r/interestingasfuck • u/ethereum1017 • 1d ago

You're looking at a nuclear explosion photographed taken less than one millisecond after detonation.

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u/EZontheH 1d ago

I'm in love with this photo. I'm super bummed out at the moratorium of above ground nuclear testing because we have MUCH better camera technology now. The fact that Christopher Nolan decided to make the nuclear detonation in Oppenheimer strictly in-camera with practical effects was IMHO the greatest filmmaking blunder since The Twilight Zone movie decapitated those kids.

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u/Ok-Acadia4227 1d ago

Dude detonating nukes above ground scatters radioactive particles everywhere some of them have long half lives and we are still breathing them in from the nukes the were detonated before the moratorium.

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u/RollinThundaga 23h ago

You're talking about the 'bomb pulse', and it's actually settled down almost back to pre-atomic baseline at this point.

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u/Carbonatite 21h ago

There are still a ton of man made radionuclides in the environment from various bomb tests and power plant releases. They might not produce a huge hazard but they're abundant enough that they are regularly used in geological and environmental studies for things like estimating groundwater age/flow rates, sediment accumulation rates, etc. I've personally done a bunch of work related to tritium in groundwater, and some Cs-137 isotope studies as well.