
more fission. This positive feedback loop of fission-fusion-fission-fusion
reactions goes back and forth until a huge explosion occurs ripping everything
apart. Amazingly all these events happen in only about 600 billionths of a second,
550 billions of a second for the fission bomb implosion, and 50 billionths of
a second for the fusion bomb. The result is an immense explosion with a 10
million ton yield, 700 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. And
where does all this energy actually come from? Well, if you could weigh all the
atoms of the fuel before the explosion and all the atoms released after the
fusion, the sum of all atoms after the explosion would be less than the sum of
all the atoms before the explosion. This difference in mass is converted to
energy using Einstein's famous equation E equals MC squared. And exactly how much
mass is converted to energy? To give you an idea, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima
converted 700 milligrams of mass into energy, about 1/3 the mass of a U.S.
penny. The total uranium used was 55 pounds. A hydrogen bomb however converts
about a kilogram, or two pounds of mass to pure energy. But in order to convert
this much you have to start with about 140 kilos, or 300 pounds of hydrogen fuel.
Only six countries have such bombs -China, France, India, Russia, the United Kingdom,
and the United States. Almost all the nuclear weapons deployed today are
hydrogen bombs because they are much smaller and lighter, and so can be
deployed in intercontinental ballistic missiles. These things don't just kill,
they annihilate. We humans have become quite efficient at it. Avinash here if you like our videos andconsider subscribing and ring the bell
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some have four, with the fusion bomb being used to detonate an even larger fusion bomb. tsar bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever tested, is an example of this.
A triple layer cake.
For anyone who wants to learn more about how the bombs actually work you can watch this talk:
Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work Part 1/2
Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work Part 2/2
So now I know how to make a hydrogen bomb.
If I can just get Spider-Man I can have all the tritium I need
Yo dawg I heard you like bombs