What a nuclear bomb looks like when detonated in space, and the impact felt here on Earth

Reddit is great for a lot of different reasons — while most of the time it’s a good way to catch up on news of the day, it’s also a terrific source for stories of the past, and typically include a reliable listing of resources and supporting data that give these accounts even greater context than when they were originally reported. 

Case in point: this fascinating GIF that was uploaded to the site this past week:

What you’re watching here is a nuclear bomb being detonated in space. It was part of a series of nuclear tests in the early 1960s called Operation Dominic. And within this program were the Fishbowl events, the highest atmospheric nuclear detonation tests ever performed.

Per this program, nuclear bombs were strapped to Thor missiles and launched into space from Hawaii’s Johnston Island. The goal in doing this was to understand how best to neutralize an incoming threat from a detonation high above the country, and to also understand how debris from the nuclear weapon would interact with the Earth’s magnetic field (should two warring countries ever decide to engage in an all-out nuclear war — not that we need to name names or anything). 

The highest of the Fishbowl events was the Starfish prime event, which is the GIF above. During this particular test, a 1.4 megaton bomb was detonated 250 miles above Hawaii on July 9, 1962 at 9:00:09 Coordinated Universal Time, or 11:00:09 local Hawaiian time. Point of detonation was 13 minutes and 41 seconds after the bomb / rocket had officially taken off. 

So what was the result? Well, for one the explosion was just as visible in the night sky as a ground-based test. Also, the electromagnetic pulse from the bomb wreaked havoc on all electronics. That’s because the pulse itself was much larger than anticipated. It drove a majority of the instrumentation off scale, which resulted in tremendous difficulty when it came to gathering accurate measurements. It also caused electrical damage to the people in Hawaii, about 900 miles away from the detonation point. Here, roughly 300 streetlights went out, numerous burglar alarms went off, and one telephone company reported damage to its microwave link which, in turn, resulted in the inability to place phone calls between Kauai and other Hawaiian islands. 

All of this was fixable, though. One thing the scientists did not fully consider was how the bomb would impact the Earth’s magnetic field, and the satellites that were in orbit at the time. Some of the energetic beta particles followed the Earth’s magnetic field, creating bands of radiation, if you will, that lit up the night sky. Other high-energy particles, meanwhile, became trapped and formed actual radiation belts around the Earth. This resulted in a lot of debate among scientists about the composition, magnitude, and adverse effects that this trapped radiation would have on Earth. Their worry was further compounded when three satellites were disabled after the detonation. Over time, about one-third of all satellites in lower Earth orbit became disabled due to their exposure to the bomb’s radiation aftermath. 

Superficially speaking, what is interesting is how these bombs did not generate the mushroom clouds we all associate with nuclear bombs; instead, they yielded massive auroras. This is due to the fact that the charged particles from the bomb interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field which, in turn, spread them miles from the point of detonation, and resulted in a bunch serpentine-like green ribbons across the sky. Debris from the bomb also created filaments within that glowing aurora, and as the particles fell back to Earth, they burned up in the atmosphere. 

Fortunately for all of humanity, these tests were short lived, as President Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which put an end to atmospheric nuclear testing altogether. 

Check out original video of the Starfish event below:

Via Reddit