Nuclear Explosion

[SPIT]

Hi
Excuse my ignorance but when you look at some pictures of Nuclear Explosions there appear to be some kind of fallout/lines to the sides of the Mushroom cloud, WHAT IS IT.

[golfbananajam]

smoke trails so that scientists can measure "stuff". see

https://gizmodo.com/5856121/what-are...ear-bomb-tests

What are Those Smoke Trails Doing in That Test Picture?

[PDR1]

If you're refering to what I think you are - these were the trails of smoke rockets launched just before detonation so that the passage of the shock front could be visualised as it passed. They are not part of the nuclear detonation itself.

PDR

[VinRouge]

Used to measure primarily the expansion shock wave progress and one way to quickly determine the power output of the device I believe, used for overland testing. A clever man came up.with a deterministic way to scale up the 100 tonne reference explosion made with TNT into the multi kiloton output of a nuke.

https://seismo.berkeley.edu/~rallen/...uke/yield.html

[Prangster]

Very Big Bangs

Originally Posted by SPIT

Hi
Excuse my ignorance but when you look at some pictures of Nuclear Explosions there appear to be some kind of fallout/lines to the sides of the Mushroom cloud, WHAT IS IT.

Spit, read the Haynes Manual on British Nuclear Weapons. Very entertaining!

[gr4techie]

Making a giant ruler out of rocket smoke. Each rocket being x meters apart, to give the photo of the mushroom cloud some scale.