Tsar Bomba - Not The Most Powerful

coming up from my last video lord knows how long ago that was while studying the topic i came to realize something quite interesting neutronium bombs sound cool but are next to impossible to make i mean there's just no way to get enough neutrons to make a bomb so my dear viewer you can relax nuclear and thermonuclear bombs on the other hand are quite easy to make well if you somehow get your hands on some uranium and plutonium then it becomes easy although the topic was based on pure fiction one question came to mind while i was studying the tsar bomba how were they able to achieve 50 [Music] megatons hello everyone subject zero here at the end of the second world war two atomic bombs were dropped in japan little boy with 15 kilotons of tnt equivalence and fat men with 21. they were the first and only atomic bombs to be used in warfare killing an estimated number of in between 120 to 160 000 people something that should never happen again now the way these bombs worked although you could say that they were state of the art during their time had a lot of drawbacks seriously not only their design was so simple which makes me wonder why the germans never figured it out they also could easily be disabled if only the japanese knew about it but i digress to understand how they were able to achieve a 50 megaton bomb we first need to understand how it all works the principle behind how fission and fusion bombs work is straightforward for fission to occur essentially you need fast moving neutrons to collide with the nucleus initiating a chain reaction this is a major problem hitting the nucleus is really hard especially with fast neutrons in most reactions neutrons are lost if nothing keeps them at bay to help they use something called temper a temper makes sure that the fast fusion neutrons released by the hit bounce back continue the chain reaction but all of this has to happen in a fraction of a second to release all of the energy of the bomb hence why these devices are so precise down to the microsecond there are mainly two ways to ignite the core and both of them were explored during the second world war the first most simple method was used with little boy version of the bomb it is the simplest way to ignite nuclear fission this bomb used a ballistic approach two pieces of uranium that smashed against each other at almost the speed of sound it looked something like this you have a projectile and a target both made of uranium-235 the projectile is where the majority of uranium is concentrated about 60 and the target with 40 they are located on opposite ends of the bomb at a distance of 1.1 meters when it's time to detonate cordite powder bags are triggered launching the projectile towards the target at 300 meters per second surrounding the target tungsten carbide is used as a temper this happens in a microsecond releasing about 15 kilotons this method is quite inefficient as for the amount of uranium needed versus blast yield physicists define this as their yield to weight ratio it is a simple calculation where you take the total energy released in practice or in theory divided by the total weight of the bomb little boy had an yield to weight ratio of 3.6 kilotons per ton in comparison the fat man bomb had an eel-to-weight ratio of 4.6 kilotons per ton the main problem with the ballistic method is that not enough neutrons remain in the reaction to increase blast yield now the fatman bomb was a more complex device however far more efficient with only 6.4 kilograms of plutonium it was 40 stronger in this case they used a series of explosives projected inwards compressing uranium-235 to twice its normal density what they called radiation implosion this is the reason this method is more efficient the bomb was assembled in such way to produce a symmetrical compression to achieve this they position high explosive charges in a classic soccer ball pattern divided into three layers each of the three layers of explosives was designed to transform concave waves into a spherical one the wave then causes the implosion of the aluminum pusher crushing a boron plastic shell this plastic shell was designed to prevent pre-detonation the shockwave reaches a beryllium polonium-modulated neutron initiator pushing the two metals together releasing the first burst of neutrons from the center of the bomb causing fission neutrons eventually reach the nickel-plated delta phase alloy of plutonium-239 240 and gallium the second fission reaction happens here moving further outwards towards the natural uranium temper uranium not only fissions but also works as a temper reflecting back neutrons towards the center this scheme uses significantly less feeling and achieves a higher yield but there is a major drawback the blast waves have to be synchronized down to the microsecond any disturbance and the bomb yield drops dramatically now how were they able to get 50 megatons well the tsar bomba was created using radiation implosion as well with a two-part multi-stage structure the only difference is that they introduced something called a dry fuel or lithium-6 deuteride the first problem with hydrogen bombs lies with hydrogen itself hydrogen concentration has to be high enough to increase the chances of fusion lithium hydride is a solid soft material with salt-like characteristics it is the perfect fuel for this type of use because of its high hydrogen content now since detailed schematics aren't available i will have to extrapolate things using the classic hydrogen bomb explanation with the teller ulam configuration in this schematic you have a fission bomb comprising the first stage next to the second and third stage containing plutonium and lithium-6 deuteride not only it holds hydrogen in place facilitating fusion but lithium also breaks down increasing blast yield the castle bravo device contained large quantities of lithium-6 and 7 which were responsible for a 2.5 times increase in blast yield from 6 to 15 megatons in the case of the most powerful bomb detonated it released 50 megatons of tnt equivalent with an eel-to-weight ratio of 2 megatons per ton at first the tsar bomba was supposed to have a third stage capable of adding an extra 50 megatons now it isn't clear if the bomb had all three stages when detonated however it is believed that the second and third stage of the bomb would have a lead temper instead of uranium-238 which decreased the bomb yield from 100 to 50 megatons the ratio of the tsar bomba is only a fraction of what is possible in theory but much higher values were achieved by u.s scientists there is one bomb with a higher ratio and that is the b-41 also known as the mk-41 a total of 500 were produced and they hold the record for the most efficient highest yield to weight ratio at 5.2 megatons per ton the b-41 weighs only 4 840 kilograms but if it weighs the same as the tsar bomb at 27 tons this bomb would more than surpass the tsar bomb by a factor of almost three times at 140 megatons of tnt equivalent but at the end of the day though these bombs were extremely powerful they weren't practical entire airplanes had to be dedicated to the bomb itself severely limiting their maneuverability since war became more strategic and small scale there was no need for these mega bombs and smaller more tactical nukes that could be delivered by rockets gained preference over time alright folks that's it we're done here you

Channel: Subject Zero Science

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Keywords: Subject Zero Science, graphene, tsar bomba, tsar bomba footage, tsar bomba documentary, tsar bomba explosion footage, tsar bomba comparison, thermonuclear, thermonuclear explosion, thermonuclear bomb test, thermonuclear fusion, thermonuclear bomb explosion

Id: -SQinarHV9U

Length: 8min 52sec (532 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021