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A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs , a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits.
Beginning with the Teller–Ulam breakthrough in March 1951, there was steady progress made on the issues involved in a thermonuclear explosion and there were additional resources devoted to staging, and political pressure towards seeing, an actual test of a hydrogen bomb. [6]: 137–139 A date within 1952 seemed feasible.
After Truman ordered the crash program to develop the hydrogen bomb in January 1950, the Boston Daily Globe published a cutaway description of a hypothetical hydrogen bomb with the caption Artist's conception of how H-bomb might work using atomic bomb as a mere "trigger" to generate enough heat to set up the H-bomb's "thermonuclear fusion" process.
The hydrogen bomb, which carried the force of 50 million tons of conventional explosives, was detonated in a test in October 1961, 4,000 meters over the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago above the ...
The primary device was a COBRA deuterium-tritium gas-boosted atomic bomb made by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, a very compact MK 7 device. This boosted fission device had been tested in the Upshot-Knothole Climax event and yielded 61 kilotons of TNT [kt] (260 TJ) (out of 50–70 kt expected yield range).
Edward Teller (Hungarian: Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design based on Stanisław Ulam's design.
The hydrogen bomb primarily has 2 units: a nuclear bomb, which was the primary unit, and a secondary energy unit. The first stage of the hydrogen bomb resembled the layer-cake design, except the main difference is that the initiation is carried out by a nuclear device, rather than a conventional explosive. [ 10 ]
In the initial microseconds after the explosion, a fireball is formed around the bomb by the massive numbers of thermal x-rays released by the explosion process. These x-rays cannot travel very far in standard atmosphere before reacting with molecules in the air , so the result is a fireball that rapidly forms within about 10 metres (33 ft) in ...