the beginning of the end of the world

itsAsin@lemmy.world to pics@lemmy.world – 323 points –

images taken with specialized photography of the first few micro-seconds of a nuclear blast.

i am too lazy and grumpy today to find more relevant info for you (sorry). but these are sitting on my drive and it feels like the right day to post them up.

have a great weekend everyone!

24

Here’s some more info:

https://interestingengineering.com/science/filming-the-first-milliseconds-of-a-nuclear-explosion-with-the-rapatronic-a-1950-engineering-marvel

It was captured by a special camera called a Rapatronic, a camera system able to take photographs at a frame rate of 10 million frames per second.

I remember during my early years there was a world wide fear about the upcoming test of a new Hydrogen Bomb. People feared that it might ignite the world's atmosphere.

What I’ve always found interesting about these images is how close the initial blasts look to virus/phages, particularly their heads.

You can argue that a nuclear blast is the end of the world, but a really intense virus could end us all just as easily, albeit taking a bit longer.

Some pictures look like a metroid from, well, Metroid.

wait how does it see inside the blast

That second picture isn't the inside of the blast even though it looks a little inside out. It's the evolution of the blast a fraction of a second later in time. Those bits sticking out the right and left sides are also sticking out the front pointing toward the camera, giving it an inside out appearance.

That first picture - and I am WILDLY speculating based on my understanding of how a nuclear bomb works - might be the initial triggering blast, which is a conventional explosive like any regular bomb. The second picture might be the first appearance of the actual nuclear explosion which moves faster and is overtaking the initial conventional blast.

Again, take that with a handful of salt. I'm just hazarding a guess.