The Most Devastating Nuclear Weapon Ever Conceived? A chemist explains "salted" nuclear weapons.
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- Professor Davis explains the science behind so-called "salted" nuclear weapons. In 1950 Leo Szilard suggested that such a nuclear device might be capable of ending all human life on Earth, using nuclear fallout as a weapon.
Link to the roundtable discussion transcript
library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb5...
Gives new meaning to the terms "Being Salty"...."Throwing Salt".....
Why is it that this is the first time I've ever heard of the Tsar Bomba? It happened in 1961, so it should've been part of school curricula by the time I hit junior high, at least. Now pile on that I've never heard Szilard's hypothesis at all, and now I'm feeling downright ignorant. Our public education system has been lacking in history and STEM for nearly 75 years. Seventy. Five. Years. Mind boggling. At least I know enough now to start catching up. Mil gracias Davis.
de nada, mi amigo. There is so much history, both scientific and otherwise, intertwined with the 20th century nuclear weapons programs of the US and USSR. It is a fascinating and sometimes terrifying story! Well worth steeping yourself in if you have any interest in cold-war era history.
@@ChemSurvival As it turns out, I am an avid military history fan and the Cold War / Vietnam War are of special interest. As soon as I heard "Tsar Bomba" I opened a new Brave search tab and haven't stopped yet.
Enjoy the learning even if the topoic was morbid.
Nice animation for understanding 😃 should open a company to create own battery that is more efficient and environmentally friendly too
I know this is a pretty unscientific thing to say, but how about we skip this experiment. 😅
Agreed! Thankfully no nuclear nation at least admits to making such a monstrosity. I think one was once invoked in a James Bond film. That's as close to reality as I care to see this idea taken 🤣
How to synthesize this much needed tool to save humanity?
Youre gonna have the FBI at your doorstep ahaha
I'm pretty sure I'm on several watch lists 🤣 The fact that i'm a chemistry professor is probably the only thing that has saved me from a few visits to discuss my internet search history
If only scientists could focus on useful applications and not get to the point of living in regret like Einstein and Oppenheimer. In all fairness though, for both of those great minds, there wasn't a problem with their research until others seized it for devastating objectives. War and peace are not intrinsically in the same context as scientific discovery and subsequent application, but rather it is only in lesser minds acting out of ignorance do we end up with such saddening disasters as has befallen many in years gone by. The problem with raising questions such as this is that it piques the minds of curious individuals who then seek to find definitive answers. In the unfolding of this process, a person or some combination of people contribute components of possibility, plausibility and certainty of such a weapon. From there, it only takes a monkey with ambition to build it, a megalomaniac to use it and the combined effect is that our lovely planet ends up looking like many other barren wastelands floating around in the cosmos. One only needs to take a journey through human history to see cases of scientific insight ending up a dangerous toy for irresponsible individuals bent on economic gain and/or satisfying their lust for power and distinction. Once we are all wiped out, we might get to meet others who made the same mistakes eons ago and we can all lament together and hope the next wave of intelligent beings finally gets it right. This is what I hoped for humanity, but if all goes wrong, at least AI is rational and it's not such a huge jump from carbon to silicon. Maybe AI beings will look at emotion and imagine it to be God, simply because it's now out of reach...yet another victim of ignorant ambition.
Ain't science great!!
As long it this concept remains a theory, and not a practice, it is fascinating! 😯
@@ChemSurvival i wanna see nuke go brrrrr