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It's ammonium nitrate fertilizer - - hopped up by mixing it with a little aluminum powder
This guy loaded up his old rider lawn mower with it and shot it from only 43 feet away, see what happened . . .
I am seeing other analyses that put the size of the explosion at about one tenth of this size. The analysis in this Twitter thread correlates the observed degree of damage with the distance from the explosion. It comes up with an estimated 240 tons TNT-equivalent, though naturally this comes with a considerable margin of error. https://twitter.com/GeorgeWHerbert/status/129071971954515968... This Twitter thread is mak…
So I imagine the yield of the Beirut explosion could be calculated the same way from the video.
I am seeing other analyses that put the size of the explosion at about one tenth of this size. The analysis in this Twitter thread correlates the observed degree of damage with the distance from the explosion. It comes up with an estimated 240 tons TNT-equivalent, though naturally this comes with a considerable margin of error. https://twitter.com/GeorgeWHerbert/status/129071971954515968... This Twitter thread is mak…
My fluid mechanics prof told the class that a scientist in the 1940's published the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Since this was top secret, he got investigated. But he showed how the yield could be calculated from the film of the explosion - how fast the blast radius expanded. So I imagine the yield of the Beirut explosion could be calculated the same way from the video.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ship you can see in the bottom left of the Yamato's explosion (link [2]) is a Japanese destroyer. I'm not sure which ship it is specifically, but she is likely 100-130 meters in length (those were the only ones around at the time Yamato sank). And she's closer than the actual cloud.
On that note, I wonder how the ships / watercraft in the area handled it. Overturned/sunk/? :(
To give a sense of scale, the USS Washington firing on the IJN Kirishima in the Second Battle of Guadalcanal is reckoned as one of the shortest-range engagements in WWII... at about 5km.
That said, the remaining ships in the area were the surviving Japanese destroyers, and destroyers closing in closer to ships would not be unusual. Furthermore, the Yamato was in the process of abandoning ship at this point, and the destroyers may have been closing in to help fight fires or rescue survivors. I doubt they'd be closer than about a km from the ship at the time of the explosion, and none of the Japanese ships (so far as I'm aware) reported any effect from the explosion. Some planes (up to 7) were lost in the fireball, though.
I am seeing other analyses that put the size of the explosion at about one tenth of this size. The analysis in this Twitter thread correlates the observed degree of damage with the distance from the explosion. It comes up with an estimated 240 tons TNT-equivalent, though naturally this comes with a considerable margin of error. https://twitter.com/GeorgeWHerbert/status/129071971954515968... This Twitter thread is mak…
My fluid mechanics prof told the class that a scientist in the 1940's published the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Since this was top secret, he got investigated. But he showed how the yield could be calculated from the film of the explosion - how fast the blast radius expanded. So I imagine the yield of the Beirut explosion could be calculated the same way from the video.
Note that the distinctive orange color is probably a large volume of nitrogen dioxide at pretty high concentration. If it was an ammonium nitrate explosion, the orange cloud supports the idea it was accidental. The explosion would have been easier to set off and more powerful had there been a fuel (or more fuel) mixed with the ammonium nitrate.