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Meson Bomb
The meson bomb was a proposed nuclear weapon that would derive its destructive force from meson interactions with fissionable material like uranium. The idea behind the bomb was rejected by most scientists, but during the Cold War, American intelligence managed to trick the Soviet Union into conducting research on this topic, which resulted in several years of wasted labor by one of the Soviet nuclear weapon research bureaus. Origins Mesons ( hadronic subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by the strong interaction) were proposed to form a nuclear weapon as early as the 1940s. Early speculation suggested that the resulting bomb would be the most powerful nuclear weapon yet to have been developed. American physicist Ernest Lawrence used the potential military applications of mesons to obtain funding for its synchrocyclotron built between 1940 and 1946 at the University of California, Berkeley. Soon, however, the scientific consensus was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to . The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to . Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54) and 50 megatons for the Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as can release energy equal to more than . A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
