What is an Atomic Bomb {Fusion Bomb} ? | Nuclear Bomb Effects | Fat man vs Little boy | Nuclear Bomb Inventor | Types of Nuclear Weapons
Atomic Bomb Facts | What is a Nuclear Bomb
Atomic bombs are nuclear weapons that use the energy production of nuclear fission to produce a large explosion. These bombs are different from hydrogen bombs, which use both fission and fusion to power their greatest explosive potential.
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| Atomic Bomb Explosion |
Story of Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Only two nuclear weapons have been used during the war by the United States near the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, a uranium pistol-type cluster bomb called "Little Boy" was planted over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, the code for the plutonium transplant-type cluster bomb was renamed "Fat Man" in Nagasaki, Japan. These two attacks killed some 200,000 Japanese, mostly civilians. Japan's surrender and the bombing's role in its moral standing remain the subject of popular and academic debate.
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| Atomic Bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki |
Atomic Bomb History and Atomic Bomb Definition
Atomic bombs and Nuclear bombs are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as an explosive energy source. Scientists developed nuclear weapons technology during the First World War. Atomic bombs have only been used in war twice, both by the United States at the end of WWII against Japan, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The period of nuclear proliferation followed that war, and during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union fought for supremacy in the global nuclear arms race.
Atomic Bomb and Hydrogen Bomb
The discovery made by atomic physicists in a laboratory in Berlin, Germany, in 1938 made the first atomic bomb possible after the discovery of atomic fission by Otto Hahn, Lis Mittner, and Fritz Strassmann.
When an atom of radioactive material splits into light atoms, there is a sudden and powerful release of energy. The discovery of nuclear fission opened the possibility of nuclear technologies, including weapons.
Atomic bombs are weapons that obtain their energy from fission reactions. Thermonuclear weapons, or hydrogen bombs, rely on a combination of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is another type of reaction in which two atoms of light combine to release energy.
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| Manhattan Project |
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was the code name for a US-led effort to develop a functional atomic bomb during World War II. The Manhattan project was started in response to fears that German scientists had been working on a nuclear-powered weapon since the 1930s.
On December 28, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Manhattan Project to bring together various scientists and military officials working on nuclear research.
Who Invented Atom Bomb?
Most of the work on the Manhattan Project is based on theoretical physicist J. in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was directed by Robert Oppenheimer, who was "the father of the atomic bomb." On July 16, 1945, in a remote desert location near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated: the Trinity Test. It formed a huge mushroom cloud at an altitude of about 40,000 feet and heralded the nuclear age.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings [Atomic Bomb Japan]
By 1945, Los Almos scientists had developed two different types of atomic bombs: a uranium-based design called "The Little Boy" and a plutonium-based weapon called "The Fat Man."
Although the war in Europe ended in April, fighting continued in the Pacific between the Japanese army and American troops. In late July, President Harry Truman called for Japan's surrender with the Potsdam Declaration. The declaration promised "rapid and apocalyptic destruction" if Japan did not surrender.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped its first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, in a B-29 bomber plane named Enola Gay. "Little Boy" exploded with approximately 13 kilotons of force, razing five square miles of the city and killing 80,000 people instantly. Later, tens of thousands of people would die from radiation exposure.
When the Japanese did not immediately surrender, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb three days later on the city of Nagasaki. The "Fat Man" affected some 40,000 people.
Nagasaki was not the primary target of the second bomb. American bombers initially targeted the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest corpse plants, but smoke from the incendiary bombings touched the sky over Kokura. The American planes turned on their secondary objective, Nagasaki.
Citing the destructive power of "a new and more brutal bomb," Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his country's surrender on August 15, a day known as V-J Day at the end of World War II.
Cold War
The United States was the only country with nuclear weapons in the years immediately after World War II. The Soviet Union initially lacked the knowledge and raw materials to build nuclear warheads.
However, within a few years, the U.S.S.R. had obtained through a network of spies who were engaged in international espionage: the blueprint of a cluster bomb and the discovery of regional sources of uranium in Eastern Europe. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.
The United States responded by launching a program in 1950 to develop more advanced thermonuclear weapons. The Cold War arms race had begun and nuclear testing and research had become high-profile targets for many countries, particularly the United States and the Soviet Union.
Cuban missile crisis
Over the next several decades, each world superpower will store tens of thousands of nuclear warheads. Other countries, including Great Britain, France, and China, also developed nuclear weapons during this period.
To many observers, the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war in October 1962. The Soviet Union had installed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, which was only 90 miles off US shores. This resulted in a 13-day political and military deadlock known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
President John F. Kennedy carried out a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear that the United States was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize the threat.
Disaster averted when the United States accepted an offer from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw the Cuban missiles, promising not to invade Cuba.
Three mile island
Many Americans became concerned about the health and environmental effects of the nuclear collapse: the radiation left in the environment after nuclear explosions after World War II and nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific over the decades. 1940 and 1950.
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the anti-Anithic movement emerged as a social movement. On November 1, 1961, during the women's strike for women, co-organized by activist Bella Abzug, some 50,000 women marched in 60 cities in the United States to protest against nuclear weapons.
The anti-nuclear movement regained national attention in the 1970s and 1980s, with high-profile protests against nuclear reactors following the Three Mile Island accident, a nuclear collapse at the Pennsylvania power plant in 1979.
In 1982, a million people marched in New York City to protest nuclear weapons and called for an end to the Cold War nuclear arms race. It was one of the largest political protests in American history.
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
In 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to negotiate an international agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
The Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (also known as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT) entered into force in the 1970s. It divided the countries of the world into two groups: nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states.
The nuclear weapon states included the five countries known at the time to possess nuclear weapons: the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and China.
Under the treaty, nuclear-weapon states have agreed not to use nuclear weapons or to assist non-nuclear states in obtaining nuclear weapons. It also agreed to phase out stocks of nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of total disarmament. The non-nuclear weapon states agreed not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, thousands of nuclear weapons were scattered across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Many weapons were located in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. These weapons were deactivated and returned to Russia.
Illegal nuclear weapons status
Some countries wanted the option of developing their own nuclear weapons and never signed the NPT. India was the first country outside the NPT to test nuclear weapons in 1974.
Other non-signatories to the NTP include: Pakistan, Israel, and South Sudan. Pakistan has a nuclear weapons program. Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, although the existence of a nuclear weapons program has never been officially confirmed or denied. South Sudan does not know whether it has nuclear weapons or not.
North Korea
North Korea initially signed the NPT treaty, but announced its withdrawal from the agreement in 2003. Since 2006, North Korea has openly tested nuclear weapons, prompting sanctions from various countries and international bodies.
North Korea tested two long-range ICBMs in 2017, which are reportedly capable of reaching the continental United States. In September 2017, North Korea claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb that could fit over an ICBM.
Iran, while a signatory to the NPT, has said it has the ability to start nuclear weapons production on short notice.
The nuclear chemistry behind the explosion.
The atomic bomb is made up of a fissile element, such as uranium, which is rich in isotopes that can sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction. When a free neutron collides with the nucleus of a fissile atom, such as uranium-235 (235U), the uranium splits into two smaller atoms called fission fractions and more neutrons. Fission can be self-perpetuating because it produces more neutrons with the speed necessary to produce new neutrons. This creates a chain reaction.
The uranium-235 content of "weapons-grade" uranium is generally above 85 percent, although unspecialized weapons are considered "weapon-usable", which may be composed of 20 percent enriched uranium. Little Boy, the first uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, used 64 kilograms of 80 percent enriched uranium.
In fission arms, a mass of fissile material, which enriches uranium or plutonium, is assembled into a supercritical mass, the amount of material necessary to start a rapidly growing nuclear chain reaction. This is accomplished by firing one piece of subcritical material at another, known as the "gun" method, or by using chemical explosives at a subcritical area of the material several times its original density. Compressed is called the "implant" method.
The detonation method is considered more sophisticated than the pistol method and can only be used when the fissile substance is plutonium. The underlying radioactivity in the uranium will release a neutron, which will bombard another 235U atom to produce volatile uranium-236, which fission, releases more neutrons, and continues the process. Uranium atoms can be divided in many different ways, as long as the atomic weights add up to 236 (additional uranium and neutrons). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into strontium-95 (95Sr), xenon-139 (139Xe), and two neutrons (n), plus energy:
[latex]^{235}U+ ^1_0n\rightarrow \ \ ^{95}Sr+^{139}Xe +2\ ^1_0n+180 MeV[/latex]
Atomic Bomb Effects
The immediate release of energy per atom is approximately 180 million electron volts (m). 93 percent of the energy produced is the kinetic energy of the charged fission fragments moving away from each other, which are mutually canceled by the positive charge of their protons. This initial kinetic energy provides an initial velocity of about 12,000 kilometers per second.
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| Atomic Bombing Tests |
However, the high electrical charge of the charged part causes many inorganic collisions with the surrounding cores and therefore these fragments remain trapped within the uranium well of the pump. Here, its movement is converted into X-ray heat, a process that takes about a millionth of a second. At that time, the core of the bomb and the handling material are several meters in diameter and have been converted to plasma at temperatures of millions of degrees. This X-ray energy produces explosions and fires that are often the purpose of a nuclear explosion.
After Reading this post, I hope You have got full Knowledge on “What is An Atomic Bomb” and “atom bomb Formula”






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