More powerful than "king-bomb". The worst weapon: How powerful nuclear bomb can create people

Scientists believe that people, theoretically, can create 100 times more powerful weapons, writes Big Think. In focus. Technology has appeared its Telegram channel. Subscribe not to miss the latest and most intrusive news from the world of science! On October 30, 1961, the Soviet pilots of the Tu-95 bomber dropped a huge nuclear bomb weighing 26. 5 tons and 8 meters above the new land, remote Archipelago in the Barents Sea. After that, the pilots turned the plane and flew as quickly as they could.

They knew what would happen when their deadly cargo exploded and wanted to survive the event. From a distance of about 60 km, the pilots saw an explosion, and then heard and felt it, because the "king-bomb" still exploded. After the explosion, with a power of 57 megaton in the TNT, a nuclear mushroom was formed about 60 km in height. Until now, this explosion is considered the most powerful nuclear explosion in history.

Scientists believe that it is very unlikely that people will be able to create something more powerful, but as is often the case, people are unpredictable, especially when they want to destroy themselves. By the way, the US nuclear arsenal is now a warhead that can cause an explosion of only 1. 2 megaton in TNT. It is the most powerful nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, but it, of course, does not go into any comparison with the "king-bomb.

" But if you assume that a nuclear arms race will begin again on Earth, will scientists be able to create something more powerful than the infamous Soviet nuclear bomb? Although it will be very difficult, scientists say it is possible. Initially, Soviet scientists wanted to create a 100 megaton nuclear bomb, but it would be so large that it would not be able to lift the planes. Therefore, the size and power of the bomb was reduced.

On the other hand, there were fears that the explosion of such power could lead to radiation contamination of the entire northern part of the former USSR. At present, scientists believe that theoretically it is possible to create a thermonuclear bomb that would consist of several parts. Each separate bomb would lead to the next, larger size. As a result of such an association, you can create a huge nuclear bomb that would be 100 times stronger than "king-bomb" in power.

For example, in the United States, in the early 1950s, some scientists proposed to create a nuclear bomb of 10,000 megaton. The explosion of such a bomb could completely destroy, such as the United Kingdom or Germany. But this idea seemed crazy.

But in the 1970s, scientists from the Liberty National Laboratory named after Lawrence, the United States, made calculations on the supercomputer, which showed that a wave of thermonuclear combustion could be created inside a large tank with liquid deuterium. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen containing a neutron in addition to one proton in the atomic nucleus, and it was widely used as fuel in thermonuclear weapons.

Deuterium is fused with less other hydrogen isotope, tritium, creating a huge amount of energy. The calculations have shown that a nuclear bomb filled with 212 tons of deuterium can cause an explosion of 5200 megaton. That is, we returned to the fact that theoretically people could create a nuclear bomb that is 100 times more powerful than the most powerful bomb in the history of the Earth.