Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too! distance = 1,116.44 feet/second * 12 seconds = 13,397.28 feet
Significant figures, you have too many of them.
13,397 feet
Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
111–118 of 118 posts
Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#112Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear testing did change the levels of C14 significantly [1]. Carbon dating is impossible for dates after the '50s, when large amounts of nuclear testing started. [1] http://www.sciencecourseware.org/VirtualDating/files/RC_3.ht...
OK, but in my understanding, C14 dating was not really used to date anything recent in the first place. Usually it's used to date old items, monuments, bones, etc... So, what's your point exactly ?
I think the suggestion is C14 dating would be useful to date recent events (perhaps in accidents or crime scenes) were nuclear tests not so common in the 50s. Humanity lost a useful tool (dating recent events) so that we could develop more devastating nuclear weapons a bit quicker than we otherwise would have.
Phrased like that it sounds a shame, but I have no idea if this is true or not. My understanding of C14 dating is that it relys on the half-life of C14 being predictable. But my understanding of radioactive decay is that it is not perfectly deterministic. This suggests to me that you might need a bit of time for the radioactive decay to trend to its expected average rate.
Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
13,397 feet
14,000 feet. Sorry to nitpick! You go with the min of the sigfigs in the expression, which here is 2 = sigfigs(12) < sigfigs(13,397.28) = 7
Ha, don't worry about it.
I was thinking it was the significant digits after the decimal. It's always been my weakness calculation-wise.
How about 14E3 feet? :P
Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
14,000 feet. Sorry to nitpick! You go with the min of the sigfigs in the expression, which here is 2 = sigfigs(12) < sigfigs(13,397.28) = 7
Ha, don't worry about it. I was thinking it was the significant digits after the decimal. It's always been my weakness calculation-wise. How about 14E3 feet? :P
much better!
Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
risk analysis: low likelihood x unacceptable impact is still an unacceptable risk. anyhoo, I won't be satisfied with "dismantling the whole nuclear arsenal of the USA" : I want total global elimination. perhaps we can begin by agreeing that ending the development of new nuclear weapons should not represent a huge allocation of resources. In fact, that kind of no-cost leadership by example could be the most important…
You can't really use unacceptable impact in risk analysis, it is too subjective. In my opinion illegal fire arms have a (high likelihood * unacceptable impact) risk. Would this risk be greater than the (low likelihood * unacceptable impact)? Yes, no-new-nukes would be a major step forward. Unfortunately it seems that the Cold War is still on, with the USA building missile defense systems in the eastern Europe and the…
when comparing unacceptable impacts, we might try: http://mapw.org.au/download/nuclear-famine-findings
'Nuclear Famine: A Billion People at Risk − Global Impacts of Limited Nuclear War on Agriculture, Food Supplies, and Human Nutrition', from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, describes how A nuclear war using as few as 100 weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that the lives of more than a billion people would be at risk.
Re: Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Fukushima accident demonstrates nothing at all about the use of nuclear weapons. High yield thermonuclear weapons detonated above ground turn large quantities of soil and dust radioactive and throw it up into the atmosphere. Nothing in any way comparable to this happened at Fukushima. It is instructive that the US, UK and USSR were able to agree, at the height of the Cold War (this was less than a year after the…
You seem to keep thinking I'm talking about the real effects, when I'm talking about perception. The perception is flawed. No amount of pointing out that the dangers are non-zero will change the fact that the dangers are generally badly overstated; you need to show that fallout really is as dangerous as people think , which I gotta tell you, is going to be quite a challenge. This is sort of what I'm getting at when I…
ok, I'll bite (sorry for inexpertly juggling two accounts):
Fair enough, and no in fact I didn't read your post as pro-nuclear advocacy. I am just particularly keen to underscore the fact that, any overblown perceptions aside, nuclear weapons are definitely bad enough to be worth a bit more effort to halt their development and then eliminate them from our world.
I just came back here after reading: http://mapw.org.au/download/nuclear-famine-findings