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Why so far north? Why not in Semipalatinsk Test Site?
This page, "Tsar Bomba" says about Hiroshima:
"If detonated at full yield, the force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima."
But the "Kiloton" wikipedia, which points to this page, says:
"The Little Boy weapon dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 13 kilotons. Thus, a megaton is equivalent to roughly 77 Hiroshima bombs."
Could the authors discuss this and resolve the difference? The person who wrote 13 kilotons may have knowledge no one else on the web seems to.
Does anyone happen to have some image or video material of this bomb, or does anyone know if such material exists?
"Tsar Bomba [...] was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated."
Was or is still the largest? That should be clarified.
It is ridiculously unlikely that anyone will set off a nuclear explosive larger than the Tsar Bomba anytime in the foreseeable future. I don't think it needs to "as of 2005" categorization in there, which implies that this designation is likely to change anytime soon. If someone sets off a +50MT explosive (a weapon larger than any warheads kept by any of the declared nuclear powers and of extremely limited military and political value in today's geopolitical climate), I will personally update the page if I, or Wikipedia, am still around. ;-) In most cases I think the policy would make sense, but in ones which are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon (or if they did, it would be a tremendous and massive world event), I don't think it is necessary to stick with if it makes the entry look awkward. -- Fastfission 05:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If you stand that we don't understand the nature of nuclear testing, then I must say that you don't understand a principial difference between the wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia. The printed one has a natural timestamp: the date of print. And when Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) says that Sir Brillinghat caught the largest fish ever in history, I understand that it could be quite possible that in year 1956 Abu Farhun ibn Gurqamzai could have caught an even bigger fish. Wikipedia does not have this natural time reference, and exactly for this reason the rule is established to keep statements independent of the current moment. And I see nothing outrageous in your proposal about tsunami. Thanks for the hint, I will go and edit it accordingly. Mikkalai 20:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As for "flooded", please allow me to be sceptical. The most recent example. The articles about the history of the Soviet Union are an arena of heated editing. Nevertheless, until yesterday not a single one said anything about the moment of the declaration of the state. What is more, the main article contained a ridiculous date of July 4 1924 (or something), and no one flooded to fix it. And the examples abound. Soon there will be half million articles. But the number of non-occasional editors hardly exceeds several thousand. (I am not sure; may be I am too pessymistic; I will recheck). Mikkalai 20:40, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, count me convinced. Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, there is a remote possibility that a relatively large asteroid will be detected on an Earth-crossing orbit. We cannot rule out existence of such objects. In worst case, we may have only something like 1 month left before impact. It's possible that governments wouldn't want to take any chances and will launch several 100+MT nuclear tipped missiles in order to destroy/deflect the thing. Yes, not very likely to happen, but is not impossible.
Pointless, anyway. There is no blast in a vacuum - just a dirty big (silent) flash. You just give the asteroid a suntan on one side and don't deflect it one inch :-)(ChrisR UK 12Aug05)
Well, "Tsar Bomba was designed and constructed in only 14 weeks" and "bomb itself weighed 27 tonnes". I think if we (I am from former SU, thus... :) could make it in 14 weeks just because Nikitka wanted it, I'm sure it can be done again, especially if in dire need. Present-day Delta IV Heavy lifts 25 tons to LEO. On-orbit docking of ~25 ton,~100MT warhead and boost stage gives you an asteroid buster. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, I don't think so. -- Denis Vlasenko
100Mt surface blast may fail to fracture nickel-iron asteroid, and unlikely to fracture asteroid of any composition if it is large enough (like ~70 km diameter Chiron). However, blast is going to evaporate a huge amount of material and expel it with speed of tens of km/s in space. This will alter orbit of the object.
--An asteroid 70 km in diameter falls to earth with the force of approximately 2000 MEGATONS. One hundred megatons does not make a difference. It's a simple calculation, my astronomy professor completed it in class. He also illuminated what would happen in an "Armageddon" type situation, where humans drill a hole in an asteroid and pump hundreds of megatons worth of explosives. The asteroid explodes, but its gravity forces it back together. It basically just eats up the explosion and re-accreates into the same object. Sad but true. We don't have to worry about it though, they only happen once every 100 mil years or so. On the hundred year scale, we only have to worry about 40m objects, which can act like a humongous nuclear bomb. Mikkalai should know about this, one fell on Siberia sometime at the beginning of the twentieth century. Leveled a whole forest. Moo.
Rather than speculative "if", I would like to see the actual comparison. There is no limit for "if"s. What if they have made it 200Mt?, etc. This is good for a newspaper, but not for encyclopedia about the particular instance of a device. I am prepared to delete this phrase, especially the second half. No one knows what qualitative effects would have kicked in after duplicating the yield. And by the way, what was learned from the blast besides "it was visible 1000 km away"? Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
http://www.vce.com/tsar.html, which is the souce of the statement, is full of incorrect details, and therefore lacks credibility. The phrase removed.
The following phrase contradicts recent Russian sources.
Mikkalai 07:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If it'll make everyone happy, I'll look into what the scholarly sources (Holloway) say about this. I'm under the general impression that the above line is the common understanding though. Replacing the tamper with the non-fissile lead would have cut down on the yield quite dramatically, and most of the "dirty" aspects of hydrogen weapons come from their final fission stage (the natural uranium tamper). Most sources say that Sakharov said it was designed to have been at least 100MT at full yield (though yields are apparently often not something which can be realiably predicted ahead of time when you start getting into such complicated reactions as a multi-multi-multi stage weapon like this would require). I'm fairly sure that Kuran's Trinity and Beyond says this as well, but that's not much of a scholarly source (though he obviously consulted some degree of literature on it). Impractical for war; primarily a political symbol. I'm fairly sure little was learned from the blast -- it was not an experiment, it was a symbol: "Look what we can do." As a technical trick it is only impressive to a certain degree -- it was just a scaling up of what could already be done with thermonuclear weapons by the late 1950s. The real question is why to make them that big, and the answer (Soviet politics) is fairly localized. At least, that's how it is depicted in English-language sources, though they are often notoriously off in terms of the Soviet nuclear program (the only one I trust almost unconditionally is Kojevnikov because his Russian is the best and he is notoriously suspicious of simple explanations).
Which recent Russian sources are you referring to?-- Fastfission 23:44, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So here's the second Google hit, then: [7]. It lists the following reference for that specific bit of trivia: Thomas Reed and Arnold Kramish. 1996. Trinity at Dubna, Physics Today, November 1996, pg. 30-35. Bryan 07:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I appreciate your diligence in proving your point. Nevertheless I have to disagree. For an industry to be disrupted it must exist in the first place. The person who produced this funny trivia had no idea how Soviet lingerie in 1960s looked like. Silk and nylon stockings were considered luxury, and their production was negligible, since in Soviet Union the production decisions were not made by market, but by state planners that controlled state-owned plants. Nylon stockings were considered waste of country's efforts. Moreover, only naive person can think that parachute nylon is of the same quality as the one used in stockings. This was a totally separate industry, and always under good care, being of military purpose. It is well-known now that a significant amount of military production was carried out in a disguised way at civil enterprises, so in a sense parachute industry could have disrupted Soviet hosiery indeed, but this was the whole state policy, rather than an occasional glitch. Mikkalai 16:20, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I finaly found out what material was used for parachutes in Soviet Union at these times. It was acetate rayon and percale. Removing this nylon bullshit, probably invented by some paparazzi. Mikkalai 00:26, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have no knowledge of the veracity of the claim, but maybe we can make everybody happy if we change the line to:
?? - Fastfission 22:22, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ehm, don't forget that USSR boasted some of the most developed (and numerous) airborne troops on this planet. With all the parachutes made for the VDV and others, an additional one for the bomb would make no difference whatsoever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.137.194.104 ( talk • contribs)
Directly relevant. Necessary for google search, to verify info etc. Who knows when individual articles will be created Mikkalai 05:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Over what period of time is this "entire power output of the Sun" measured? Ground 22:26, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 Joules, the power produced during the explosion was around 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This represents a power just greater than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (386 yottawatts)."
Should it not be the total energy output of the sun reaching the earth? Otherwise it seems to me to be a gross exaggeration No matter the answer, it should be elaborated in a way so that it will not be misinterpreted by physics illiterates(like me!) If I read the numbers below correctly you would need roughly two billion Tsar Bombas and not close to a hundred, to emulate the suns energy output for a second!
Energy Output Of The Sun In One Second
Value In Joules: 385 septillion (3.85 x 10e26) Value In Megatons: 92.1 billion (92.1 x 10e10)
"Tsar Bomba" Nuclear Bomb Value In Joules: 209 quadrillion (2.09 x 10e17) Value In Megatons: 50 (5.00 x 10e2) Source: http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/Trunko/energy.html
1 megaton = 4.2 X 10e15 joules 50 megaton = 2.1 X 10e17 joules The Suns output pr. sec. 3.9 X 10e26 joules Thus you need around 1857142800 Tsar Bombas exploding at the same time and not a hundred to compete with the sun for a second.
Please correct my errors or if I am right correct the wikipedia.
I was wrong. The entire fission-fussion proces takes place in ca. 0.000002 sec. creating an entire different value for watts. But It still think it should be ellaborated so as not to cause misunderstanding. Johan "Apollo" Bressendorff(Denmark) Pietas 22:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The "1% power output" calculation seems to be correct in my opinion. An interesting aspect in this, is to compare the volume needed in the sun to generate that power with that of the Tsar Bomba. Sun has fusion taking place in a sphere of 20% of it's diameter. The processes in the bomb take place in a region of several meters. Thus the power density must be many times greater in the bomb, than in nature.
I doubt this was just for propaganda they probably intended these to be used as real weapons. If they wanted to do propaganda they would just dentonate a smaller bomb and make it look bigger Dudtz 7/21/05 1:20 PM EST
It wouldn't be easy to detect, at lest back then when the bomb was detonated there were no radiation detecting satellites. There wasn't much of any other detecting equipment back then It's not that impractical just wheel it into the back of a cargo plane and drop it out the back door when you're redy. Dudtz July 25th 2005 3:28 PM EST
Article has no info on aftermath. Is there a crater? How big is it? Damage to arctic wildlife? etc... -- Denis Vlasenko
I've found some info at http://www.bilderberg.org/hbomb.htm:
Some time after the explosion, photographs were taken of ground zero. “The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink,” a witness reported. “The same goes for rocks. The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away.”
This article seems quite comprehensive. How about a FA nomination? - Fredrik | talk 11:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic, Halloween 2005. As is often the case in Wikipedia, the prose of this entry could use a good deal of polish, which I have supplied. This topic fascinates me because I can still recall the gloomy fall morning when I came to the breakfast table and saw the screaming headlines in the morning paper about a 100 megaton Russian test in Nova Zemlya. I was 9 at the time. Only a fortnight ago did I discover that that test had been an airdrop, that the Bomba had been designed to minimize fallout, and that its weight and size rendered it hopelessly impractical. I have added a link pointing out that the USA built and deployed a similar weapon in those days.
I have not found one sentence discussing the possible impact on Nova Zemlya wildlife. My atlas also reveals 3-4 tiny settlements along the southern part of that island. Did they exist in 1961? If so were the inhabitants evacuated? Warned in any way?
Concerned Cynic, Halloween. I hasten to correct what I wrote above. The massive USA warhead that "rivaled" the Bomba was the B41, rated at about 25 Mt. Its production began in 1958. The Mark-17 was the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon. Its dimensions were on the same scale as the Tsar Bomba, 7.5 m long, 1.5 m in diameter, 19 metric tons in weight. The only way of delivering the Mark-17 was by a specially modified B-36, the largest warplane ever built. My thrust should be clear. The Tsar Bomba was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a culture of "Doomsday" weapons, pursued willy-nilly even though they required a massive size that rendered them barely barely deliverable.
Concerned Cynic. A Soviet show bomb was a quick and cheap way to counter much of the deterrent effect of American deployed bombs. And I do suspect that the Mark-17 and B41 had yields about as high as were practical at the time. As for the Doomsday culture, I refer all readers to Dr Strangelove. Sometimes art transcends engineering...
This user is doing a great many edits on this page and I am not sure that he/she is improving it. I have left a message on the user page of this editor and I have yet to recive an answer. Would you rather answer here? DV8 2XL 22:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic. I am the one who has made many recent changes to this article. For reasons beyond my
control, I sign on using several names.
This is the only Wikipedia article I've worked on that has led to any controversy. Apparently, I am not the amateur Cold War military historian out there!
I've heavily edited this article because while the facts fascinate me and I remember the 1961 screaming headlines about a "100 megaton test", the sentences often did not read smoothly, the ordering of facts made my mind stumble, there were repetitions and inconsistencies. Such flaws are not
uncommon in other Wikipedia articles on recent military history and technology.
I created the section "Critique" and contributed much of its content. I have no training in nuclear weapons. Rather, I was a precocious teenager during the 1960s, who underwent civil defense training, and who read everything that came my way about such weapons. Later I learned why : war is too important to be delegated to mere generals!
Exposition and organisation are matters of taste, and all of you out there are free to undo what I've done. Those of you more expert than I am are welcome to correct and add to the facts. But I insist on a matter of historical interpretation: the Tsar Bomba was not just one more instance of Soviet "military brutality" or "inhumanity". It is not the USSR that broke new ground here, but the USA. Human civilisation turned a corner when the USA tested the Teller-Ulam (1954 Castle Bravo series) design, then manufactured 200 Mark-17s implementing that design and put them in the bellies of B-36s, all in a matter of months. The Soviets almost surely knew the outlines, if not the details, of the Mark 17 and B41 bombs when the Tsar Bomba was built. Krushchev wanted to show the Americans (and the world) that he could "match and raise". That the yield of the Tsar Bomba was twice that of the B41, and could be raised to four times, is a distinction without a difference. It is also essential to understand why such Doomsday weapons are now obsolete. Power is knowledge. Or as I read decades ago "if a cruise missile could fly down a Kremlin chimney with a fair chance of success, no need for nukes." Improved delivery technology may eventually make all weapons of mass destruction obsolete.
Concerned Cynic: It would be nice if my mind worked in the way you think it should... I really do not think that the article is in its current incarnation, is 'locked.' For the record, everything containing 'Concerned Cynic' is authored by the same.
-- Craig ( t| c) 22:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic: That assumes a hard operational distinction between "fact" and "interpretation."
Concerned Cynic: Not just casing size, but also weight and yield.
Much of the discussion above is stimulating and well-written. I either agree with, or am not competent to challenge, many of the points raised. I would be nice if an Arzamas veteran were to go over the article closely.
Concerned Cynic: There's been too much talk about procedure and not enough about content.
Concerned Cynic: one can always hope.
The rules of Wikipedia are not an option. You are expected to adhere them just like everyone else. Making a statement to the effect that you will not is grounds for suspension. Sign your comments please and tag your edits. DV8 2XL 04:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Does Tsar Bomba mean "Tsar of the bombs" or "bomb of the Tsar(s)"?
Would that video really be copyvio? I thought things created before 1973 in the USSR were in the public domain in most countries, per {{ PD-USSR}}? (Did the Soviet government claim copyright on official produced materials?) -- Fastfission 18:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful device ever utilized by humans, as pointed out in the article. User Yooden modified that statement to read most "powerful explosive ever" [9] and then reverted my later removal of that modifier. While the fact that it is the most powerful explosive ever detonated is strictly true, the wider definiton of most powerful device overall is more accurate and useful/interesting to the reader. Also, it appears that Yooden's remark in his edit that "the computer is more powerful" I think demonstrates a gross misconception of the concept of power being talked about here. Measures of computer power and literal physical power are two entirely different phenomena. -- Deglr6328 22:48, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Yooden
How ludicrously silly this whole thing is.
Here we shall take a vote then (either oppose or support) on whether we should consider the term power, as used in this science related article as having any reasonable likelyhood of being confused with power (computers), power (communication), power (mathematics), political power, macial powers, power (legal jurisdiction) or power (basketweaving).-- Deglr6328 07:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I enjoy Dr. Strangelove as much as the next guy, but I don't think it is a reputable source for the Cold War military mentality which may be related to the development of the Tsar Bomba. In fact I think it has very little to do with the Tsar Bomba at all — it is a comedy about Mutual Assured Destruction and military paranoia in the United States. I don't think it has much to do with a show bomb developed by the Soviet Union and referring to it as a source to look at for further information about the "culture and mindset" which led to the creation of the Tsar Bomba is unhelpful, incorrect, juvenile, and fairly POV (Strangelove is a decidedly anti-military film, one determined to portray to arms race in a completely ridicuous light; I happen to agree with much of the POV but it is still a very strong POV). I don't think including a line in the "Origins" section of this page is at all called for. --22:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Umm, lasers can be quite 'powerfull' as their energy output is often condensed into very small time frames. Maybe someone should look into this? -- John
In Peter Kuran's "Trinity and Beyond (The Atomic Bomb Movie)", this bomb is referred to as "The Monster Bomb". There is nothing in the article about this alias. -- Oblivious 23:11, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
A user added the following note to my talk page, though it really probably belongs here. -- Fastfission 17:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
The "Tsar Bomba" is the centerpiece of a new novel about nuclear terrorism, "King of Bombs." The novel's premise is that Al-Qaeda seeks to replicate a duplicate of the Tsar Bomba device, tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, with fusion tampers installed. With the help of Iran, North Korea, the nuclear weapons black market and a former worker at the Arzamas-16 nuclear weapons research facility, Al-Qaeda is determined to fabricate a device that will inflict apocalyptic devastation on the United States. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.161.53.216 ( talk • contribs) on 19:37, 29 December 2005
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/10/north_koreairan_cooperation_sh.php
Yes, rogue states never cooperate, except that they do. Thanks for your pointless comment, Nil Einne.
When I first read the following, I couldn't believe it:
"Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10^-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."
I then did the calculation myself and found it to be correct!
However I have a small quarrel with how the information was presented. The comparison should NOT be between a 39 nanosecond quantity of solar energy versus the Tsar Bomba's. It should rather be a comparison of instantaneous power. The Solar Constant is 1.37 kw/m^2. Construct a control surface of 1 AU radius around the Sun. 1 AU = 1.49598x10^11 m. The surface area of the control surface is 4 * Pi * [1.49598x10^11]^2 = 2.812298x10^23 m^2. The total power of the sun is 3.852849x10^26 watts. A megaton is 4.187x10^15 joules. For 50 megatons (50 Mt) at 3.9x10-8 sec, the average power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 5.3679x10^24 watts. The instantaneous power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 1.39% of the Sun!! However, it's inappropriate to compare the Sun's energy against the Tsar Bomba because the Sun is producing energy continuously while the Tsar Bomba only produced energy for 39 nanoseconds, e.g. over a one second period the Sun produced 1.8 billion times the amount of energy produced by the Tsar Bomba. This number is closer to intuition since we and our technology are nothing compared to the Sun.
The 1.39% power rating raises an interesting question. Thermonuclear weapons supposably burn like a match, i.e. the radiation from the fission trigger pre-compresses the thermonuclear fuel in the secondary section while a detonation wave propagates down the length of the secondary section starting from the fission trigger. My intuition tells me that a 25 Mt explosion would have burned for only 1.95x10-8 sec. Is this true? Where did the 39 nanosecond burntime number for the Tsar Bomba come from? Does the burn time scale linearly with weapon yield? At some point the linearity should breakdown, e.g. if the secondary section is too long then it doesn't pre-compress properly or if it's too short, it doesn't have time to pre-compress before the detonation wave passes through. Any nuke experts out there with clues about this?
BTW, it was a marvellous article!
Egg plant 04:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
When describing the test, the author states that "Failing such retardation, the bomb would have either reached its planned detonation altitude soon enough to turn the test into a suicide mission, or crashed into the ground at high speed, with unpredictable results"
Could someone elaborate on the "unpredictable" bit? My physics education stopped at GCE A-levels. What's so special about crashing a nuclear bomb into the ground? I mean, they do carry out underground tests, don't they?
Someone responded to my above comment and changed the article to say:
"The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful explosive device ever constructed by humans, and its test is the largest detonation ever. Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."
The wording is fine and mathematically correct assuming the burn time was 3.9×10^-8 sec (thanks for making the revision). However there still stands the question of whether or not the average power of a fusion weapon scales with size. Obviously the energy released by the weapon will scale with size. However it is quite possible that a much smaller nuclear explosion would create greater average power. In order to reduce fallout, the Tsar Bomba used a lead jacket as a tamp rather than the usual U-238 tamp. A weapon with a U-238 tamp probably had a greater average power level (the tamp would have been exothermic rather than endothermic). The question boils down to burn time for a given yield.
A question for nuke experts out there: What's the burn time and yield for a modern state-of-the-art thermonuclear weapon?
Egg plant 19:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Most photos of the Tsar Bomba explosion I've seen are visible in the discovery Channel video including two from this article. raptor 02:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hyppothetically if such a bomb i.e 60-100 MT were to be detonated over the United States, as in a Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario what kind of casualties could be expected?
I was testing out some of my Russian today (playing with http://multitran.ru/ and putting in things like "nuclear weapon test" and seeing what that would call up in Google), and found a number of places on the web where Russian websites referred to the Tsar Bomba as "Кузькина мать" -- Kuzka's mother? I don't know what this means, but perhaps someone with better Russian can ferret out whether this is what the Russians call(ed) this bomb. -- Fastfission 03:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I know the German DVD of Trinity and Beyond. But it shows only a short flash of lightning, no mushroom cloud or something like that. Does the US-Version contain more material? However, they also mixed up video clips from Castle Bravo with clips from another Bravo shot (maybe Romeo).', so it wouldn't be a big surprise if the US version used US test videos to illustrate the Tsar shot.-- SiriusB 12:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I am russian and Царь means king.
Just out of curiousity, in the phrase from the intro section "Developed by the Soviet Union, the ~50 megaton bomb was codenamed Ivan", would it be advantageous to replace the "~" with a "≈" - a double-tilde? I see that, according to the ~ article, the ~ is fine in English usage as the ≈ isn't usually available, but on Wikipedia, it is available. Might it look a bit more formal to use the ≈? -- T. S. Rice 08:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
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![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Why so far north? Why not in Semipalatinsk Test Site?
This page, "Tsar Bomba" says about Hiroshima:
"If detonated at full yield, the force of this bomb would have been approximately 6,500 times the 15-16 kiloton bomb detonated at Hiroshima."
But the "Kiloton" wikipedia, which points to this page, says:
"The Little Boy weapon dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of approximately 13 kilotons. Thus, a megaton is equivalent to roughly 77 Hiroshima bombs."
Could the authors discuss this and resolve the difference? The person who wrote 13 kilotons may have knowledge no one else on the web seems to.
Does anyone happen to have some image or video material of this bomb, or does anyone know if such material exists?
"Tsar Bomba [...] was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated."
Was or is still the largest? That should be clarified.
It is ridiculously unlikely that anyone will set off a nuclear explosive larger than the Tsar Bomba anytime in the foreseeable future. I don't think it needs to "as of 2005" categorization in there, which implies that this designation is likely to change anytime soon. If someone sets off a +50MT explosive (a weapon larger than any warheads kept by any of the declared nuclear powers and of extremely limited military and political value in today's geopolitical climate), I will personally update the page if I, or Wikipedia, am still around. ;-) In most cases I think the policy would make sense, but in ones which are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon (or if they did, it would be a tremendous and massive world event), I don't think it is necessary to stick with if it makes the entry look awkward. -- Fastfission 05:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If you stand that we don't understand the nature of nuclear testing, then I must say that you don't understand a principial difference between the wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia. The printed one has a natural timestamp: the date of print. And when Encyclopedia Britannica (1911) says that Sir Brillinghat caught the largest fish ever in history, I understand that it could be quite possible that in year 1956 Abu Farhun ibn Gurqamzai could have caught an even bigger fish. Wikipedia does not have this natural time reference, and exactly for this reason the rule is established to keep statements independent of the current moment. And I see nothing outrageous in your proposal about tsunami. Thanks for the hint, I will go and edit it accordingly. Mikkalai 20:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As for "flooded", please allow me to be sceptical. The most recent example. The articles about the history of the Soviet Union are an arena of heated editing. Nevertheless, until yesterday not a single one said anything about the moment of the declaration of the state. What is more, the main article contained a ridiculous date of July 4 1924 (or something), and no one flooded to fix it. And the examples abound. Soon there will be half million articles. But the number of non-occasional editors hardly exceeds several thousand. (I am not sure; may be I am too pessymistic; I will recheck). Mikkalai 20:40, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, count me convinced. Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, there is a remote possibility that a relatively large asteroid will be detected on an Earth-crossing orbit. We cannot rule out existence of such objects. In worst case, we may have only something like 1 month left before impact. It's possible that governments wouldn't want to take any chances and will launch several 100+MT nuclear tipped missiles in order to destroy/deflect the thing. Yes, not very likely to happen, but is not impossible.
Pointless, anyway. There is no blast in a vacuum - just a dirty big (silent) flash. You just give the asteroid a suntan on one side and don't deflect it one inch :-)(ChrisR UK 12Aug05)
Well, "Tsar Bomba was designed and constructed in only 14 weeks" and "bomb itself weighed 27 tonnes". I think if we (I am from former SU, thus... :) could make it in 14 weeks just because Nikitka wanted it, I'm sure it can be done again, especially if in dire need. Present-day Delta IV Heavy lifts 25 tons to LEO. On-orbit docking of ~25 ton,~100MT warhead and boost stage gives you an asteroid buster. Unlikely? Yes. Impossible? No, I don't think so. -- Denis Vlasenko
100Mt surface blast may fail to fracture nickel-iron asteroid, and unlikely to fracture asteroid of any composition if it is large enough (like ~70 km diameter Chiron). However, blast is going to evaporate a huge amount of material and expel it with speed of tens of km/s in space. This will alter orbit of the object.
--An asteroid 70 km in diameter falls to earth with the force of approximately 2000 MEGATONS. One hundred megatons does not make a difference. It's a simple calculation, my astronomy professor completed it in class. He also illuminated what would happen in an "Armageddon" type situation, where humans drill a hole in an asteroid and pump hundreds of megatons worth of explosives. The asteroid explodes, but its gravity forces it back together. It basically just eats up the explosion and re-accreates into the same object. Sad but true. We don't have to worry about it though, they only happen once every 100 mil years or so. On the hundred year scale, we only have to worry about 40m objects, which can act like a humongous nuclear bomb. Mikkalai should know about this, one fell on Siberia sometime at the beginning of the twentieth century. Leveled a whole forest. Moo.
Rather than speculative "if", I would like to see the actual comparison. There is no limit for "if"s. What if they have made it 200Mt?, etc. This is good for a newspaper, but not for encyclopedia about the particular instance of a device. I am prepared to delete this phrase, especially the second half. No one knows what qualitative effects would have kicked in after duplicating the yield. And by the way, what was learned from the blast besides "it was visible 1000 km away"? Mikkalai 02:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
http://www.vce.com/tsar.html, which is the souce of the statement, is full of incorrect details, and therefore lacks credibility. The phrase removed.
The following phrase contradicts recent Russian sources.
Mikkalai 07:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If it'll make everyone happy, I'll look into what the scholarly sources (Holloway) say about this. I'm under the general impression that the above line is the common understanding though. Replacing the tamper with the non-fissile lead would have cut down on the yield quite dramatically, and most of the "dirty" aspects of hydrogen weapons come from their final fission stage (the natural uranium tamper). Most sources say that Sakharov said it was designed to have been at least 100MT at full yield (though yields are apparently often not something which can be realiably predicted ahead of time when you start getting into such complicated reactions as a multi-multi-multi stage weapon like this would require). I'm fairly sure that Kuran's Trinity and Beyond says this as well, but that's not much of a scholarly source (though he obviously consulted some degree of literature on it). Impractical for war; primarily a political symbol. I'm fairly sure little was learned from the blast -- it was not an experiment, it was a symbol: "Look what we can do." As a technical trick it is only impressive to a certain degree -- it was just a scaling up of what could already be done with thermonuclear weapons by the late 1950s. The real question is why to make them that big, and the answer (Soviet politics) is fairly localized. At least, that's how it is depicted in English-language sources, though they are often notoriously off in terms of the Soviet nuclear program (the only one I trust almost unconditionally is Kojevnikov because his Russian is the best and he is notoriously suspicious of simple explanations).
Which recent Russian sources are you referring to?-- Fastfission 23:44, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So here's the second Google hit, then: [7]. It lists the following reference for that specific bit of trivia: Thomas Reed and Arnold Kramish. 1996. Trinity at Dubna, Physics Today, November 1996, pg. 30-35. Bryan 07:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I appreciate your diligence in proving your point. Nevertheless I have to disagree. For an industry to be disrupted it must exist in the first place. The person who produced this funny trivia had no idea how Soviet lingerie in 1960s looked like. Silk and nylon stockings were considered luxury, and their production was negligible, since in Soviet Union the production decisions were not made by market, but by state planners that controlled state-owned plants. Nylon stockings were considered waste of country's efforts. Moreover, only naive person can think that parachute nylon is of the same quality as the one used in stockings. This was a totally separate industry, and always under good care, being of military purpose. It is well-known now that a significant amount of military production was carried out in a disguised way at civil enterprises, so in a sense parachute industry could have disrupted Soviet hosiery indeed, but this was the whole state policy, rather than an occasional glitch. Mikkalai 16:20, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I finaly found out what material was used for parachutes in Soviet Union at these times. It was acetate rayon and percale. Removing this nylon bullshit, probably invented by some paparazzi. Mikkalai 00:26, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I have no knowledge of the veracity of the claim, but maybe we can make everybody happy if we change the line to:
?? - Fastfission 22:22, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ehm, don't forget that USSR boasted some of the most developed (and numerous) airborne troops on this planet. With all the parachutes made for the VDV and others, an additional one for the bomb would make no difference whatsoever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.137.194.104 ( talk • contribs)
Directly relevant. Necessary for google search, to verify info etc. Who knows when individual articles will be created Mikkalai 05:10, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Over what period of time is this "entire power output of the Sun" measured? Ground 22:26, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
"Since 50 Mt is 2.1x1017 Joules, the power produced during the explosion was around 5.3x1024 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This represents a power just greater than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (386 yottawatts)."
Should it not be the total energy output of the sun reaching the earth? Otherwise it seems to me to be a gross exaggeration No matter the answer, it should be elaborated in a way so that it will not be misinterpreted by physics illiterates(like me!) If I read the numbers below correctly you would need roughly two billion Tsar Bombas and not close to a hundred, to emulate the suns energy output for a second!
Energy Output Of The Sun In One Second
Value In Joules: 385 septillion (3.85 x 10e26) Value In Megatons: 92.1 billion (92.1 x 10e10)
"Tsar Bomba" Nuclear Bomb Value In Joules: 209 quadrillion (2.09 x 10e17) Value In Megatons: 50 (5.00 x 10e2) Source: http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/Trunko/energy.html
1 megaton = 4.2 X 10e15 joules 50 megaton = 2.1 X 10e17 joules The Suns output pr. sec. 3.9 X 10e26 joules Thus you need around 1857142800 Tsar Bombas exploding at the same time and not a hundred to compete with the sun for a second.
Please correct my errors or if I am right correct the wikipedia.
I was wrong. The entire fission-fussion proces takes place in ca. 0.000002 sec. creating an entire different value for watts. But It still think it should be ellaborated so as not to cause misunderstanding. Johan "Apollo" Bressendorff(Denmark) Pietas 22:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The "1% power output" calculation seems to be correct in my opinion. An interesting aspect in this, is to compare the volume needed in the sun to generate that power with that of the Tsar Bomba. Sun has fusion taking place in a sphere of 20% of it's diameter. The processes in the bomb take place in a region of several meters. Thus the power density must be many times greater in the bomb, than in nature.
I doubt this was just for propaganda they probably intended these to be used as real weapons. If they wanted to do propaganda they would just dentonate a smaller bomb and make it look bigger Dudtz 7/21/05 1:20 PM EST
It wouldn't be easy to detect, at lest back then when the bomb was detonated there were no radiation detecting satellites. There wasn't much of any other detecting equipment back then It's not that impractical just wheel it into the back of a cargo plane and drop it out the back door when you're redy. Dudtz July 25th 2005 3:28 PM EST
Article has no info on aftermath. Is there a crater? How big is it? Damage to arctic wildlife? etc... -- Denis Vlasenko
I've found some info at http://www.bilderberg.org/hbomb.htm:
Some time after the explosion, photographs were taken of ground zero. “The ground surface of the island has been levelled, swept and licked so that it looks like a skating rink,” a witness reported. “The same goes for rocks. The snow has melted and their sides and edges are shiny. There is not a trace of unevenness in the ground.... Everything in this area has been swept clean, scoured, melted and blown away.”
This article seems quite comprehensive. How about a FA nomination? - Fredrik | talk 11:53, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic, Halloween 2005. As is often the case in Wikipedia, the prose of this entry could use a good deal of polish, which I have supplied. This topic fascinates me because I can still recall the gloomy fall morning when I came to the breakfast table and saw the screaming headlines in the morning paper about a 100 megaton Russian test in Nova Zemlya. I was 9 at the time. Only a fortnight ago did I discover that that test had been an airdrop, that the Bomba had been designed to minimize fallout, and that its weight and size rendered it hopelessly impractical. I have added a link pointing out that the USA built and deployed a similar weapon in those days.
I have not found one sentence discussing the possible impact on Nova Zemlya wildlife. My atlas also reveals 3-4 tiny settlements along the southern part of that island. Did they exist in 1961? If so were the inhabitants evacuated? Warned in any way?
Concerned Cynic, Halloween. I hasten to correct what I wrote above. The massive USA warhead that "rivaled" the Bomba was the B41, rated at about 25 Mt. Its production began in 1958. The Mark-17 was the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon. Its dimensions were on the same scale as the Tsar Bomba, 7.5 m long, 1.5 m in diameter, 19 metric tons in weight. The only way of delivering the Mark-17 was by a specially modified B-36, the largest warplane ever built. My thrust should be clear. The Tsar Bomba was not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a culture of "Doomsday" weapons, pursued willy-nilly even though they required a massive size that rendered them barely barely deliverable.
Concerned Cynic. A Soviet show bomb was a quick and cheap way to counter much of the deterrent effect of American deployed bombs. And I do suspect that the Mark-17 and B41 had yields about as high as were practical at the time. As for the Doomsday culture, I refer all readers to Dr Strangelove. Sometimes art transcends engineering...
This user is doing a great many edits on this page and I am not sure that he/she is improving it. I have left a message on the user page of this editor and I have yet to recive an answer. Would you rather answer here? DV8 2XL 22:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic. I am the one who has made many recent changes to this article. For reasons beyond my
control, I sign on using several names.
This is the only Wikipedia article I've worked on that has led to any controversy. Apparently, I am not the amateur Cold War military historian out there!
I've heavily edited this article because while the facts fascinate me and I remember the 1961 screaming headlines about a "100 megaton test", the sentences often did not read smoothly, the ordering of facts made my mind stumble, there were repetitions and inconsistencies. Such flaws are not
uncommon in other Wikipedia articles on recent military history and technology.
I created the section "Critique" and contributed much of its content. I have no training in nuclear weapons. Rather, I was a precocious teenager during the 1960s, who underwent civil defense training, and who read everything that came my way about such weapons. Later I learned why : war is too important to be delegated to mere generals!
Exposition and organisation are matters of taste, and all of you out there are free to undo what I've done. Those of you more expert than I am are welcome to correct and add to the facts. But I insist on a matter of historical interpretation: the Tsar Bomba was not just one more instance of Soviet "military brutality" or "inhumanity". It is not the USSR that broke new ground here, but the USA. Human civilisation turned a corner when the USA tested the Teller-Ulam (1954 Castle Bravo series) design, then manufactured 200 Mark-17s implementing that design and put them in the bellies of B-36s, all in a matter of months. The Soviets almost surely knew the outlines, if not the details, of the Mark 17 and B41 bombs when the Tsar Bomba was built. Krushchev wanted to show the Americans (and the world) that he could "match and raise". That the yield of the Tsar Bomba was twice that of the B41, and could be raised to four times, is a distinction without a difference. It is also essential to understand why such Doomsday weapons are now obsolete. Power is knowledge. Or as I read decades ago "if a cruise missile could fly down a Kremlin chimney with a fair chance of success, no need for nukes." Improved delivery technology may eventually make all weapons of mass destruction obsolete.
Concerned Cynic: It would be nice if my mind worked in the way you think it should... I really do not think that the article is in its current incarnation, is 'locked.' For the record, everything containing 'Concerned Cynic' is authored by the same.
-- Craig ( t| c) 22:30, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Concerned Cynic: That assumes a hard operational distinction between "fact" and "interpretation."
Concerned Cynic: Not just casing size, but also weight and yield.
Much of the discussion above is stimulating and well-written. I either agree with, or am not competent to challenge, many of the points raised. I would be nice if an Arzamas veteran were to go over the article closely.
Concerned Cynic: There's been too much talk about procedure and not enough about content.
Concerned Cynic: one can always hope.
The rules of Wikipedia are not an option. You are expected to adhere them just like everyone else. Making a statement to the effect that you will not is grounds for suspension. Sign your comments please and tag your edits. DV8 2XL 04:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
Does Tsar Bomba mean "Tsar of the bombs" or "bomb of the Tsar(s)"?
Would that video really be copyvio? I thought things created before 1973 in the USSR were in the public domain in most countries, per {{ PD-USSR}}? (Did the Soviet government claim copyright on official produced materials?) -- Fastfission 18:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful device ever utilized by humans, as pointed out in the article. User Yooden modified that statement to read most "powerful explosive ever" [9] and then reverted my later removal of that modifier. While the fact that it is the most powerful explosive ever detonated is strictly true, the wider definiton of most powerful device overall is more accurate and useful/interesting to the reader. Also, it appears that Yooden's remark in his edit that "the computer is more powerful" I think demonstrates a gross misconception of the concept of power being talked about here. Measures of computer power and literal physical power are two entirely different phenomena. -- Deglr6328 22:48, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
-- Yooden
How ludicrously silly this whole thing is.
Here we shall take a vote then (either oppose or support) on whether we should consider the term power, as used in this science related article as having any reasonable likelyhood of being confused with power (computers), power (communication), power (mathematics), political power, macial powers, power (legal jurisdiction) or power (basketweaving).-- Deglr6328 07:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
I enjoy Dr. Strangelove as much as the next guy, but I don't think it is a reputable source for the Cold War military mentality which may be related to the development of the Tsar Bomba. In fact I think it has very little to do with the Tsar Bomba at all — it is a comedy about Mutual Assured Destruction and military paranoia in the United States. I don't think it has much to do with a show bomb developed by the Soviet Union and referring to it as a source to look at for further information about the "culture and mindset" which led to the creation of the Tsar Bomba is unhelpful, incorrect, juvenile, and fairly POV (Strangelove is a decidedly anti-military film, one determined to portray to arms race in a completely ridicuous light; I happen to agree with much of the POV but it is still a very strong POV). I don't think including a line in the "Origins" section of this page is at all called for. --22:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Umm, lasers can be quite 'powerfull' as their energy output is often condensed into very small time frames. Maybe someone should look into this? -- John
In Peter Kuran's "Trinity and Beyond (The Atomic Bomb Movie)", this bomb is referred to as "The Monster Bomb". There is nothing in the article about this alias. -- Oblivious 23:11, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
A user added the following note to my talk page, though it really probably belongs here. -- Fastfission 17:04, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
The "Tsar Bomba" is the centerpiece of a new novel about nuclear terrorism, "King of Bombs." The novel's premise is that Al-Qaeda seeks to replicate a duplicate of the Tsar Bomba device, tested by the Soviet Union in 1961, with fusion tampers installed. With the help of Iran, North Korea, the nuclear weapons black market and a former worker at the Arzamas-16 nuclear weapons research facility, Al-Qaeda is determined to fabricate a device that will inflict apocalyptic devastation on the United States. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.161.53.216 ( talk • contribs) on 19:37, 29 December 2005
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/10/north_koreairan_cooperation_sh.php
Yes, rogue states never cooperate, except that they do. Thanks for your pointless comment, Nil Einne.
When I first read the following, I couldn't believe it:
"Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10^-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."
I then did the calculation myself and found it to be correct!
However I have a small quarrel with how the information was presented. The comparison should NOT be between a 39 nanosecond quantity of solar energy versus the Tsar Bomba's. It should rather be a comparison of instantaneous power. The Solar Constant is 1.37 kw/m^2. Construct a control surface of 1 AU radius around the Sun. 1 AU = 1.49598x10^11 m. The surface area of the control surface is 4 * Pi * [1.49598x10^11]^2 = 2.812298x10^23 m^2. The total power of the sun is 3.852849x10^26 watts. A megaton is 4.187x10^15 joules. For 50 megatons (50 Mt) at 3.9x10-8 sec, the average power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 5.3679x10^24 watts. The instantaneous power of the Tsar Bomba while burning its nuclear fuel was 1.39% of the Sun!! However, it's inappropriate to compare the Sun's energy against the Tsar Bomba because the Sun is producing energy continuously while the Tsar Bomba only produced energy for 39 nanoseconds, e.g. over a one second period the Sun produced 1.8 billion times the amount of energy produced by the Tsar Bomba. This number is closer to intuition since we and our technology are nothing compared to the Sun.
The 1.39% power rating raises an interesting question. Thermonuclear weapons supposably burn like a match, i.e. the radiation from the fission trigger pre-compresses the thermonuclear fuel in the secondary section while a detonation wave propagates down the length of the secondary section starting from the fission trigger. My intuition tells me that a 25 Mt explosion would have burned for only 1.95x10-8 sec. Is this true? Where did the 39 nanosecond burntime number for the Tsar Bomba come from? Does the burn time scale linearly with weapon yield? At some point the linearity should breakdown, e.g. if the secondary section is too long then it doesn't pre-compress properly or if it's too short, it doesn't have time to pre-compress before the detonation wave passes through. Any nuke experts out there with clues about this?
BTW, it was a marvellous article!
Egg plant 04:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
When describing the test, the author states that "Failing such retardation, the bomb would have either reached its planned detonation altitude soon enough to turn the test into a suicide mission, or crashed into the ground at high speed, with unpredictable results"
Could someone elaborate on the "unpredictable" bit? My physics education stopped at GCE A-levels. What's so special about crashing a nuclear bomb into the ground? I mean, they do carry out underground tests, don't they?
Someone responded to my above comment and changed the article to say:
"The Tsar Bomba is the most powerful explosive device ever constructed by humans, and its test is the largest detonation ever. Since 50 Mt is 2.1×10^17 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 3.9×10-8 seconds or 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.3×10^24 watts or 5.3 yottawatts. This constitutes over 1% of the power output of the Sun (383 yottawatts) over the same time interval."
The wording is fine and mathematically correct assuming the burn time was 3.9×10^-8 sec (thanks for making the revision). However there still stands the question of whether or not the average power of a fusion weapon scales with size. Obviously the energy released by the weapon will scale with size. However it is quite possible that a much smaller nuclear explosion would create greater average power. In order to reduce fallout, the Tsar Bomba used a lead jacket as a tamp rather than the usual U-238 tamp. A weapon with a U-238 tamp probably had a greater average power level (the tamp would have been exothermic rather than endothermic). The question boils down to burn time for a given yield.
A question for nuke experts out there: What's the burn time and yield for a modern state-of-the-art thermonuclear weapon?
Egg plant 19:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Most photos of the Tsar Bomba explosion I've seen are visible in the discovery Channel video including two from this article. raptor 02:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Hyppothetically if such a bomb i.e 60-100 MT were to be detonated over the United States, as in a Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenario what kind of casualties could be expected?
I was testing out some of my Russian today (playing with http://multitran.ru/ and putting in things like "nuclear weapon test" and seeing what that would call up in Google), and found a number of places on the web where Russian websites referred to the Tsar Bomba as "Кузькина мать" -- Kuzka's mother? I don't know what this means, but perhaps someone with better Russian can ferret out whether this is what the Russians call(ed) this bomb. -- Fastfission 03:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I know the German DVD of Trinity and Beyond. But it shows only a short flash of lightning, no mushroom cloud or something like that. Does the US-Version contain more material? However, they also mixed up video clips from Castle Bravo with clips from another Bravo shot (maybe Romeo).', so it wouldn't be a big surprise if the US version used US test videos to illustrate the Tsar shot.-- SiriusB 12:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I am russian and Царь means king.
Just out of curiousity, in the phrase from the intro section "Developed by the Soviet Union, the ~50 megaton bomb was codenamed Ivan", would it be advantageous to replace the "~" with a "≈" - a double-tilde? I see that, according to the ~ article, the ~ is fine in English usage as the ≈ isn't usually available, but on Wikipedia, it is available. Might it look a bit more formal to use the ≈? -- T. S. Rice 08:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
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