[FirstClassSkeptic]

Many nuclear blasts are shown as being yellowish in color.

Here is a popular 'nuke' picture which appears all over the net:


Here is a picture of the Grable test, another popular picture:


The problem is, yellow indicates a relatively low temperature combustion of a hydrocarbon, while nuclear blasts are claimed to reach temperatures of 6000 C.

Compare the above nuclear blasts with napalm:





http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/napalm.htm

See also [account of photo of girl in Vietnam War]:
http://www.bushair.co.za/fly-in2006.htm

[FirstClassSkeptic]

What is causing the smoke in the Grable test picture above?

Black smoke or soot is usually the result of an incomplete combustion of carbon, or hydrocarbon. Example: candle burning, smoke from a diesel truck, smoke from an acetylene flame.

The Grable test shown was supposed to have taken place in the air, above a desert. What exactly would be burning to create a black smoke?

I think the answer is that the Grable test is really napalm burning.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

What is the flame test colors for uranium and plutonium?

For uranium, I found this:

With a borax bead test in the oxidizing flame, the bead is yellow to brownish red color while hot and is colorless to yellow when cold. This test is very similar to iron.

The Na2(NH4)(PO4) bead test for uranium is a much better test, under oxidizing conditions the bead is clear yellow (hot) yielding slightly greenish yellow on cooling. In the reducing flame, it becomes a fine green color when hot or cold.

http://www.sciencelab.com/data/elements/U.shtml

Assuming that the heat from a nuclear reaction would be equivalent in its effects to a flame test, you might expect a nuclear reaction of uranium to give a yellow color, which does match the pictures of nukes. But you might also expect to see a brownish red, or a green color, which I have never seen. Have you?

[rerevisionist]

A flame test isn't the same as a borax bead test.

A flame test - sample is held in a flame, eg bunsen burner. Copper for example gives green; barium a different shade of green; sodium yellow (as in sodium street lamps).

A borax bead is a bit of borax, plus the sample, heated by a blowpipe on a charcoal block, then left to cool; it gives a little glassy cloudy bead. Uranium gives a yellowish green - as you've seen in sme uranium glass objects. The tests aren't quite the same. In any case U238 is supposed to undergo fission, splitting into other elements of about half its atomic mass, so a flame test would result in quite a mixture of wavelengths of light. Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone comment on a spectroscopic analysis of an atom bomb, although surely this would be a good way to see what elements were present in such an explosion.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

Come to think of it, I've never seen anyone comment on a spectroscopic analysis of an atom bomb, although surely this would be a good way to see what elements were present in such an explosion.

Aha!!. I must be receiving your brain waves from across the Atlantic. Just within the last hour, the thought came to me: Has anyone done a spectrographic analysis of an atomic blast?

I did a google search for "spectrographic analysis atomic blast" and didn't find much.

There was spectrographic analysis of the uranium used:

In 1942 she went into the Wacs and worked
on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, NM.. Aunt Myrtle was
responsible for the spectrographic analysis of the uranium to
be used in the atomic bomb. Hers was a quality control job
she had to assure the purity of the U238 that they were
using. From the deserts of New Mexico she gave me, at
varying times, a swedish hunting knife that she had found, a
Harrington and Richardson target 22 caliber pistol, and a
fine pair of english riding boots that were too small for me.
She attained the rank of Captain, and no one in the family
had any idea what she was doing in New Mexico, more on this
later.
After the Second World War she sent my dad a sample of
fused earth from the first atomic bomb blast. It was mounted
on a stainless steel pedestal, with a brass plaque denoting
what it was and had a glass dome to encase it. It was
specimen number 58. A short time later it was recalled to be
resealed in a solid plastic paper weight. It no longer had
the brass plaque, but the brass number 58 is imbedded in the
bottom of the weight. The reason it was recalled was the
danger of radiation exposure.

http://www.oocities.org/rdbachiler/Bachiler_14.html

Kenneth Bainbridge, who was in charge of the Trinity test, seemed to have some specialty, or interest, at least, in spectrographic analysis of some sort.

http://books.google.com/books?id=ngsAAA ... st&f=false

An account of trinity test:
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/atomic/trin ... inity.html

The TR-5 Group, responsible for spectrographic and photographic measurements

So there was a group there at the Trinity Test supposed to have done a spectrographic measurement.

The Bausch & Lomb spectrograph and the movie camera with filters were on low

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17428130/Trin ... Bainbridge
http://library.lanl.gov/la-pubs/00317133.pdf

I wonder what became of their spectrograph results?

May 1975, page 46, Bainbridge describes the fire ball at Trinity:

Finally, I could remove the goggles and watch the ball of fire rise rapidly. It was surrounded by a huge cloud of transparent purplish air...

http://books.google.com/books?id=dQsAAA ... ph&f=false

[FirstClassSkeptic]

A borax bead is a bit of borax, plus the sample, heated by a blowpipe, then left to cool; it gives a little glassy bead. Uranium gives a yellowish green - as you've seen in sme uranium glass objects.

Thanks. I didn't know that.

So what color should the glass be that was supposedly formed at the Trinity test by the heat of the bomb? Wouldn't that be a sort of borax bead test?

[rerevisionist]

Thanks for all the links. I found another one for the Bainbridge book, which is downloadable without having to sign in at lbrary.lanl.gov (there's an oddity - it says Los Alamos is an equal opportunities employer etc! Someone's been editing!)

The desert glass thing doesn't sound credible to me - if it happened, there'd no doubt be a symmetrical area, which doesn't seem to be the case. But there is a mineral, lechatelierite, named no doubt after Le Chatelier, a glassy desert thing found near craters and believed to have been formed either by metorite strikes or lightning. So I think someone just found a deposit of this stuff. I'd expect a competent geologist would know about it, though it is anomalous non-crystalline stuff. For that matter, I'd guess anyone could make some of it with a blowtorch or acetylene burner. Maybe the samples were recalled because they weren't realistic!

The borax test relies on there being quite a lot of the substance, enough to melt into and colour it. With the usual beliefs of nuclear explosions, I can't believe there'd be enough to give a definite colour. I'd guess it's just one of these little stories that tend to accumulate.

[Ooh I've just had a scam phone call from India with my CSID]

[mooninquirer]

Excellent point about the color of supposed nuke bombs. If any explosion is to occur, it is necessarily true that it be of EXTREME heat ---- and this includes the secondary fissioning in mid air. The supposed secondary fissioning in mid air is necessary in order for nuke bombs to have the claimed blast power far greater than conventional bombs. { see this lecture, at the end ---- type into youtube : UC BERKELEY PHYSICS NUKES .

What would be required is that the uranium or plutonium would VAPORIZE, and that means it would be much hotter than molten metal, which is yellow-white.

All of these yellow explosions could easily have just been conventional explosions.

Check out this photo of a known conventional explosion in Libya, that has a mushroom cloud, and could very easily pass for a nuclear explosion --- indeed, it looks more typically like a nuclear explosion than some photos that are claimed to be of a nuke explosion, such as operation hardtack.

Look for this photo under "Libya," in the "Current Events" section of this site.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/ ... 8C-010.jpg

1.6Mb file.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq -- A ball of fire erupts as more than 18,000 pounds of munitions are destroyed by explosive ordnance disposal Airmen from the 506th Civil Engineer Squadron here. Munitions were found throughout the Kirkuk region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Adrian Cadiz)

http://www.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.a ... 5&page=125

[FirstClassSkeptic]

This picture in the Daily mail today caught my attention;



Caption:

Battle: Rebel fighters take part in training as Gaddafi stepped up his bombardment of cities under rebel control

It goes with this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... efire.html

[claypool1]

The color of flames is not only derived from the combustion of a hydrocarbon, it is also a factor of the energy released in a reaction. A nuclear fission reaction is a very exothermic reaction, in fact, the color of stars is the result of the temperature of the nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium. Example: Blue stars are an excess of 30,000 K, while a cooler orange/yellow star is around 6000 K, these temps match the description of a device creating 6000+ degrees C and as we all know there is no combustion of a hydrocarbon in stars. The soot or smoke as some have called it is actually the sand from the desert floor being swept up due to the intense vacuum created upon a release of energy of the magnitude of a nuclear device.

[rerevisionist]

There are one or two problems with what you say - for example, the absence of melted sand, and the absence of fall out of spicules or possibly droplets of condensed silicon or silica. Moreover there's a problem with 'temperature', since the temperature on the surface of a star is not the same as the temperature of a nuclear reaction. Also you don't seem to address the issue of the black smoke, not something associated with stars.

I'd be interested if you'd provide some autobiographical details, as your comments seem too naive to be from a full-time offical troll!