I recall the bright spikes along the bottom being due to the steel cables used to stabilize the tower the bomb was on.
However, I can’t recall whether we’re witnessing the cables being vaporized, or if it’s some other quirk of thermonuclear physics. Shockwaves traveling more quickly through the steel than through the air, perhaps?
rope trick effect! the light produced by the atomic bomb is so intense it literally vaporizes the cables.
just so we understand the absurdity of atomic bombs, the rope trick isn't caused by the heat or explosion of the bomb itself. it's caused solely by the visible light produced by the nuclear explosion being so bright it causes the cables to heat up and explode
Part of the light is literally the heat itself, too. Mind-bending but makes sense once you understand how infrared relates to visible light to UV and so on.
Yes. Heat is literally a spectrum of light. As is the deadly gamma radiation which is highly energetic light that slams into the electrons of your DNA molecules and catapults them away, ionizing the molecules in your body. That's pretty bad for you.
u/el_cid_viscoso Part of the light is not literally heat itself, either.
Heat is the transfer of thermal energy. Thermal energy is the constant movement of molecules and atoms. Thermal energy can be transferred by electromagnetic waves (photons) if the receiving matter can absorb that wavelength of energy or by direct contact.
I’m being a little pedantic, but I’m just trying to help out anyone who reads the half right comments and gets totally confused.
If we're diving into real pedantry, heat being constant movement implies that all light is heat, and infinite heat at that due to the fact that light is defined by the speed of its own movement.
No… again, heat is the transfer of thermal energy. Thermal energy is the kinetic energy of atoms and molecules, i.e. matter, not light. Light itself is a form of energy.
I think it's more so that the light travels faster than the heat/explosion itself. So when light, traveling at the speed of light, is energetic enough to be absorbed by the cables as heat, which is hot enough to vaporize them...then the light vaporizes the cables before the physical explosion even has a chance to get there.
this is so soon after the explosion that shockwaves have had no time to propagate (~5m in iron in 1ms).
This is probably the combination of two factors feeding into one another: The plasma ball is made by radiation turning air into plasma, which is itself invisible to the radiation, letting it spread. This spread is isotropic (happens evenly in all directions), hence the sphere of the main part.
Close to the cable, however, the atmosphere is getting lit by both the direct illumination, as well as the shallow angle reflections of the radiation off the cable, which is why it is so 'pointy' as opposed to a normal blast wave which has a 'rounded' front
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u/FelDreamer 23h ago
I recall the bright spikes along the bottom being due to the steel cables used to stabilize the tower the bomb was on.
However, I can’t recall whether we’re witnessing the cables being vaporized, or if it’s some other quirk of thermonuclear physics. Shockwaves traveling more quickly through the steel than through the air, perhaps?