This is interesting and counterintuitive — because of how the energy proportions itself (e.g. visible vs. infrared), kiloton-range nuclear weapons are brighter than megaton-range weapons, apparently.pic.twitter.com/AgRnRpBY8Y
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I have looked for a graph or equation that would give peak brightness as a function of yield, but not found anything obvious. Which is itself kind of interesting.
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I did find this interesting article from Nature, 1962, on the brightness of nuclear weapons — has some nice illustrations:pic.twitter.com/3E9BlUfBzV
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It has this graph which seems wrong to me — it assumes that the amount of visible energy is directly proportional to the yield, but that's not right. Article ends with a nice bit about whether aliens in nearby star systems could see nukes going off on Earth (probably not).pic.twitter.com/vnZUAramyr
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Poked around a bit and found these interesting diagrams (which are related to flash blindedness) which seem to indicate that indeed, lower-yield nuclear weapons are indeed brighter than higher-yield ones. Again, kind of an interesting and unintuitive fact.pic.twitter.com/EOBQ5n8xtL
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Appears to actually be from Science Vol. 138, No. 3539 (Oct. 26, 1962), pp. 483-489
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You are right! I don't know why my brain sometimes swaps Nature and Science, but it often does.
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