AToIMIC Testing

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Why did we do Nuclear Atomic Testing?

Didn't we already know how to make nuclear bombs... why did we continue to test bigger and bigger mushrooms... looking at thier shapes in water for so long? -> did the data actually help with weapons... or is thier something else to be gained out of the experiment.

Some test were to see if they still worked. Tritium's half life is just a few years
(well a rifle scope I had said in 10 years the tritium iluminated aiming point would stop
glowing.)

To compete in the cold war.

So they were manufacuring, heavy elements like Tritium? ... maybe?... bit expensive though...maybe they refined the tehniques on a smaller scale.

...Cold war... but the French did post cold war in the Murora Atol? ... all under water ones too. ...and it's not lie the French are actually Competing on any ground on an armananents perspective (well maybe a little to curb Russia's Enthusiasm)... but they kept at it after the colapse of the Soviet Block.


Is it that there is somesort of intersting data that can be gained from a mushrroom cloud, akin to the type of data that you get from a cyclotron?

-->ther is currently a race to build the biggest cyclotrons around the world?

To test new designs, there are a great number of different ways to build a bomb, some of them better than others. To find out what works and what doesn't, to see what yield, radiation output, and blast radius a particular design will have. In one test, a fleet of ships were moored around a weapon to see what effect it would have (most were sunk), in another (footage of which you'll often see) structural damage by a blast was tested. The list goes on and on. This site has a full list of tests:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

Why the mini underwater ones then?

I think most of the 'destruction' tests were done in the first 20 years... now anyone still doing testing don't even bother with the object that get's destroyed.(don't quote me on that,, who knows what india and nKorea did)

Mini underwater ones?

No, N. Korea, India, and Pakistan were testing designs. The best way to test a new weapon design is still to use it.

the mini under water ones that the French did... not more than 15year ago? -> how does that help with testing real life explosions?
..actually I don't think they were mini at all?

....The Remake of Godzilla starts out at the site... Mroura Atoll.

According to wikipedia, they did some tests before the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in order to gather data for simulations. Is that what you're talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and ... estruction

I think the logic here is the same logic that makes guys get really powerful cars even though they'll never use them to their potential.

Yeah that's the one - in 1995!

I always thought that they were studying the way in which the chain reaction propogates... maybe because it defies natural laws.. sort of like how we build particle accelerators to reach the speed of light... the easiest thing we have to build that already reaches the speed of light is the nuclear bomb.

No, that sort of testing would be done in a lab, the only point in detonating a Nuclear weapon, is to test said weapon.

Defies natural laws?

A Lab! -> I can imagine the professor just saying to his technicians.... Oh owe... RUN!!

I thought that the major assumption would be, when you set off such an explosion, is that you can observe the speed of light, or at least observe a change in space around the xplosion.

Wouldn't be the first time...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident



Admitedly, my knowledge in nuclear physics is somewhat casual, but I can't think of anything emitted by a weapon that couldn't be replicated by a particle accelerator.

The French tests in the 1990s weren't really underwater detonations. The tests took place inside shafts drilled into the Moruroa Atoll. There just happened to be a lot of water above and around the test site, which is why (in photos from the round of tests) you can see a shock wave on the water (just like in underground detonations in the desert) rather than a mushroom cloud.