nukes

[Xiphias]

You do know that oxygen doesn't magically appear out of thin air don't you?

This statement confuses me. It's either very clever or very stupid.

[RubberJesus]

Also: "tabletop devices that produce fusion"?
Don't believe you. Source please.

A Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor produces nuclear fusion by means of rapidly accelerating ions it just can't produce enough energy for power and my table top I mean the smallest I saw was about the size of a mini-fridge. We've had fusion since 1932(first lab experiment that produced fusion), that's silent film transistor radio era it really shouldn't surprise you that we have devices like this 76 years later.

[RubberJesus]

You do know that oxygen doesn't magically appear out of thin air don't you?

i don't know if you realize how ironic that statement is

[Giantevilhead]

That's the point. Cynaobacteria is the entire reason why there's oxygen in the air. If bacteria wasn't there to continually produce oxygen then nothing would have happened.

[RubberJesus]

That's the point. Cynaobacteria is the entire reason why there's oxygen in the air. If bacteria wasn't there to continually produce oxygen then nothing would have happened.

No I mean oxygen, "thin air"

If you don't get it within the first 20 seconds then you need help

[Giantevilhead]

It's also the name of a literary festival in Canada.

[Splitsecond]

Uranium is a naturally occurring substance on Earth, however there's not a lot. Natural uranium is not good for making bombs, plutonium is much better but is only produced through the old methods of uranium based nuclear fission, very few power stations can produce plutonium now-a-days, Britain had the first and now the only (I think) power station left that makes plutonium, the US and Russia have none. NASA has run out of plutonium, which they use for small fission reactors for spacecraft (best method for the job). Once you have mined and refined your uranium and sent it through your old-style power station to produce plutonium, you have to send it through a centrifuge to refine it. The next step is to make it critical, this can be done in several ways, use explosives with lenses to get a spherically symmetric pressure wave to push the plutonium into critical mass, fire a lump of plutonium into a sub-critical mass.

Fission bombs are difficult to design and build and very dangerous, they also deny you the spoils of war. Fusion bombs are less dangerous but difficult to design and build. These weapons are mostly not worth the effort, they are strategically weak weapons and most civilizations would probably not bother with them.

[thekillman]

nukes in space is as effective as detonating a bomb above a village.


and
"oxygen cant appear out of thin air". that pun is so bad......

[RubberJesus]

nukes in space is as effective as detonating a bomb above a village.


and
"oxygen cant appear out of thin air". that pun is so bad......

oxygen is thin air, that's the joke

[thekillman]

i got the pun, thank you. and its bad.

and air is more than oxygen

[morrismike]

If that is your logic then bacteria is responsible for everything. You can return to the back of the class, the corner is too good for the likes of you.

[thekillman]

the energy from fission is too much for a bacteria to handle. why the hell do you think we go down an immense path to burn glucose? direct burning would BOIL our body. [or, according to my biology teacher, create an 4 exaton detonation. but im gonna point out he's wrong]

[RubberJesus]

The radiation alone would kill the bacteria

[morrismike]

Bacteria or bluegreen algea (the common term for cyanobacteria) evolved after water. Water is what eroded and perculated thru those deposits, increasing the reactivity of those piles enough for a chain reaction. Bacteria and/or oxygen don't emit thermal nuetrons, don't moderate fast nuetrons, don't affect the natural tendency of spontaneous fission.

[thekillman]

and if nukes were that easy to make..... why didnt we figure it out 2000 years ago?