Joe 4
RDS-6s (; American codename: "Joe 4") was the first Soviet attempted test of a thermonuclear weapon that occurred on August 12, 1953, that detonated with an energy equivalent to 400 kilotons of TNT. RDS-6 utilized a scheme in which fission and fusion fuel ( lithium-6 deuteride) were " layered", a design known as the ''Sloika'' (, named after a type of layered puff pastry) or the so-called layer cake design, model in the Soviet Union. A ten-fold increase in explosive power was achieved by a combination of fusion and fission, yet it was still 26 times less powerful than the Ivy Mike device tested by the US in 1952. A similar design was earlier theorized by Edward Teller, but never tested by the US, as the " Alarm Clock". Description The Soviet Union started studies of advanced nuclear bombs and a hydrogen bomb, code named RDS-6, in June 1948. The studies would be done by KB-11 (usually referred to as Arzamas-16, the name of the town) and FIAN. The first hydrogen bomb ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Semipalatinsk Test Site
The Semipalatinsk Test Site or Semipalatinsk-21 (; ), also known as "The Polygon", was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located in Zhanasemey District, Abai Region, Kazakhstan, south of the valley of the Irtysh River. The test site was part of the former Kazakh SSR. The scientific buildings for the test site were located around west of the town of Semipalatinsk, later renamed Semey, near the border of East Kazakhstan Region and Pavlodar Region. Most of the nuclear tests taking place at various sites further to the west and the south, some as far as into Karagandy Region. The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991. According to estimates from Kazakh experts, 1.5 million people were ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edward Teller
Edward Teller (; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian and American Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the History of the Teller–Ulam design, Teller–Ulam design based on Stanisław Ulam's design. He had a volatile personality, and was "driven by his megaton ambitions, had a Messiah complex, messianic complex, and displayed autocratic behavior." A thermonuclear design he devised was an Alarm Clock model bomb with a yield of 1000 MT (1 GT of TNT) and he proposed delivering it by boat or submarine. It would be capable of incinerating a continent. Born in Austria-Hungary in 1908, Teller emigrated to the US in the 1930s, one of the many so-called The Martians (scientists), "Martians", a group of Hungarian scientist émigrés. He made numerous contributions to Nuclear physics, nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, and Surface science, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mark 16 Nuclear Bomb
The Mark 16 nuclear bomb was a large American thermonuclear bomb (hydrogen bomb), based on the design of the Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear device ever test fired. The Mark 16 is more properly designated TX-16/EC-16 as it only existed in Experimental/Emergency Capability (EC) versions. The TX-16 was the only deployed thermonuclear bomb which used a cryogenic liquid deuterium fusion fuel, the same fuel used in the Ivy Mike test device. The TX-16 was a weaponized version of the Ivy Mike design. This required both a considerable reduction in weight of the explosive package and the replacement of the elaborate cryogenic system with vacuum flasks for replenishing boiled-off deuterium. The carrier aircraft was to be the B-36 as modified under Operation Barroom. Only one B-36 was so modified. The TX-16 shared common forward and aft casing sections with the TX-14 and TX-17/24 and in the emergency capability (EC-16) version was almost indistinguishable from the EC-14. A small number o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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R-7 Semyorka
The R-7 Semyorka (, GRAU index: 8K71) was a Soviet Union, Soviet missile developed during the Cold War, and the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 made 28 launches between 1957 and 1961. A derivative, the R-7A Semyorka, R-7A, was operational from 1960 to 1968. To the West it was unknown until its launch (later it would get the NATO reporting name SS-6 Sapwood). In modified form, it launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit, and became the basis for the R-7 (rocket family), R-7 family which includes Sputnik (rocket), Sputnik, Luna (rocket), Luna, Molniya (rocket), Molniya, Vostok (rocket family), Vostok, and Voskhod (rocket), Voskhod Expendable launch system, space launchers, as well as later Soyuz (rocket family), Soyuz variants. Various modifications are still in use and it has become the world's most reliable space launcher. Description The R-7 was long, in diameter and weighed ; it had a single stage with four strap on boosters p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War. An ethnic Georgian, Beria enlisted in the Cheka in 1920, and quickly rose through its ranks. He transferred to Communist Party work in the Caucasus in the 1930s, and in 1938 was appointed head of the NKVD by Stalin. His ascent marked the end of the Stalinist Great Purge carried out by Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria purged. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Beria organized the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, and after the occupation of the Baltic states and parts of Romania in 1940, he oversaw the deportations of hundred ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cross Section (physics)
In physics, the cross section is a measure of the probability that a specific process will take place in a collision of two particles. For example, the Rutherford cross-section is a measure of probability that an alpha particle will be deflected by a given angle during an interaction with an atomic nucleus. Cross section is typically denoted (sigma) and is expressed in units of area, more specifically in barns. In a way, it can be thought of as the size of the object that the excitation must hit in order for the process to occur, but more exactly, it is a parameter of a stochastic process. When two discrete particles interact in classical physics, their mutual cross section is the area transverse to their relative motion within which they must meet in order to scatter from each other. If the particles are hard inelastic sphere A sphere (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ) is a surface (mathematics), surface analogous to the circle, a curve. In solid geometry, a sphere is ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vitaly Ginzburg
Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg ForMemRS (; – 8 November 2009) was a Russian physicist who was honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003, together with Alexei Abrikosov and Anthony Leggett for their "pioneering contributions to the theory of superconductors and superfluids." He spent his career in the former Soviet Union and was one of the leading figure in former Soviet program of nuclear weapons, working towards designs of the thermonuclear devices. He became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and succeeded Igor Tamm as head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences ( FIAN). In his later life, Ginzburg become an outspoken atheist and was critical of clergy's influence in Russian society. Biography Vitaly Ginzburg was born to a Jewish family in Moscow on 4 October 1916— the son of an engineer, Lazar Yefimovich Ginzburg, and a doctor, Augusta Wildauer who was a graduate from the Physics F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet Physics, physicist and a List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Although he spent his career in physics in the Soviet atomic bomb project, Soviet program of nuclear weapons, overseeing the development of thermonuclear weapons, Sakharov also did fundamental work in understanding particle physics, magnetism, and physical cosmology. Sakharov is mostly known for his political activism for Individual and group rights, individual freedom, Human rights in Russia, human rights, civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he was deemed a Soviet dissident, dissident and faced persecution from the Soviet establishment. In his memory, the Sakharov Prize was established and is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights and freedoms. Biography F ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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History Of The Teller–Ulam Design
The Teller–Ulam design is a technical concept behind modern thermonuclear weapons, also known as Nuclear weapon design#Hydrogen bombs, hydrogen bombs. The design relies on the radiation implosion principle, using thermal X-rays released from a fission nuclear primary to compress and ignite nuclear fusion in a secondary. This is in contrast to the simpler design and usage of nuclear fusion in Boosted fission weapon, boosted fission weapons. The design is named for scientists Edward Teller and Stanisław Ulam, who originally devised the concept in January 1951 for the United States and nuclear weapons, United States nuclear weapons program, though their individual roles have been subsequently debated. The US Operation Greenhouse, Greenhouse George test in May 1951, the world's first artificial thermonuclear fusion, validated the radiation implosion principle. The US first tested the "true" Teller-Ulam design with the very high-yield Ivy Mike test in 1952. The design was independe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Fuchs attended the University of Leipzig, where his father was a professor of theology, and became involved in student politics, joining the student branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and the '' Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold'', an SPD-allied paramilitary organisation. He was expelled from the SPD in 1932, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lebedev Physical Institute
The Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS or just LPI) (in ), situated in Moscow, is a Russian research institute specializing in physics. The institute was established in its present shape in 1934 by academician Sergey Vavilov. It moved to Moscow and was named after a Russian physicist Pyotr Lebedev the same year. It is also known as P. N. Lebedev Institute of Physics or just Lebedev Institute. In Russian it is often referred to by the acronym FIAN (ФИАН) standing for "Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences". The range of the research activities includes: laser technology, dark matter structure, nanostructures, superconductivity, cosmic rays, and gamma-astronomy. The institute developed a technique of crystallizing cubic zirconia (which was called '' Fianit'' in Russia, named after FIAN). Directors of the Institute # Sergey Vavilov (1934–1951) # Dmitri Skobeltsyn (1951–1972) # Nikolay Basov (1973–1988) # Leonid Ke ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |