NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Tsar Bomba

Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба, literally "Emperor Bomb") is the Western name for the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb (codenamed "Иван" (Ivan) by its developers) — the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT; however that was reduced by half in order to limit the amount of nuclear fallout that would result. Two bombs were built, a mock bomb and the real bomb, with the real bomb being tested on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.^[1] Despite testing, the weapon never entered service; it was simply a demonstration of the capabilities of the Soviet Union's military technology at that time. The mock bomb was stored in the Russian Nuclear Weapons Museum in Sarov. The basics of the Tellerâ€“Ulam configuration: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel. ... Unit of energy commonly used to quantify laerge amounts of energy. ... An emperorrefers to Nick Herringshaw, a title, empress may only indicate the wife of an emperor (empress consort. ... The basics of the Tellerâ€“Ulam configuration: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the hypocenter A nuclear weapon derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions of fusion or fission. ... // The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (million of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of... Unit of energy commonly used to quantify laerge amounts of energy. ... Fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion, so named because it falls out of the atmosphere into which it is spread during the explosion. ... is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Novaya Zemlya (Russian: , lit. ... The Mergui Archipelago The Archipelago Sea, situated between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland, the largest archipelago in the world by the number of islands. ... Sarov (Russian: ) is a town in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. ...

Origins

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev initiated the project on July 10, 1961, requesting that the test take place in late October, while the 22nd Congress of the CPSU was in session. Image File history File links Ivan_bomb. ... Image File history File links Ivan_bomb. ... Khrushchev redirects here. ... is the 191st day of the year (192nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The term "Tsar Bomba" was coined in an analogy with two other massive Russian objects, the Tsar Kolokol, the world's largest bell, and the Tsar Pushka, the world's largest howitzer. Although the bomb was so named by Western sources, the name is now widely used in Russia. Tsar Kolokol (Tsar Bell) (Царь-колокол in Russian) - a huge bell still on display in the Kremlin. ... A view of the Tsar Pushka, showing its massive bore and cannonballs, and the Lions head cast into the carriage. ... 19th century 12 pounder (5 kg) mountain howitzer displayed by the National Park Service at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, USA A howitzer is a type of artillery piece that is characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small explosive charges to propel projectiles at trajectories with...

The Soviet Union used it as a deterrent to the United States during the Cold War. Khrushchev approved of the bomb's development during a very tense time; construction of the first Berlin wall began on August 13, 1961. Moreover, France was just emerging as the second Western European nuclear force on February 13, 1960 when Gerboise Bleue was successfully completed. The USSR had ended a de facto moratorium on nuclear tests (which lasted for nearly three years) and was about to deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis; in response to the U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons in Turkey. For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... View in 1986 from the west side of graffiti art on the walls infamous death strip Walls poster in memory of the fall. ... is the 225th day of the year (226th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 44th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Gerboise Bleue (blue jerboa) was the name of the first French nuclear test. ... De facto is a Latin expression that means in fact or in practice. It is commonly used as opposed to de jure (meaning by law) when referring to matters of law or governance or technique (such as standards), that are found in the common experience as created or developed without... For the video game based on the possible outcomes of this event, see Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath. ...

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly about the test, Khrushchev used the Russian idiom "show somebody Kuzka's mother", which means "to show who's the boss". Because of this, sometimes the weapon is referred to as "Kuzka's mother" (Кузькина мать) in Russian sources. The United Nations General Assembly (GA, UNGA) is one of the five principal organs of the United Nations and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation. ...

Design

The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons.^[2] This is equivalent to ten times the amount of all the explosives used in World War II combined.^[3] A three-stage H-bomb uses a fission bomb primary to compress a thermonuclear secondary, as in most H-bombs, and then uses energy from the resulting explosion to compress a much larger additional thermonuclear stage. However, there is evidence that the Tsar Bomba had a number of third stages rather than a single very large one. ^[4] Snezhinsk (Russian: Ð¡Ð½ÐµÐ¶Ð¸Ð½ÑÐº) is a closed city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. ... The basics of the Tellerâ€“Ulam configuration: a fission bomb uses radiation to compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel. ... // The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (million of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of... Unit of energy commonly used to quantify laerge amounts of energy. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 lifted nuclear fallout some 18 km (60,000 feet) above the epicenter. ...

The initial three stage design was capable of approximately 100 Mt (Megatons), but at a cost of too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage, and possibly the second stage, had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield). There was a strong incentive for this modification since most of the fallout from a test of the bomb would fall on populated Soviet territory. General Name, Symbol, Number lead, Pb, 82 Chemical series Post-transition metals or poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 6, p Appearance bluish gray Standard atomic weight 207. ... The first nuclear weapons, though large, cumbersome and inefficient, provided the basic design building blocks of all future weapons. ... There are two objects with this name: Unterseeboot 238 Uranium-238, the most common isotope of uranium This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Fast fission is fission that occurs when a heavy atom absorbs a high-energy neutron, called a fast neutron, and splits. ...

The components were designed by a team of physicists which was headed by Academician Julii Borisovich Khariton and included Andrei Sakharov, Victor Adamsky, Yuri Babayev, Yuri Smirnov, and Yuri Trutnev. Shortly after the Tsar Bomba was detonated, Sakharov began speaking out against nuclear weapons, which culminated in his becoming a dissident. The title Academician denotes a Full Member of an art, literary, or scientific academy. ... Julii Borisovich Khariton (Ð®ÌÐ»Ð¸Ð¹ Ð‘Ð¾Ñ€Ð¸ÌÑÐ¾Ð²Ð¸Ñ‡ Ð¥Ð°Ñ€Ð¸Ñ‚Ð¾ÌÐ½, February 27, 1904 - December 18, 1996) was a Soviet physicist working in the field of atomic energy. ... Andrei Sakharov, 1943 For the historian, see Andrey Nikolayevich Sakharov. ... Yuri Petrovich Trutnev (Ð®Ñ€Ð¸Ð¹ ÐŸÐµÑ‚Ñ€Ð¾Ð²Ð¸Ñ‡ Ð¢Ñ€ÑƒÑ‚Ð½ÐµÐ²) is a Minister of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation since 2004. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the hypocenter A nuclear weapon derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions of fusion or fission. ... Soviet dissidents were citizens of the Soviet Union (1917 â€” 1991) who disagreed with the policies and actions of their nation, and at the same time actively protested against these measures through non-violent means. ...

The test

The Tsar Bomba was flown to its test site by a specially modified Tu-95V release plane which took off from an airfield in the Kola peninsula, flown by Major Andrei E. Durnovtsev. The release plane was accompanied by a Tu-16 observer plane that took air samples and filmed the test. Both aircraft were painted with a special reflective white paint to limit heat damage. The Tupolev Tu-95 (Ð¢ÑƒÐ¿Ð¾Ð»ÐµÐ² Ð¢Ñƒâ€“95) (NATO reporting name Bear) is the most successful and longest-serving Tupolev strategic bomber and missile carrier built by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. ... The Tupolev Tu-95 (Ð¢ÑƒÐ¿Ð¾Ð»ÐµÐ² Ð¢Ñƒâ€“95) (NATO reporting name Bear) is the most successful and longest-serving Tupolev strategic bomber and missile carrier built by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. ... Location of Kola south of the Barents Sea. ... The Tupolev Tu-16 (NATO codename: Badger) was a twin-engine jet bomber used by the Soviet Union. ...

The bomb, weighing 27 tonnes, was so large (8 meters long by 2 m in diameter) that the Tu-95V had to have its bomb bay doors and fuselage fuel tanks removed. The bomb was attached to an 800 kilogram fall-retardation parachute, which gave the release and observer planes time to fly about 45 km from ground zero. This article is about the metric tonne. ... For other uses, see Tank (disambiguation). ... This article is about the device. ... Ground zero is the exact location on the ground where any explosion occurs. ...

The Tsar Bomba detonated at 11:32 a.m. on October 30, 1961 over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range (Sukhoy Nos Zone C), north of the Arctic Circle on Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Sea. The bomb was dropped from an altitude of 10,500 m; it was designed to detonate at a height of 4,000 m over the land surface (4,200 m over sea level) by barometric sensors. is the 303rd day of the year (304th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Novaya Zemlya (Russian: , lit. ... For the fast food restaurant chain, see Arctic Circle Restaurants. ... Schematic drawing of a simple mercury barometer with vertical mercury column and reservoir at base A barometer is an instrument used to measure atmospheric pressure. ...

The original U.S. estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen and felt 1,000 km away. The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km away from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 60 km high (nearly seven times higher than Mount Everest) and 30–40 km wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, even breaking windows there. ^[5] Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 km away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.^[6] Its Richter magnitude was about 5 to 5.25. An American nuclear test. ... For other uses, see Burn. ... Ground zero is the exact location on the ground where any explosion occurs. ... The atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke, flame, or debris resulting from a very large explosion. ... Everest redirects here. ... Atmospheric focusing is a phenomenon occurring when a large shockwave is produced in the atmosphere, as in a nuclear explosion or large extra terrestrial object impact. ... Body waves and surface waves Earthquake wave paths p-wave and s-wave from seismograph A seismic wave is a wave that travels through the Earth, most often as the result of a tectonic earthquake, sometimes from an explosion. ... The Richter magnitude scale, or more correctly local magnitude ML scale, assigns a single number to quantify the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake. ...

Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10¹⁷ joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds^{[citation needed]}, was about 5.4×10²⁴ watts or 5.4 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1.4% of the power output of the Sun: The joule (IPA: or ) (symbol: J) is the SI unit of energy. ... For other uses, see Watt (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Watt (disambiguation). ... Sol redirects here. ...

The detonation of Tsar Bomba is the single most physically powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity. By contrast, the largest weapon ever produced by the United States, the now-decommissioned B41, had a predicted maximum yield of 25 Mt, and the largest nuclear device ever tested by the U.S. (Castle Bravo) yielded 15 Mt (due to a runaway reaction; the design yield was approximately 5 Mt). For comparison, the asteroid impact which formed the Chicxulub Crater, was an event larger than Tsar Bomba's yield by some six orders of magnitude; it released an estimated 500 zettajoules (5.0×10²³ joules) of energy, approximately 100 teratons of TNT, on impact. In physics, power (symbol: P) is the rate at which work is performed or energy is transmitted, or the amount of energy required or expended for a given unit of time. ... This article discusses the human history of the world. ... For other uses, see Weapon (disambiguation). ... The casing of a B41 thermonuclear bomb. ... A black-and-white photograph of the Castle Bravo mushroom cloud. ... Radar topography reveals the 180 kilometer (112 mile) wide ring of the crater (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech) Chicxulub Crater (IPA: ) (cheek-shoo-LOOB) is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the YucatÃ¡n Peninsula, with its center located approximately underneath the town of Chicxulub, YucatÃ¡n, Mexico. ... An order of magnitude is the class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio to the class preceding it. ... A teraton is equal to 1,000 gigatons. ... R-phrases S-phrases Related Compounds Related compounds picric acid hexanitrobenzene Except where noted otherwise, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 Â°C, 100 kPa) Infobox disclaimer and references Trinitrotoluene (TNT) is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. ...

Fifty megatons of 1.654g/cm³ TNT would be about 30,230,000 cubic metres (1,067,000,000 cubic feet), or roughly a cube 300 metres (1000 feet) to a side.

Analysis

The weight and size of the Tsar Bomba limited the range and speed of the specially modified bomber carrying it and ruled out its delivery by an ICBM (although on December 24, 1962, a 50 Mt ICBM warhead developed by Chelyabinsk-70 was detonated at 24.2 megatons to reduce fallout).^[7] In terms of physical destructiveness, much of its high yield was inefficiently radiated upwards into space. It has been estimated that detonating the original 100 Mt design would have released fallout amounting to about 25 percent of all fallout emitted since the invention of nuclear weapons.^[8] Hence, the Tsar Bomba was an impractically powerful weapon. The Soviets decided that such a test blast would create too great a risk of nuclear fallout and a near certainty that the release plane would be unable to reach safety before detonation.^[9] ICBM redirects here. ... is the 358th day of the year (359th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Snezhinsk (Russian: Ð¡Ð½ÐµÐ¶Ð¸Ð½ÑÐº) is a closed city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. ...

The Tsar Bomba was the culmination of a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapons designed by the USSR and U.S. during the 1950s (examples include the Mark-17^[10] and B41). Such bombs were designed because: // The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, expressed usually in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene (TNT), either in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) or megatons (million of tons of TNT), but sometimes also in terajoules (1 kiloton of... The first nuclear weapons, though large, cumbersome and inefficient, provided the basic design building blocks of all future weapons. ... The Mark 17 and Mark 24 were the first mass produced hydrogen bombs deployed by the United States. ... The casing of a B41 thermonuclear bomb. ...

Thus certain bombs were designed to destroy an entire large city even if dropped five to ten kilometers from its centre. This objective meant that yield and effectiveness were positively correlated, at least up to a point. However, the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better made such a design philosophy obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design in the 1960s and 1970s focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for many years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... ... Firepower is a measure of the ability of weapons, specifically weapons which involve fire or explosion, to inflict harm, damage, or kill. ... KH-4B Corona satellite Lacrosse radar spy satellite under construction A spy satellite (officially referred to as a reconnaissance satellite) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications. ... An inertial navigation system measures the position and altitude of a vehicle by measuring the accelerations and rotations applied to the systems inertial frame. ... A Minuteman III missile soars after a test launch. ... A B61 nuclear bomb in various stages of assembly; the nuclear warhead is the bullet-shaped silver cannister in the middle-left of the photograph. ... For the article about the band, see M.I.R.V. The MIRVed U.S. Peacekeeper missile, with the re-entry vehicles highlighted in red. ... The phrase carpet bombing refers to the use of large numbers of unguided gravity bombs, often with a high proportion of incendiary bombs, to attempt the complete destruction of a target region, either to destroy personnel and materiel, or as a means to demoralize the enemy (see terror bombing). ...

Contents

Origins

Design

The test

Analysis

See also

Notes and references

References

External links