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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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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Does it matter that this is luminance ‘at minimum safe distance’? So not the same distance?
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Why? "the intensity of radiation effects drops off with the second power of distance. This results in the range of thermal effects increasing markedly more than blast range as higher and higher device yields are detonated" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions …
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I am reminded of Dune Messiah's Stone Burners and their ability to blind without annihilating Arakeen...
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Wow, not just brighter as a percentage of energy output, but brighter in absolute terms.
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Look at that graph on the right - these were done _at safe distances_, which are much larger for higher yield weapons (you can also clearly see the double flash in that graph). Safe distances means that (for high yields) you are far enough away that flash effects are... safe.
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Does this phenomenon exist for detonations in vacuum or very high altitudes?
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But the distance to the 20kt bomb is 3 times bigger than the 2kt bomb, which by inverse square law would decrease intensity by a factor of 9. So the the 20kt bomb would brighter.
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It would be interesting to know if the smaller nukes represent the emission spectra of the bomb components (mostly Pu) while fusion weapons would likely be E-spectra of He and atmospheric gassespic.twitter.com/wLjCAQHMnh
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