What are those LINES near nuclear explosions?

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
  • In this video we are going to answer one of the most frequently asked questions we receive from our viewers. What actually are those mysterious lines in many photos of nuclear explosions?

ความคิดเห็น • 2.1K

  • @grisslebear
    @grisslebear ปีที่แล้ว +7109

    FUN FACT: It took ~240,000 times longer to explain this phenomenon in this video than for the event to occur in real time.

    • @SorenCicchini
      @SorenCicchini ปีที่แล้ว +186

      That's not my idea of fun.

    • @Mr.Robert1
      @Mr.Robert1 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Great COMMENT. In plain English. It gets so hot it can't get out of it's own way. Hotter than shit.💩💩💩

    • @Wavy_Gravy
      @Wavy_Gravy ปีที่แล้ว +43

      Detonation and energetics be like that.

    • @kiliandrilltzsch8272
      @kiliandrilltzsch8272 ปีที่แล้ว +49

      r/theydidthemath

    • @grisslebear
      @grisslebear ปีที่แล้ว +20

      @@Invalidinput
      The other side of the coin. Thanks for augmenting my statement.

  • @msredfox
    @msredfox ปีที่แล้ว +4681

    I've honestly never seen footage of the smoke rockets being fired off before detonating the nuke, so thanks for sharing that

    • @tomstamford6837
      @tomstamford6837 ปีที่แล้ว +89

      The never usually show that, the big ticket is the blast itself and not the boring detail of setting it up.
      But I know what you mean. Often times, all the work that went into something like these big events is more interesting. I have watched so many videos about Apollo preparations, how the astronauts were trained, the construction of the equipment for that reason.
      But for years I always wondered about this before learning of the sounding rockets. In pre-internet days, searching for answers was either difficult or very time consuming.

    • @piehound
      @piehound ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Honesty is the best policy !!!! BTW smoke rockets are used only in test detonations. In actual war they would not use them. Obviously . . . the rockets are useful only when high speed cameras are set up to record the event. Clearly that means they know ahead of time exactly WHEN the explosion will happen. In war that would be impossible.

    • @msredfox
      @msredfox ปีที่แล้ว +7

      @@piehound oh I know the US military would never deploy smoke rockets, especially considering most of the US nuclear stockpile is either ICBMs or SLBMs

    • @DennisGr
      @DennisGr ปีที่แล้ว +23

      @@tomstamford6837 there is just a very limited supply of nuke footage out there, same with meaningful volcanic eruptions, you just exhaust it very quickly, so it's always rad to see something new.

    • @armykiller1288
      @armykiller1288 ปีที่แล้ว

      true

  • @Ninjahat
    @Ninjahat ปีที่แล้ว +5

    A huge thank you! This has never been explained or at least been available information before. We are many who have been wondering for decades 🙂

  • @PeterGrenader
    @PeterGrenader ปีที่แล้ว +14

    Try to wrap your head around him saying "when the average temperature of the fireball drops below 300,000° Celsius".

    • @k2000kidd1
      @k2000kidd1 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      You could fry an egg at.those temps, then again what egg?

    • @Head-Tr1ck
      @Head-Tr1ck ปีที่แล้ว +1

      ​@@k2000kidd1There is a radius around a nuclear detonation where every pizza is cooked to perfection. Just something I thought I should share.

  • @FrenkMelk
    @FrenkMelk ปีที่แล้ว +12

    So this is one of those imponderables I've had in my life for as long as I can remember. So glad I got it explained in such an elegant and succinct fashion. As soon as they gave the example of the heathered balloon I knew immediately what the purpose of the smoke trails was. Well done!

  • @jeffreyraia
    @jeffreyraia ปีที่แล้ว +26

    This answered a lifelong question I had about those strange lines. What was strange is that it seemed that I was the only person that wondered what they were because no one asked or seemed to care.

    • @stumpgrindingdirect2385
      @stumpgrindingdirect2385 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      same here, i did think it was some kind of reaction of the explosion, lightning or something.

    • @joeKisonue
      @joeKisonue ปีที่แล้ว

      You were not the only one

  • @gangalo68
    @gangalo68 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    This is a great part of TH-cam. I got a question answered I didn’t know I had. 😊

  • @BoondockMercantile
    @BoondockMercantile 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Speed up to 1.25X so the narrator doesn't sound like he's reading you a bedtime story.

  • @hawaiidispenser
    @hawaiidispenser ปีที่แล้ว +8

    I figured these were rockets to measure the size of the mushroom cloud. Kinda close. Subscribed, as this was explained clearly and succinctly.

  • @patrickpet7905
    @patrickpet7905 ปีที่แล้ว

    Wow... this video showed an expert in using the most words to explain something so simple...

  • @nee3029
    @nee3029 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Super good explanation!
    I am always amazed by the fact that the Trinity test was filmed with 6 super high speed cameras.Yes, not much material fits on one tape. But the fact that it was possible is almost unbelievable.

  • @ek6648
    @ek6648 ปีที่แล้ว +75

    What still questions me is what in the world gives these materials such force

    • @declandougan7243
      @declandougan7243 ปีที่แล้ว +57

      I love the way Feynman described it.
      Gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces, it takes a whole planet to weigh you down. The forces we see in our everyday lives can shape the world in dramatic ways, but there is much more hidden beneath the surface. When you feel static electricity, that is the effect of an extremely minuscule amount of charge, accumulated by the triboelectric effect. When generating electricity, we humans concentrate a very small amount of electrons to do our bidding, the weight of the entire internet is akin to a strawberry. On very small scales, we can still see this power, when you touch something you are coming so close to it that its electric charge pushes back on you. However, the strong nuclear force is even stronger, but once again, its constituents are in numerical balance, hiding away the fact that extreme energy exists in all things. To unleash this power from only a dollar bill’s weight of fissile material created the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. But everything everywhere stores this energy.

    • @80ssynthfan48
      @80ssynthfan48 ปีที่แล้ว +19

      E=mc2. The energy contained in mass is gargantuan if released by nuclear fission or fusion. The multiplier c2 means you only need a small amount of mass liberation to produce extraordinary amounts of energy.

    • @DeezNutz-ce5se
      @DeezNutz-ce5se ปีที่แล้ว +3

      It's called the strong force.

    • @bold810
      @bold810 ปีที่แล้ว +4

      That's easy: Male Insecurity.
      🎉

    • @DS-lk3tx
      @DS-lk3tx ปีที่แล้ว +17

      ​@@bold810 If only the birthing people were a fraction of our greatness.

  • @danielhenne3350
    @danielhenne3350 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    I really feel like although this video is super technical, i still sense it's own awareness of what a real treat it was for me as I watched it. I know there was nothing more to say, but when it was over I was saddened being as I could have watched a video on this topic and in this style indefinitely. Thank you. Also thank you for the new footage.

    • @party4lifedude
      @party4lifedude ปีที่แล้ว

      And then there are all these children in the comments complaining about how it was "way too long" because everything needs to be a 7 second tik tok now.

  • @rnews5750
    @rnews5750 8 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I've always wondered what they were. Thanks for sharing and teaching us.

  • @Omega_A3
    @Omega_A3 ปีที่แล้ว

    I did wonder about those lines and it's pretty cool that it's actually a unique way to do scientific research.

  • @josephcontreras8930
    @josephcontreras8930 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Thanks for answering this question. I thought they were flares dropped by the bomber. Also the hbomb explosion always looked like lemon meringue pie filling to me as a kid. Great viddie

  • @jpiper2001
    @jpiper2001 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I hypothesized what they were for 40 ago. Thanks for confirming.

  • @cloudandsurf
    @cloudandsurf ปีที่แล้ว

    WOW, thank you so much atomicarchive for settling this mysterious question.

  • @2150dalek
    @2150dalek ปีที่แล้ว

    Still frightening to see the power of the Nuclear bomb in these film clips after all these years.

  • @Superlokkus5
    @Superlokkus5 ปีที่แล้ว

    Thank you so much, this question acutely tormented my for years a tiny bit.❤

  • @mhick3333
    @mhick3333 ปีที่แล้ว

    What a great presentation!

  • @peterthegamer9334
    @peterthegamer9334 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Shock front sounds like a battle bot team name if they allowed electrical offensive systems. Just imagine a giant taser strapped in front of a battle bot😂

  • @MM4F
    @MM4F ปีที่แล้ว

    Excellent.. good job, as you say… always wondered. 👍🇬🇧

  • @Chronicbadminton
    @Chronicbadminton ปีที่แล้ว

    Very interesting information. I always thought those were part of the explosion some how.

  • @andrewbailey7999
    @andrewbailey7999 ปีที่แล้ว

    Wow, always thought these were radiation phenomena! Never occurred to me that they were a deliberate part of testing, and never part of the nuclear blast itself!

  • @daemn42
    @daemn42 ปีที่แล้ว

    I always knew they were rocket trails and must be used to track progress but didn't know that it's just the optical refraction effect they're after, not physical displacement (at least not initially).

  • @jordy6082
    @jordy6082 ปีที่แล้ว

    So rockets that, seconds before detonation of the bomb, shoot straight up leaving horizontal smoke lines to track the shockwave.
    Saved you a whole lot of gibberish

  • @reggievangleason9511
    @reggievangleason9511 ปีที่แล้ว

    👍Great information, made easy to understand. But, play at 1.75x or higher to avoid drowsiness.😞

  • @dwm5150
    @dwm5150 ปีที่แล้ว

    I’ve always wondered, thanks for the answer to a 58 year old question.

  • @pogpotatofarmer
    @pogpotatofarmer ปีที่แล้ว

    this guy sound like he voice the fitness gram pacer test💀

  • @PuffleFuzz
    @PuffleFuzz ปีที่แล้ว

    1:16 okay that looks so cool

  • @gravitas6170
    @gravitas6170 ปีที่แล้ว

    tldr; they use small rockets to create smoke trails, which allows the effects of the shockwave in the air to be seen as it interacts with said smoke trails.

  • @Edelweiss-uv5xi
    @Edelweiss-uv5xi ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Sounding rockets. There you go, saved you some time.

  • @js70371
    @js70371 ปีที่แล้ว

    Fun Fact: this video could have easily been compressed into a 15 second short

  • @lj5190
    @lj5190 ปีที่แล้ว

    CLIFF'S NOTES: Smoke rockets are launched just before detonation to measure the invisible shock front.

  • @fz671
    @fz671 ปีที่แล้ว

    All that when they could have said. Those are the smoke traits of rockets used to track the different pressure waves.

  • @MegaDirtyberty
    @MegaDirtyberty ปีที่แล้ว

    Now I know the science of how I am going to die when a nuke is used.....

  • @AceMon2005
    @AceMon2005 ปีที่แล้ว

    TLDR: They're smoke rockets used for tracking the shockwave.

  • @umbrellacorp.
    @umbrellacorp. ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Shock Fronts, got it. 😎👍💯

  • @machonsote918
    @machonsote918 ปีที่แล้ว

    You know, I hadn't noticed that.........mmmmmm.......I'll have to pay close attention next time one gets detonated close to me.

  • @shellygardner6410
    @shellygardner6410 ปีที่แล้ว

    Can't wait to see this

  • @kennixox262
    @kennixox262 ปีที่แล้ว

    You wonder how they figured to set the exposure on the cameras so as not to get an over exposed film.

  • @RickyPisano
    @RickyPisano ปีที่แล้ว

    Clean sparks diving down.....

  • @ThatOpalGuy
    @ThatOpalGuy ปีที่แล้ว

    Fascinating

  • @foxalpha09
    @foxalpha09 ปีที่แล้ว

    Tldr, its a bunch of vaporized cables that are ment to measure the Shockwave

  • @H3ntairican
    @H3ntairican ปีที่แล้ว

    Bro this video reminded me of that meme how It sounds to women when guys talk about cars😂

  • @Warriorking.1963
    @Warriorking.1963 ปีที่แล้ว +326

    Although I'd seen those smoke trails, I always thought they were caused by some weird reaction between the air and the explosion. I never even thought they were put there deliberately to help monitor what was going on. Great video!

    • @cubertmiso
      @cubertmiso ปีที่แล้ว +1

      as you know, if there were some weird reaction where would be more smoke trails. i suggest a good and tiny book called: consider a spherical cow, made myself see world better as it is.

    • @chouseification
      @chouseification ปีที่แล้ว +7

      it's like graph papering the sky :D

    • @imawatermelon1439
      @imawatermelon1439 ปีที่แล้ว +4

      I honestly thought it was lighting strikes, I just assumed that large of a thermal reaction caused some friction that needed to be released. The more ya know.

  • @Osmone_Everony
    @Osmone_Everony ปีที่แล้ว +54

    The last clip (3:54) was also very interesting. We were able to see how the shock wave got reflected from the ground, ran vertically up in the air, deformed the fireball and dragged dust and smoke up behind it.

    • @carnellmanson6797
      @carnellmanson6797 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      It creates a mushroom cloud
      That’s fucking sick

    • @doogleticker5183
      @doogleticker5183 3 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      The lowest part of the rebounded wave nearly doubles the energy of the expanding ground wave…the rebounded energy combines with the original expanding wave at ground level. This is called a Mach wave and one of the reasons that airbursts have more lethal shock waves at ground level. Ground bursts provide more of a radioactive cloud, but less of a expanding shock wave. 😮

  • @scottieray
    @scottieray ปีที่แล้ว +1541

    Most impressed by the hard math/science behind these experiments. It makes me wonder how modern nuclear developments are conducted in current times considering live testing is banned. There seem to be periods in human history where developments just leapfrog into a whole new era.

    • @davidswanson5669
      @davidswanson5669 ปีที่แล้ว

      It seems like you’re describing the 20th century. An era of unprecedented research and advancements, unhampered by the whiny wokeism that’s currently damning the 21st century.

    • @ttrestle
      @ttrestle ปีที่แล้ว +180

      Supercomputers. Very big supercomputers.

    • @magtovi
      @magtovi ปีที่แล้ว

      I'm all for experiments, using the results to vaporize innocent civilian women, children, elderly and men is what doesn't sit quite right with me.

    • @piotrd.4850
      @piotrd.4850 ปีที่แล้ว +122

      Simulations, hope and maintenance. I'm more interested how PEOPLE are recruited for the work, as it isn't taught in regular university classes.

    • @VoidHalo
      @VoidHalo ปีที่แล้ว +79

      In the case of North Korea, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were a lot of scientists in Ukraine where a lot of the research was done, were suddenly without work. So, they went to work for North Korea. Taking decades of nuclear science with them.
      In the case of the USSR, they were working on their ownbprogram, but they got a huge headstart from information stolen from the US by spies. People like the Rosenburgs helped the program come along a great way like that.
      Those are the only two countries I can say with any assuredness how they developed nuclear weapons. But judging from the pattern, I think it's safe to say other nuclear powers that shouldn't have them like Israel and South Africa probably developed their weapons using stolen information.
      I'm pretty sure that the UK worked with the US to develop their weapons. And I have no clue how France got the bomb. They seem the least likely developed country to have nukes.
      Of course, there's a lot more to building nukes than just knowing how. One of the hardest parts is purifying uranium ore into weapons grade uranium-235. Which requires massive, extremely fast, extremely precisely built centrifuges made out of special, high strength metal alloys since they spin so fast that normal materials would just tear themselves apart. You need a lot of information and special materials just to process the uranium. Then making it into a bomb from there is actually fairly straight forward by comparison. But the materials and methods for making these centrifuges alone are not easy to get. Then you need people who know what they're doing.
      Just read about the accidents at los alamos while the US was developing their bombs. There was one incident in which a researcher had a vial of plutonium in liquid form explode in his face. Covering his face and inside of his mouth with what at the time was most of the plutonium that existed on the planet. Only a few ml. But you bet the government wanted their plutonium back. After all was said and done, dude had to process the plutonium out of his contaminated clothes, things in the room that were contaminated and bodily fluids, vomit and uring I believe. He never got any radiation siclness or poisoning from the plutonium. But he had a hefty enough dose that plutonium was detectable in his urine until he died.
      Oh yeah and there are the demon core incidents. Those are a classic.

  • @SirFloofy001
    @SirFloofy001 ปีที่แล้ว +931

    Whenever you see the shockwave hit houses it always looks like a huge blast of wind, but watching those smoke trails you understand it not wind its more like every particle of air suddenly wanted to exist 10 feet to the left and they're taking everything with them.
    Edit. Okay so explosions are chemical reactions, two or more ingredients react with each other which creates heat which continues the reaction. But chemical reactions do not remove matter, they simply convert it to a different form, so if you have a fist sized ball of explosives and it all explodes then you are left with a ball of super dense super heated gasses that is equal to the mass of the ball but wants to take up much more space, so those gasses expand outwards but they cant break the speed of sound so it becomes a pressure wave expanding outwards in all directions. But as soon as the pressure wave passes over you the air stops, there is no energy imparted into the air it is simply trying to make room for the sudden expansion of hot gasses.
    Nukes work the same way except instead of a chemical reaction turning solids to gasses its atoms splitting into two with some extra bits flying off, plus breaking the nuclear bond releases much more energy so everything gets much hotter and more heat equals more expansion equals more pressure and bigger boom.
    The wind caused by nukes is not from the explosion but from the air expanding to far and springing back combined with a massive updraft from the fireball rising into the upper atmosphere.
    Fun fact, any atomic bomb footage you have seen where the fireball seemed to have fiery legs its because the nuke was on top of a tower which was supported by cables and the heat has vaporized the cables so fast they basically explode.

    • @jackcallahan1848
      @jackcallahan1848 ปีที่แล้ว +88

      Is that not wind?

    • @sylvan186
      @sylvan186 ปีที่แล้ว +3

      Probably teleporting

    • @akyer8085
      @akyer8085 ปีที่แล้ว +76

      It isnt wind, but it gives off the effect of such. It's very similar to how waves propagate through water.

    • @zhufortheimpaler4041
      @zhufortheimpaler4041 ปีที่แล้ว +83

      the effect you see is not the smoke trail being displaced, but the compressed air in the wavefront acting as a lense that distorts the view on the smoketrail. those are the "hooks" you see.
      Distorting lense effects of supercompressed air.

    • @elduderino007
      @elduderino007 ปีที่แล้ว +78

      @@jackcallahan1848 it's like wind in the way a handshake relates to a punch.

  • @o.b.7217
    @o.b.7217 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    (3:00) is where the question ("what are those LINES...?") gets answered.
    If you only want to know what these lines are - (3:00) is where you get your _(trivial)_ answer.
    All before that is scientific stuff, that's surely interesting for some, but only serves to lead to that point.

  • @HirschfeldWillamette
    @HirschfeldWillamette ปีที่แล้ว +558

    I think the way shockwaves interact with smoke and dust is strangely beautiful, also really haunting

    • @ECGProductions092
      @ECGProductions092 ปีที่แล้ว +5

      I really want to watch a nuke go off

    • @enolopanr9820
      @enolopanr9820 ปีที่แล้ว +9

      It’s designed to end humanity so 😐

    • @Surrenitie
      @Surrenitie ปีที่แล้ว +9

      @@enolopanr9820 No, they're designed to never be used

    • @ultimaxkom8728
      @ultimaxkom8728 ปีที่แล้ว +4

      @@Surrenitie No, they're used as deterrence.

    • @Surrenitie
      @Surrenitie ปีที่แล้ว +3

      @@ultimaxkom8728 Precisely

  • @That-Google-Guy
    @That-Google-Guy ปีที่แล้ว +340

    Can we all take a moment to appreciate the ingenuity here? This is the nuclear explosion equivalent of those black and white lines/rulers on high speed camera videos. Truly an incredible work of engineering and practical knowledge

    • @aldunlop4622
      @aldunlop4622 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      It’s amazing.

    • @Norp-i7m
      @Norp-i7m ปีที่แล้ว

      ...all in the service of mass murder.

    • @sidv4615
      @sidv4615 ปีที่แล้ว +4

      Can you explain what you meant by black and white lines/rulers on high speed camera videos

    • @That-Google-Guy
      @That-Google-Guy ปีที่แล้ว +8

      @@sidv4615 of course! If you watch some high speed camera videos, especially ones where they want to show movement per frame (like a bullet), they may have a wall in the background with either a ruler or a set of black and white lines that are ruled equally (ie all of them are 1 inch long) so you can see how many inches it moves in a specific amount of time.
      So if the bullet has moved 3 inches in 5 seconds with a frame rate of 10,000 frames per second, you can use some algebraic equations to find out exactly how fast that bullet is moving. I’m not smart enough to do that math but that’s the long-and-short of how they can derive those numbers.
      SO with the nuclear bomb, if shockwave passes three of those smoke lines in 5 seconds at 10,000 frames per second, and those smoke lines are 100 feet apart, they can calculate the speed of the shockwave, or whatever else they want to measure.
      I hope that makes sense, please ask more questions if you need more info :)

    • @flutebasket4294
      @flutebasket4294 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      I'll not take a moment, no

  • @motobazuka2535
    @motobazuka2535 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Anyone else have to play this video at 1.25x speed?

    • @Zack-yl2vy
      @Zack-yl2vy 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Yeah. Immediately

    • @MA-vw1pl
      @MA-vw1pl 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Multiplied by 20x.

  • @festeradams3972
    @festeradams3972 ปีที่แล้ว +109

    Thanks for that. Often seen the lines but didn't know if they were somehow an artifact of the explosion itself or something else. Good explanation of the "double flash" as well. A former boss I had many years ago helped design protective "flash glasses" that would protect an observer from the second flash (which does most of the damage). The protective "glasses" or actually goggles, would have to sense the first flash, then fire an extremely quick acting "squib charge" which would then drive a "shutter" closed to protect the wearers eyes.

    • @leftcoastline
      @leftcoastline ปีที่แล้ว

      Strapping explosive charged glasses to your face so you can look directly at the brightest thing humans have ever created and hopefully not go blind.

  • @mogeroithe
    @mogeroithe ปีที่แล้ว +77

    I’ve always noticed those trails, and was always curious what they were. I took them to be some mysterious aspect of the detonation itself, and wanted to know more about them.
    Now I know, but although the explanation was interesting, I feel kinda underwhelmed to find that it wasn’t some exotic radiation being released.

  • @Asterra2
    @Asterra2 ปีที่แล้ว +463

    When I was like 7 or 8, I used to think those lines were, like, somehow related to the Earth's magnetosphere, like the nuke was somehow causing it to manifest visually. It obviously never occurred to me to wonder why the lines were always conveniently perpendicular to the camera.

    • @qafmbr
      @qafmbr ปีที่แล้ว +20

      Me too, I thought "spoooky interaction" ! LOL

    • @aztronomy7457
      @aztronomy7457 ปีที่แล้ว +55

      You knew what the magnetosphere was when you were 7 ? Ok Einstein

    • @Asterra2
      @Asterra2 ปีที่แล้ว +127

      @@aztronomy7457 Keep in mind, this was back when we had channels like Discovery and TLC and they were still in "education mode", as opposed to today when we see the endgame of needing to appeal to wider audiences with shorter attention spans.

    • @maxsparks5183
      @maxsparks5183 ปีที่แล้ว +23

      You were thinking about “magnetosphere” at 7 or 8 years old? Well damn! I was playing cowboys and Indians.😏

    • @Asterra2
      @Asterra2 ปีที่แล้ว +53

      @@maxsparks5183 Pretty sure I didn't know the _word_ "magnetosphere" but I mean sure, by that age, everyone knows what magnets are, that the Earth is a kind of magnet in its own right, and that they tend to be illustrated (somewhat imprecisely) as having lines coming out of them in various directions.

  • @i-love-space390
    @i-love-space390 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    It never ceases to amaze me how ingenious a large group of humans can be when they cooperate. Even the smartest individual cannot compare to the power of a large group of moderately smart people. It also shows how many potentially weird phenomena can be explained by our CURRENT ideas about the laws of physics if you spend enough time thinking about it.

  • @JabrinkTheStink
    @JabrinkTheStink ปีที่แล้ว +66

    Always been curious about this. Very well done! 2 for 2 on great uploads so far. Keep it up 👍

  • @bubbaandrayearl1678
    @bubbaandrayearl1678 ปีที่แล้ว +11

    I remember getting warnings about fallout. It showed on the news the wind patterns. There were numerous atomic bomb tests in the 50's and 60's. Yes, I'm old.

    • @ziting5756
      @ziting5756 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Hey man we will all get old one day at least you got to experience a nuclear bomb in the flesh! Not that I want to during my lifetime

  • @kryptoniridium
    @kryptoniridium ปีที่แล้ว +135

    I always knew it was something to do with shockwaves but it's amazing that a simple observation lead to their use. Also this is the first time I'm seeing them fire.

    • @Don.Challenger
      @Don.Challenger ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Of course many many specialist eyes watched and rewatched those videos for every nuance and glimmer that they could inform them of. Every facet and particle on each frame was being considered provisionally important.

    • @melonshop8888
      @melonshop8888 ปีที่แล้ว

      SHOCKWAVE TRAIL METER BARRIER BUT THIS LOOK LIKE THE TRINITY RADIOACTIVE TRAIL. :3

  • @GamingHelp
    @GamingHelp ปีที่แล้ว +77

    Outstanding video. It seemed obvious they were for yield calculation, but I didn't realize this was the mechanism behind it. Simple, straight forward and to the point like a video should be! Nice! :)

    • @michaellavery4899
      @michaellavery4899 ปีที่แล้ว

      Yes.

    • @grindelston5968
      @grindelston5968 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Maybe obvious for you, I had absolutely no idea

    • @GamingHelp
      @GamingHelp ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@grindelston5968: I can understand that. How obvious a given thing is will greatly depend on the work/career/interests someone has. For myself looking at this from the outside, there can only be so many reasons for shooting giant lines of smoke trails just before a detonation. My initial thought was that displacement of the smoke itself by the initial pressure wave could give yield calculations. Which turned out to be true, but I had the underlying mechanism wrong. Or, to put it in real world context, you could think of my initial notion as the windsock at an airport. How much it's hanging and which direction tell you two important things: Wind speed and direction. Same kind of deal, except that initial guess was wrong.

  • @tomw8419
    @tomw8419 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I once attended an awkward (boring) birthday gathering where I only knew the host. I sat and marveled over one of the gifts, a thick volume of 10x14" color photos of nuke-tests with single-paragraph captions, one of which explained the smoke trails. Maybe I'm strange, but I found the book beautiful.

  • @Hey_MikeZeroEcho22P
    @Hey_MikeZeroEcho22P ปีที่แล้ว +6

    THANK Y O U !!!
    For MANY Years I always wanted to know, "...what da Hell are those lines coming from and why are they being used, and for what purpose, and....."
    You Explained one (1) of the many Mysteries I had in my life....Now, I can go to sleep.😉

  • @PyroChimp75
    @PyroChimp75 ปีที่แล้ว +19

    I remember noticing these when I was a teenager in documentaries but only now, twenty years later learned what they where from, Thank you.

  • @whatsreal7506
    @whatsreal7506 ปีที่แล้ว +17

    Well done! 👍 Clear and concise. Keep it coming.

  • @DaleBouwman
    @DaleBouwman ปีที่แล้ว +13

    I always asked myself what those lines are? Thanks for explaining for us.

  • @renatoigmed
    @renatoigmed ปีที่แล้ว +2

    QUESTION: Due to the EMP (electromagnetic pulse) would these recordings be possible today with a modern cell phone for example?

    • @ronadams681
      @ronadams681 ปีที่แล้ว

      We should have the answer soon, I'm sure someone will have a phone handy Ukraine.

  • @Stonnin
    @Stonnin ปีที่แล้ว +4

    this is one of those videos you can watch on 2x speed and feels normal

  • @kennethfuller8347
    @kennethfuller8347 ปีที่แล้ว +14

    Thanks for the straight forward and very professional explanation of this .. yes, I've often wondered what those lines were. I just assumed they were a result of the magnitude of the explosion. Thanks again.

  • @gravedanc3r317
    @gravedanc3r317 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    I always thought it was some kind of electromagnetic reaction interfacing between the ground and atmosphere kind of like how there is lightening in volcanic eruptions.. thanks for straightening me out. Neat!

  • @peterlutz7191
    @peterlutz7191 ปีที่แล้ว +9

    I always wondered what those weird trails were, I assumed it was some phenomena of the blast itself, I never knew that rockets were sent up seconds before the blast. Thanks for clearing that up.

    • @SungazerDNB
      @SungazerDNB ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Thanks now I don't have to watch the video.

    • @Denzlercs
      @Denzlercs ปีที่แล้ว

      @@SungazerDNB🤣

  • @robertheinrich2994
    @robertheinrich2994 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    there is a more important question: in various TV-films or series, there are terrorist organisations that claim to have a nuclear bomb. and when they fire one, there are those lines.
    the simple question: why so some terrorists need those smoke rockets? do they really care that much? "we will explode a city, but for scientific purposes, we have set rockets up that allow you to learn from it"

    • @sierra6993
      @sierra6993 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Probably the producers that didn’t know what those lines were and didn’t bother to check it out

  • @johnsheetz6639
    @johnsheetz6639 ปีที่แล้ว +9

    You know I always thought they hit the ground first I didn't know it was an airburst.

    • @SpaceEngines
      @SpaceEngines ปีที่แล้ว +2

      All those birds... I think you can see some of them in this video as white flashes appearing around the explosion 😢RIP little guys

    • @zaynthebrayn
      @zaynthebrayn ปีที่แล้ว +2

      What you are referring to is a ‘ground burst’. Air bursts are more efficient because you get increased blast radius with less lingering radiation.
      If you want to destroy a city entirely, do an air burst.
      If you want to destroy a city and leave it uninhabitable, do a ground burst.

    • @johnsheetz6639
      @johnsheetz6639 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      @@zaynthebrayn thank you for letting me know. Deep down im sorry I asked.

    • @Fold-103
      @Fold-103 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@zaynthebrayn air burts are good for getting the most of the blast energy aswell

    • @stargazer7644
      @stargazer7644 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@zaynthebrayn More importantly, with an air burst you multiply the strength of the shockwave where it intersects with the ground - thus increasing the damage.

  • @L0LWTF1337
    @L0LWTF1337 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    "There also were other rockets" THERE SAVED YOU THE TIME. HOLY SHIT

  • @ikm64
    @ikm64 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    That one drove me crazy for years...
    I knew it couldn't be part of the bomb itself but I couldn't figure out what caused it or if it had a purpose.
    The regular distances between each 'marker' suggested it was some measurement tool...but for a 'nuke' that where they measuring I knew it wasn't "power".
    In the end, I could only manage "size"

  • @TheRealJokeFace
    @TheRealJokeFace ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Holy cow. This whole time I've been just assuming the lines were distortions in the film caused by the radiation. I had no idea they were actually real physical things.

  • @NeverTalkToCops1
    @NeverTalkToCops1 ปีที่แล้ว +14

    Another fun fact: Metal spheres (solid ) were placed within 100 yards of ground zero. Most people would surmise that these spheres would vaporize instantly. The spheres survived, although their circumference shrunk appreciatively. This demonstrates an ablative process via the high temperature.

  • @MDrummKid2
    @MDrummKid2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    play at 1.25x speed for normal sounding voice

  • @Listeningtomuzak
    @Listeningtomuzak ปีที่แล้ว +6

    So obvious, yet so ingenious. Great presentation and thorough explanation. Bravo to atomicarchive.

  • @vitapont7338
    @vitapont7338 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    Oh, so many thanks, very useful! (I will never again do such a bomb test at home, without those smoke trail lines.)

  • @VLADPowder
    @VLADPowder ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Thank you for solving a question I had never even been exposed to (never seen those lines before) but this was really fascinating

  • @a68k_de
    @a68k_de ปีที่แล้ว +3

    you must watch this in 1.25x speed or you fall asleep
    but very very interesting!

  • @klondike69none85
    @klondike69none85 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    3:00 theres your answer just saved you 2 minutes

  • @ericinla65
    @ericinla65 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    MY FATHER who was in the Navy in the late 1950's. Saw 12 atomic bombs tests up close (a human Guinea pig). They called it Operation Hardtack in the Pacific. My father said they gave him special dark Goggles (That I still have) and was also told to turn away from the blast and put his arm in from of his eyes. My father said he was a 2 man navy boat in the ocean. When the blast went off. There was so much radiation that included x-rays. He could see through the goggles, his arm, the boat and see the skeleton of the fish in the water. My dad had both eardrums blown out and eventually died of cancer 20 years ago after being almost totally deaf for 40 years. Waiting for his VA benefits hearing to increase his disability from only 15% to 100%. He never lived long enough for the hearing. The U.S. Government had stalled him for years. That was there plan. To wait for him to die 1st. My mom is still alive and could use the 40 years of back pay they owed him.

    • @n1ckster055
      @n1ckster055 ปีที่แล้ว

      He made up the x ray stuff, X ray machines have a sensor that detects the x rays that where blocked by the human body. You fathers eyes would never be able to do that and x rays are invisible to the human eye.

    • @Guido_XL
      @Guido_XL ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@n1ckster055 I am not so sure. Gamma-rays can induce X-rays of lower energy, when they hit material. That is why we had lead-layers inside a cassette of X-ray sensitive film to photograph objects as part of an X-ray inspection. The lead would absorb the higher energy rays from outside and turn them into lower energies, as well as free electrons that would amplify the projected image on the film.
      In theory, a human eye is indeed insensitive to small wavelengths above the blue bandwidth into the ultraviolet, so that X-rays are certainly not triggering the retina as visible light does. But, gamma- and X-ray radiation may cause secondary radiation. I don't know as how this might have worked during a nuclear explosion though, I never thought of the ways that unintended projections of images may occur under those conditions.

    • @Guido_XL
      @Guido_XL ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@n1ckster055 The trick we applied was this: we attached a stack of several cassettes onto an object that we were supposed to inspect. We set up a Co60 source or a linear accelerator opposite to the stack of cassettes, with the object in between. Inside each cassette was a different combination of either a single film of a certain speed, or the same film, but sandwiched between lead-layers (or even stainless steel in some cases). The cassette could therefore contain only one film, or multiple films of different speeds, either combined with amplifying layers, or without any amplifiers. The idea was to cover a multitude of different thicknesses that we had to inspect in a single exposure. That saved a lot of time and effort.
      Obviously, we only had to go through that kind of tedious effort in case of really thick steel objects. Smaller objects could be more conveniently inspected with a single paper-wrapped film, which was of a certain speed and was sandwiched between layers of 0.027 mm lead, deposited on paper. We used portable X-ray sources for that, or Ir192 radioactive sources, which were very mobile to deploy in the field.

    • @milantrcka121
      @milantrcka121 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@n1ckster055 However, the light flash is intense enough to be able to be seen through human tissue. There are reports of such observations. Then there is X-ray fluorescence...

    • @stargazer7644
      @stargazer7644 ปีที่แล้ว

      He also liked to tell whoppers. If x-rays let you see through things, you'd kind of notice that when getting a medical x-ray of your body or a cat scan.

  • @eliastorre
    @eliastorre ปีที่แล้ว +5

    You've won a subscriber.

  • @Whoozerdaddy
    @Whoozerdaddy ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I have wondered for decades what those lines were, so thank you for explaining them so succinctly.

    • @luuk6718
      @luuk6718 9 หลายเดือนก่อน

      Kept you occupied daily didn’t it

  • @josephhein9497
    @josephhein9497 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Summary: Rocket trails used to measure shockwaves.

  • @Tradingmood
    @Tradingmood ปีที่แล้ว +4

    That was something that I often wondered as the vertical orientation and consistency from ground to maximum elevation made no sense if it were related to the explosion. Of course with high speed cameras you don't see much prior to the detonation so I always assumed that there was some phenomenon that I just wasn't aware of. I never actually realized that these were only visible with test runs.

  • @DoubleVVC
    @DoubleVVC ปีที่แล้ว +13

    Those lines are actually a bug within the game and we currently patching it, thanks for letting us know about the issue and we will add a hot fix immediately!

  • @lihboidasanstr8fyre228
    @lihboidasanstr8fyre228 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    It’s quite literally common sense tbh. Everyone thinks differently but I knew what those lines were meant for before I KNEW what they were meant for. Nice vid btw👌

  • @ucheucheuche
    @ucheucheuche ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Video went straight in with a no-holds-barred-I'm-not-gonna-sugar-coat-it answer. Boom! Tetris for AtomicA.

  • @KevinS47
    @KevinS47 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Is this video made with ChatGPT ? I swear to god it sounds like a bot is reading from a script written by chatGPT and zero effort was made for this video (except the related visuals)...

  • @randysmith2866
    @randysmith2866 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Those lines are actually an obscure language. Roughly translated they mean: "Kiss your ass goodbye mofo's!"

  • @kilroy987
    @kilroy987 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Waiting 3 minutes for the explanation with that droning voice was deeply frustrating.

  • @Anankin12
    @Anankin12 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    If you play at 1.25, he talks normally

  • @paddypenguin8895
    @paddypenguin8895 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    this is the most boring voice ive ever heard. i feel like im falling asleep while watching a topic i find fascinating, thats not supposed to happen

  • @Thomas_Wedderburn
    @Thomas_Wedderburn ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Increase video speed to 1.25x. The narrator will be speaking normally

  • @changer_of_ways_999
    @changer_of_ways_999 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    It's absolutely incredible how this managed to make an explosion sound boring.

  • @mikecronis
    @mikecronis 10 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    TL;DR Testers launched smoke trails to measure shockwave speed.