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These photos have been around a long time but I have to thank my son for pointing them out to me. They were taken by the legendary Harold Edgerton in the Nevada desert at a range of 7 miles at 1/1,000,000,000th of a second, at night. These 3 pictures show the first 3 milliseconds of an atomic bomb detonation.
Edgerton built a special lens 10 feet long for his camera which was set up in a bunker 7 miles from the source of the blast. The bomb was placed atop a steel gantry anchored to the desert floor by guide wires.
In a millisecond the blast expands; lightning caused by the force of the energy travels down the guide wires The desert floor was turned to glass.
In another millionth of a second, a planet of fire exists, silhouetting and dwarfing the Joshua Trees.
You can find out a little more about these stunning pictures here.
neat!
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second. Is it supposed to be 1,000th of a second or a microsecond?
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second. One million is 1000000, not 1000000000. Be consistent.
@Tom: Actually it is consistent. One talks about the negative exposure time – the other about the elapsed time between the actual images. They are two distinct things.
1,000,000,000 = 1 billion
1/1,000,000,000 seconds = 1 nanosecond
1,000,000 = 1 million
1/1,000,000 = 1 microsecond
1,000 = 1 thousand
1/1,000 = 1 millisecond
Your text as presented is useless.
how the hell did he get a shutter to go that fast, or film to advance that quickly?
NUMBERS EXPLAINED: READ BEFORE POSTING!!!
@anonymous, Tom, and ummm: you’re either three misunderstanding individuals or one remarkably persistent bundle of confusion. Here’s the deal:
The exposure time of the film is 1 nanosecond. This time frame happened at three different instances, each 1 millisecond apart (at a time of 1 millisecond, two milliseconds, and three milliseconds). if each exposure time was 1 millisecond, each image would have been a blur.
Still confused? An example of the difference can be represented with strobe lights: what you see is a snapshot flash of time within a longer frame of time. He is referring to the time the negative was exposed to create the photo (the quick strobe flash), and the longer period of time from image to image (the combined total of strobe flash and darkness). As Andy said, two DIFFERENT things, nano, the negative exposure (which he mentioned by the fraction 1/1,000,000,000) and milli, the time between exposures(1/1000).
Andy got it right, and the text is useful. Cool pics, too.
one billionth of a second is a picosecond i believe. i don’t know if that kind of shutter speed is possible. digital would be required. also a microsecond or one millionth of a second seems more likely. especially since the blast seems to grow about 50 meters per frame and that gives a velocity of 50 000 000 000 m/s with the picosecond frames, even thats faster than the speed of light! and with the microsecond. so probably like 1 frame per 100 000th of a second! what do you guys think?
oops nanosecond. you’re correct!
be consistent…
what a twat.
@Ven: Thank you for explaining it to these bozo’s who seem to want to appear to be publicly stupid… and, in the case of Josh, publicly insulting.
These pictures are amazing, and pulling it off without a digital camera is one amazing feat.
Also the several comments by math challenged individuals really capped it all off nicely.
The shutter may have been a Kerr cell, a layer of a liquid that rotates the plane of polarized light by an angle that depends on the voltage across it. Put the cell behind a polarizer aligned with the cell’s “rest” polarization and fire a capacitor into it with a fast switch, such as a krytron tube, and you can cut off the light path very quickly. With two Kerr cells in (optical) series, chopping off a 30-centimeter piece of light beam sounds plausible. There are other approaches involving prisms and explosives, but the Kerr cell is the most elegant.
I’m curious what the size of the shutter was, because to operate at 1/1,000,000,000 of a second the device would have to be infinitesimal, since a size of just 5mm would result in the shutter having to travel 1/3 the speed of light, and much smaller than that would render the negatives useless to any developer.
How utterly bizarre that when faced with photos that recorded the beginning of the nuclear age, possibly our species greatest threat, you all argue over the definition of micro seconds? No wonder global warming will envelope our planet, we will be busy arguing not the cause or how to mitigate the ocean rise due to polar ice cap melt, but instead whether we will measure it in milliliters or liters. People please get some perspective.
@Josh: could you be a bigger moron? first u dnt understand the article and then u dnt even understand two attempts at the explanation?
dropped as a baby?
Hi, the numbers would be fine except for the very end where you say “another millionth of a second” because that doesn’t match either the 1 millisecond(1/1000 of a second) advance time, nor the exposure time (1/1,000,000,000 of a second). I suspect in fact you meant “another millisecond”, and it came out as another millionth of a second, no harm done though. Nice pics.
While this seems cool, it’s absolutely impossible to take a picture in a billionth of a second. Unless the government has access to the technology of 2020 40 years ago, it’s not possible.
1/1000 of a second, which was pointed out to be inconsistent, is about normal for a shutter speed of a high-speed camera. So, it’s likely this picture was taken at 1/1000 of a second not 1/1000000000000 of a second.
Of course, you could easily time it to start taking the picture before it even begins exploding so that the shutter stops at a billionth, but you’d end up with a blur.
Still cool pictures though.
It’s photoshopped. Who cares how many zero’s are after it. Notice that the blast seems to radiate down the guide wires faster than the blast itself. It almost looks like you are peering into the universe.
Sorry, I was just confused by the wording. It makes more sense now.
@Cirabeau, Yes, it is neat. Rather, it blows my mind. Neat is a little mild for my reaction.
I think it’s interesting how the “flame” travels faster down the guide wires than through regular air. There is more than likely several studies detailing this phenom.
@Josh, You make me sad.
Well put, Mel. Sadly, this seems to be a common trend for most Americans. I can think of countless examples of how people focus on the unsubstantial details while paying no attention to the items that often deserve and require it.
When global warming starts to melt the ice caps at a fast rate do you think we’ll be arguing over the unit of measure in which to describe it or which individual person is doing more/less damage to the environment?
Open your eyes and your mind, people. These pictures give you a visual perspective as to the speed and intensity of an atomic bomb and I thank everyone involved in getting these pictures to this point so I can stumble upon them.
These pictures are fantastic. Don’t worry about the number prefix mistakes. The people who complain about that are the same people who berate a great story because a comma was misplaced.
@zip
Josh (post 10) was calling Tom (post 3) a twat.
To clear up all misconceptions before someone cries out these pictures were made with the 1952 version of photoshop…
About Edgerton -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Edgerton
(the provided link of his biography in this article leads to a potentially harmful website reported to install malicious programs on your computer – so says firefox 3.0 blocker..)
The cameras he used -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapatronic_camera
The Scenario -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tumbler-Snapper
The Rope trick effect -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_trick_effect
Please do a little research before you call shenanigans…
Mel:
Our species greatest threat is idiots like you.
Several of you are “over-engineering” the solution, he did not depend on shutter speed for exposure but rather flash duration. It is not unusual for a consumer model flash to have a duration of 1/50,000th of a second. The easiest way to shorten flash duration is to power multiple flash units from the same power source (in this case an electrolytic capacitor) in parallel, thereby getting the same total light output, but by dividing that over multiple units. This is one way for studio photographers to get shorter flash duration, just connect more strobe heads to the power supply. You get the same quantity of light over a much shorter duration. This was how Edgerton got such amazing photos, including the very popular photo of a drop of milk hitting a bowl of milk.
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These are incredible.
Nicely stumbled on.
And some of you might like to look at how the different types of shutter work.
Using two shutter curtains ever so slightly out of sync you can get very fast shutter speeds.
While the exposure time for the enter frame might be 6/1,000,000 no individual piece of the film is exposed for more than 1/1,000,000 and so on.
Either way this is amazing, and terrifying to see.
That these earlier tests produced such terrifying power and modern weaponry exceeds them by orders of magnitude.
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It looks like the direct center of hell. Could have been too. Scientists were only about 80% sure that the reaction would stop and that the earth wouldn’t all look like that.
Yes, i think Ben has finally got it right.
These pictures are awesome. In 2005 my SO and I were able to visit the Trinity Site and the farm house where the weapon was “armed”. Its is hard to connect the violence of the explosion with the otherwise unremarkable arid meadow.
Thank you (And your son) for the wonderful pics and great explanation……And again with the clarifications from Ven.As for the rest of the kids that just don’t get it.Don’t worry about it they never will,I am suprised one of them did not shout out “Photo shopped” or the like nonsense.
@Bryan: I think you may have got your sums mixed up a bit; if the distance the shutter has to travel (I’m not entirely sure how the shutter works) is 5mm then the speed is (0.005)/(1/1,000,000,000)= 50,000 metres per second. Light travels at a speed of 3*10^8 metres per second so this is a 1/60 th of the speed of light.
If the distance the shutter travels is half of that it’s even less, and also (according to the website the blog links to) the shutter speed was actually 1/100,000,000ths so even slower; still fast but not problematically fast.
Bryan, as mentioned earlier, the shutter is a Kerr cell. It doesn’t “move”, it simply energizes to change the polarization of light coming through it.
aren’t people just freakin brilliant. just read the responses objectively.
@zip:
Doesn’t it look to you like Josh was poking fun at Tom, rather than actually telling the author to be more consistent?
Maybe read a little next time before you tell someone they are a moron who must have been dropped as a baby. I can understand you are in a hurry to insult others online, as thats a pretty standard thing, but maybe you are in too much of a hurry.
Hhahaha you guys are too funny. i cant get enough of this post. endless bickering for no reason. tooo funny. keep up the good work
What a bunch of time geeks, get back to your tv’s to watch Stargate.
Quite creepy images.
Something like a blue angel comes to mind. The blue angel to end all blue angels.
ok sorry actually those are just scary.
leave it to deluded man to get tripped up on the numbers. The big Picture? We LOVE to create new and exciting ways to kill each other. Let’s ponder THAT.
Try imagining that ‘gorgeous’ detonation outside your bedroom window.
My God, it’s full of stars! (Third picture)
These are not shutter cameras which could never operate fast enough for these pictures. These use an electrooptic modulator made by placing a Kerr cell between two crossed polarizers. With no voltage over the Kerr cell, light is blocked by the crossed polarizers. When a voltage is placed over the Kerr cell, it rotates the polarization and light now passes through the cell. Today Kerr cells can operate at around 50 picoseconds. Back in Edgertons day I don’t think a nanosecond was possible. However, some of the radio pioneers were producing 100MHz waves in the 1940s so I think you’ll find the electronics could produce more like 10 nanosecs to perhaps 20 nanoseconds. Also at this rate, you would need an atomic explosion to expose film, because there is not very much light energy gets through a nanosecond time scale aperture. However, whether it is 1 nsec or 10nsecs or 20 nsecs, this was a remarkable technical achievement.
Why on earth can’t people just enjoy the pictures and know that the photos were shot REALLY FAST?
Alternatively, we could all just meet in a parking lot and settle this they way we used to back where I grew up. SISSY PUNKS argue like that.
By the way, thanks to Yellow Swordfish for sharing this. I had never seen the photos. Truly amazing!
It’s “guy wires”, not “guide wires”. JEEEEEZE.
Thos Weatherby,
Are you THAT daft? Or do you just like playing the part of The Troll?
Those photos have been in science textbooks since the 50’s. Were they “photoshopped” back then? Please, enlighten us.
It boggles my mind how many people in the world feel compelled to show us all how much smarter and more informed they are than the rest of us, and in the process prove beyond a doubt exactly the opposite.
Short and sweet : if you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t.
And…not to mention, these are great images.
Sheesh!
I couldn’t tell if this got resolved. The problem is that there are three durations mentioned, not two.
There is the billionth of a second, the nanosecond, or 1/1,000,000,000 of a second.
There is the million of a second, the microsecond, or 1/1,000,000 of a second.
There is the thousandth of a second, the millisecond, or 1/1,000 of a second.
The duration of the light capture through the Kerr cell lasts a nanosecond. The time between the captures is a millisecond.
The final comment about a “millionth of a second later” is a typo. He meant a “millisecond later.” We don’t need to crucify him for a typo. Though the author should really fix it.
Another thing to point out… the tower is anchored to the desert floor by “guy wires” NOT “guide wires”.
No one believes me when I tell them this, but its a “guy” wire, not “guide”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_wire
@Scott. Very funny… Are you the kind of guy who would use a flash to take a picture of a solar eclipse?
I think this is the saddest posting I have ever encountered. I had the same reaction as Mel and Jason. Our government and other world governments are busy creating the bombs and “delivery systems” to create the same “amazing phenomena”, in order to kill millions and poison the earth for millenia. These photos are a powerful warning as to why this madness needs to end. I feel sorry for those whose postings evidenced ignorance of this.
Towers have “guy” wires, not “guide” wires.
[...] http://www.yellowswordfish.com/257/1000000000th-of-a-second/ Some stunning photography that throws more than some light on how dangerous these things are. [...]
I agree with Mel.
http://www.xkcd.com/438/
I have to agree with “yeah” way above. While these pictures are astonishing not only for the technological savvy behind them, but for the possible negative implications of what it is they capture, I honestly couldn’t help but be a bit impressed by the intelligence of so many perfectly random individuals when it comes to the subject of a passion, such as physics and photography.
If anything good can come out of what these photos capture, perhaps it can be seen in the polite constuctive criticism and information sharing that has occurred.
However, I also feel the need to say that there are those few troglodytes among the brillants on this thread who need to keep thier mouths shut if they can only think of rude, immature, and insulting comments to add to the perfectly civilized debate upon and spread of knowlege that has transpired above…
“be the change you wish to see in the world” -Gandhi
“In another millionth of a second, a planet of fire exists, silhouetting and dwarfing the Joshua Trees.”
Please change, should read ‘In another thousandth of a second’ or ‘Another millisecond later, in a millionth of a second’.
It is misleading as it stands right now.
That “planet of fire” looks like a Death Star. Ironic, no?
While we are throwing in quite interesting vaguely relevant facts (none of which can actually compare with the stunning nature and historical importance of the images) I thought I’d add that the definition of a billion (ie for when discussing what a billionth of a second is) may not be the same for everyone who looks at this.
In America a billion is 1,000,000,000, in Europe its 1.000.000.000.000 (which an American would call a trillion i think). This possibly is irrelevant and as a historian I’m not sure what the scientific community uses.
More importantly however: wow cool pictures, well done on posting those!
This is really cool. I live in Las Vegas, Born and raised. I remember the atomic bomb testing. They would announce it on the news and in our classroom. We were only 90 miles away. ( Not Down Wind ) We could feel the detonations like an earthquake. It was pretty amazing.
On another note…I appreciate the pictures and commentary. These idiots that post negative responses are the same idiots that have nothing better to do than argue other peoples posts because they don’t have an original thought themselves. Reminds me of the ” Old Cronies ” who are on the Home Owners Association Boards. They have nothing better to do except look for problems. If they don’t find one……they make it one. Peace.
@Mat: I’m pretty sure everyone uses “American billions” nowadays. The same way the whole scientific community talks about “epinephrine” and “sulfur”… *sigh*.
hahaahaaa. using a flash to photograph a nuclear explosion….good one ;D
@John: I don’t think so… I believe us Brits continue to use the correct values
@Thomas:
Your comment is WAY more confusing. You’ve written: “Please change, should read … ‘Another millisecond later, in a millionth of a second’.”
“Another millisecond later, in a millionth of a second” doesn’t make any sense. The time frame “millionth of a second” does not exist in the original article. A millisecond is 1/1,000 of a second, or one one-thousandth. The Kerr cell allows light to pass for a nanosecond exposure (1/1,000,000) or one one-millionth of a second.
CRAP!!!
.
.
.Nanosecond is 1/1,000,000,000 or one one-billionth!
.
I’m sorry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ John and Andy
I think you’re both right, I think the UK officially uses the American system in the same way it officially uses the French metric system for units, but i think normal people in day to day use use the old European system of numbering in the same way we use feat and inches for hight, miles for distance and pounds and stone for weight. We don’t like change. I think the French, Germans Italian etc still all use the old long system
@Brian
Getting back to the photo… Cool to have seen something like that. were there no adverse effects being so close to the test? Sounds pretty scary to me. When the oil terminal near me blew up a couple of years ago we were evacuated for days, and that was just jet fuel.
Lets see…….
WOW!!!…
Time! …what a concept.
how long ago do they estimate that the BIG BANG happened?…
truth is.. it happens every minute we breath …there are BANGS ..and BOOMS going on all over the place …always was always will be!!
Ok CONGRATS on the freaky shots!!.. So now we see a better picture of what it all might look like!! SO MANY PARTICLES…so LITTLE TIME!!!
GREAT STUMBLE!!
All this talk of explosions turns my crank…
Why are people arguing? Don’t argue. THESE ARE AMAZING PICTURES!
They weren’t put here just to argue about whatever. We have these awesome pictures and all we can do is agrue about who is right!?
“63Andy @ Yellow Swordfish
“@John: I don’t think so… I believe us Brits continue to use the correct values”
Perhaps you MEANT to say “… WE Brits ….”
GRAMMAR am* important.
* misusage for effect.
@A. Sceptic: No – I was perfectly happy with what I did say and still am
It’s amazing how all you obviously intelligent people didnt do a simple Google search.
“The new corporation, Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier
(later EG&G), took over the job of photographing nuclear
tests from the Army Air Corps. The task required a camera
shutter that captured exposures of 1/1,000,000th of a second,
too fast for moving parts. EG&G came up with a novel
solution. Instead of a conventional shutter, two polarizing
filters kept the film in the dark until the filters were exposed
to a magnetic field. For an instant, as the plane of polarization
rotated, light was able to hit the film. Thus EG&G
obtained its infinitesimally small exposure times.
The resulting photographs revealed the atomic blast as
a bubble of light hovering over the desert, pocked and
malevolent. Edgerton, who watched the fireball through a
piece of glass from miles away, marveled at the silence in
which it unfolded. The sound took half a minute to travel
over the desert, roaring only as the cloud itself began to
decay.
@ Corey:
It would behoove you to READ THE POSTS YOU ARE AGREEING WITH. That is all.
It’s amazing how liberals bring global warming into every issue. How the polar ice melt is going to decimate the earth. When the ice melts in the ice caps the level of the ocean doesn’t rise, it stays the same. Try filling a glass with ice and then fill water up to the rim of the glass. When the ice melts, the glass does not overflow!! Don’t rush out and buy waterfront poperty in Nevada.
@CJ: I have to assume you are American as you must be the only nation on earth who use the word ‘liberal’ as an insult, to show your contempt and to brand certain people with views not consistent with your own. In truth ‘environmentalists’, climate scientists and researchers and those concerned about the health of our planet come from all points along the political spectrum so how about keeping political jibes and insults out of this?
As to the melting ice caps nobody is talking about the ice already below sea level. The reference is to the enormous volume of ice above it. You need to redo your experiment by filling the glass with water and then adding the ice.
well put andy
That these 3 photographs are authentic images of a single event is clear. That this single event was a test-grade nuclear explosion is also clear. And finally, it’s pretty obvious that the shutter speeds would have to be as fast as technically possible (whatever that was at the time). What ISN’T clear is that it’s necessary that each photo was taken by the same camera. It seems unlikely that a single photographer and his instrument were strapped with capturing these images. I would conjecture that several similar devices were used to capture these images, each triggered to take a single shot at or around the moment of detonation. From 7 miles away each shot would look like it was taken from the same spot. I think we’re simply viewing the shots that proved to be keepers. The fact that they’re presented as a time-lapsed set simply lends to the illusion that a single camera did the work. Perhaps I digress.
@tom raywood: I think there can be little doubt of that. I have not delved into it but I should imagine these were taken on 5×4 sheet film and you don’t autowind that now yet alone back in the mid ’40’s
hmmmmmmmmmmm very useful info if i say so myself. Is there any way possible to check what could be inside that planet…..the 3rd photograph. just wondering what kind of reaction is going on visually.
r there any coloured photos like these………….
these images were really neat before i read the comments. thanks for ruining it, people.
It is easy to figure out the time between exposures. Nuclear particles travel at the speed of light. simply measure the change in the radius from the first pic to the second and you can calculate the time between exposures. You could use the gantry to scale the raduis of the blast and come up with some fairly accurate and easy numbers.
What a wonderfully powerful device. Hurray for the Manhattan Project and Richard Feinman, Oppenheimer, et. al.
Do you think it can annihilate a billion (1,000,000,000) Iranian Muslims in a nanosecond (0.000,000,000,1) or a millisecond (0.000,000,1)? Don’t parse the math, just kill the masses
And like the cry that went up at 9/11, we will all say in unison, “Holy Shit”, then cheer.
Ok, so we’ve questioned shutter speed, the amount of time a bomb takes to explode, whether or not the photo has been photoshopped (honestly, who trains these morons) and, perhaps most bizarrely, whether we should be calling it a millionth or a billionth of a second*.
….and these have all been answered with explanation. Good.
Good pictures aren’t they?
* There’s some logic in only increasing from a million to a billion when you are up to your millionth million but the convenience of referral makes a strong argument for
@LastSkeptic: I tend to only discard comments when they are personally offensive or offensive to a previous commenter. This one is offensive to just about everyone who has not been suckered into believing everything they hear on Fox News.
btw andy, you seem to be on reddit!
and the pics are amazing.
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It’s guy wire not guide wire
Dude that is the coolest thing I have ever seen!
JT
http://www.crypt.alturl.com
@stabani: Hello my friend. Do you know – I do not even know what ‘reddit’ is!
Andy,
I have just been amused by all of the discussion about time measurement and guy wires. You originally entitled your post “1/1,000,000,000th of a second”, which is 1 nanosecond. Most references to the rapatronic camera say that exposure times as low as 10 nanoseconds are possible, so you may have got that wrong (and you refer to a website where you have apparently copied the text accompanying the images, anomalies-unlimited.com, where exposure time is listed as 1/100,000,000ths of a second or 10 nanoseconds)
Since these cameras could take one photograph each, it is conceivable that the second and third photographs were taken 1 millisecond and 1.001 milliseconds after the first, but I suspect that there was some sort of Kerr cell triggering mechanism that was designed to take the photographs 1 millisecond apart (and this is what I think most people understand when they look at these images).
Mat, the UK threw out long scale in 1974.
“lightning caused by the force of the energy travels down the guide wires”.
This is incorrect. It’s not lightning and energy does not impart a force. The cables are vaporizing due to the heat.
That these 3 photographs are authentic images of a single event is clear. That this single event was a test-grade nuclear explosion is also clear. And finally, it’s pretty obvious that the shutter speeds would have to be as fast as technically possible (whatever that was at the time). What ISN’T clear is that it’s necessary that each photo was taken by the same camera. It seems unlikely that a single photographer and his instrument were strapped with capturing these images. I would conjecture that several similar devices were used to capture these images, each triggered to take a single shot at or around the moment of detonation. From 7 miles away each shot would look like it was taken from the same spot. I think we’re simply viewing the shots that proved to be keepers. The fact that they’re presented as a time-lapsed set simply lends to the illusion that a single camera did the work. Perhaps I digress.
So how much did this blast contribute to global warming? I am old enough to remember the “new ice age” drama of the 1970s. Global climates change (which automobiles ruined Mars?), there are multiple sources of greenhouse effect. BTW, carbon dioxide is not the most potent greenhouse gas. Enjoy the pictures, get a life.
yep, the coolest pictures ever are completely ruined by bad math.
-)
That’s not lightning traveling down the guy wires. The wires are vaporising from the intense (IR) heat radiating from the blast.
The wgwag effect is amazing!
That’s not lightning “resulting from the force of the blast”.
The guide wires just evaporated and burned.
Humanity needs an anti-nuclear invention of some sort.
Re Andy’s:
“As to the melting ice caps nobody is talking about the ice already below sea level. The reference is to the enormous volume of ice above it. You need to redo your experiment by filling the glass with water and then adding the ice.”
Your proposed experiment is no different that CJ’s, assuming you’re both planning not adding ice past the point where it floats. Isn’t the larger concern ice that’s not currently in the ocean, e.g. the melting of glaciers currently on land?
wow nice imgs.
@Edgardo Portal: Just sloppy language! I was meaning everything above sea level whether just ice or on hard land…
The first image looks like a golf ball. Is that god’s golf ball we’re looking at?
The second image looks like a head of lettuce (clearly it’s time for the practical geeks to move aside and let the interpretive artists take a turn).
And look, in the third image, is that a galaxy of stars inside? Was there a momentary portal or wyrm hole to another dimension or location in the universe? Stargate…
Can we go there? Or do we need extra sunscreen? PF 1,000,000,000,000?
“Why on earth can’t people just enjoy the pictures and know that the photos were shot REALLY FAST?”
Because only commoners are satisfied with terms such as “REALLY FAST” or with “look, the ice is melting, let’s not care about an error of magnitude 1000 or 1000000, but just make a guess, who cares about measuring anything”.
Almost the same as imbeciles making fun of people who know their stuff. Humanity needs anti-idiot protection.
this might help.
http://simplethinking.com/home/rapatronic_photographs.htm
For those viewers whose sole education was not just on dumbed-down Fox TV, or from conservateive morons like Rush Limbaugh, the issue with global warming is not so much sea levels rising as it is everything else that accompanies it: climate change, vegetation change, ecosystem change.
To: Andy @ Yellow Swordfish
Well wise guy. Just sit around gloating in your liberal-minded idiocy (it is really a mental problem of delusion, hate, and ignorance and ass liking the European countries as well as the enemy combatants like Mother Poloskie – your Mother of God Witch Queen) and praise the lovely educated Muslim nice guys who deserve freedom and respect while they annihilate YOU and your mindless government kind from the face of the earth in 0.000,000,000,1 easy breath because you are so screwed up mentally! You fucking liberals are the shit end of America – traitors and fools and damn blind idiots ALL. Vote for Hussein Obama and commit suicide, wise guy. He will go tell Iran to fuck off, won’t he? Not.
Meanwhile in the two years that shit faced liberals have been in charge of the Bush-hating-Congress, the country has gone to hell in every respect, except for the Bush-lead surge. So wise-guy, don’t be a sycophant for a black ass president-liar-ignorant-Muslim, and wise up.
@LastSkeptic: It seems an odd law of the internet that after so many comments on any post, along comes some arsehole like you who can’t intelligently string two words coherently together, is full of bile and hatred and loathing, makes outrageous assumptions about someone you do not know, have never met and who obviously has an IQ you could only dream of and uses language that places you squarely at the low end of the gene pool. Your rant also has nothing to do with the subject but I suspect you can only think of one thing at a time. My god I do hope, for the future of mankind, that you never reproduce.
And just for the record – I am unable to vote for Obama. I am not an American. I live in the Europe you so obviously despise. There again – you seem to despise just about everything.
Do not comment here again. Take your childish and pointless remarks somewhere else.
Like the bomb that was made to wipe us out, this is how we use the internet…
Nice view of history.
This discussion is moronic. Some guy leaves three pictures, taken with a really friggin fast shutter, one at 0.001 seconds after the blast, one at 0.002 seconds, and a third at 0.003 seconds after an atomic bomb blast says “hey this is neat.” That’s the end of it.
It was going well, we had some cool pics, some odd educated discussions about some subjects on (and around the subject) and then someone has to come along and go all extreme racist.
@LastSkeptic:
Dislike of the actions of a number of people does not necessitate the hatred of everyone else from their country, their religion or the whole surrounding area. You can’t say because some terrorists were Muslim and from the middle east that all muslims are terrorists or by extension that there is anything wrong with your African American Presidential candidate. Bush is caucasian, Bush is a christian, but so were the IRA bombers who killed hundreds in Ireland. By your logic Skeptic that would make Bush a terrorist. This is obviously not true, most caucasian people as well as most middle eastern, Asian are normal people.
I know we have gone off subject a fair bit, but this needs to be said. Judging a whole group in one go and such outspoken hatred leads to… well look at the pictures that started this discussion… thats how it ends. Perhaps we were not off subject at all.
should read “This is obviously not true, most caucasian people as well as most middle eastern, Asian and everyone else are just normal people”
Perfectionist Internet Surfer: “Hey a pretty cool page on the internet. I can leave comments. I think i am going to try and prove somebody else wrong to raise my status among the billions of people that are online now. Maybe somebody will love me then!”
seriously though it may seem hypocritical that I am telling you guys this, but who cares? can’t we all just hold hands and get along and just leave a simple comment saying “sweet pics” instead of trying to sound smarter than everybody else on the page?
[...] Images of the atomic blast in it’s first millionth of a second. [...]
[...] Link (via) Tags: AtomAge, Atombomb, Photography [...]
Hey, nice pics. About the discussion… discussions naturally attract the stupid. The stupid flame and naturally attract hatred. Please keep it peaceful. Please don’t use hateful comments. If you do, get a life. Please enjoy these pictures.
I really don’t see why there are so many people leaving replies after this. Sure it’s cool but 119 is a little much don’t you think?
The photos and the discussion paint a wonderful picture. If it wasn’t for the human tendency to go for the the throat at the drop of a hat, these photos might not exist. How fantastically illustrated!
I think americans have no undersatanding of how brits use the English language and considering the fact that we created it I think that it might be you @A and @CJ that are in the wrong. I live in amererica and am constantly herassed for the way I use the language and when I point out the fact that we created it theyf ind it funny and the next day when I walk in to work everybody as their “Hallerious” english accent on.
But still awa inspiring photos and the crap about the timeing is rubbish
And on that note @LastSeptic I have to asume that you will be voting for 74 year old McCaine and his 90 something mother. “lots of new light for the country!” With his never ending war and the same old crapy medicare programme commom the dollar is alredy 2 to a pound, just watch the latest JIB JAB video it sums up McCaine very nicley he is an old bat who spent 4 years in a rat hole!
bobs last blog post..Perfect!
oh 71 sorry not that it matters.
again great photos
Those lines helping to support the tower are guy wires, not “guide” wires.
Isn’t this the Trinity device?
I believe that the first atomic bomb pictures ever taken were recorded by george washington carver. His pictorials were amazing!
Superb photographs, we are all used to seeing the mushroom cloud image. Personally I had never thought what it might look like in the milliseconds after detonation, never want to be near enough to see it for real.
Richard Slaters last blog post..Driving Theory Test
Interesting, and amazing at the same time.
i dont have time to read all these comments. it was obviously photoshopped. end of discussion. people, learn how to engage your brains. think about it. first off, these images would have existed years ago, not just in the past few days. second, they are greyscale. nothing screams amateur photoshop like greyscale, cause you can just ignore the issue of knowing how colors work. third, the explosion occured at the speed of light. think about it, it was instantly the size of the galaxy. how could you even photograph light? you cant. it really disturbs me to know people are so ignorant to physics. it’s called a book, people, and i suggest you learn how to use one. sheesh.
@mike: Well – you are not the only deluded person to believe this. What amazes me is the certainty with which you speak. I suggest you do a little more research into history before making such wild and inaccurate statements passed off as ‘fact’.
To quote Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Do a google search for Rapatronic Nuclear Photographs then see whos brain is engaged.
LTs last blog post..EVIL GENIUS DISCOVERS GUN POWDER
@LT: Oh well said. Thanks.
Mike is WRONG! In fact, the ONLY thing you can photograph is light. Light causes a chemical change in an emulsion on a film or a cascade of electrons in a CCD. The explosion obviously didn’t occur at the speed of light, nothing can go that fast. Also, there was no flash to illuminate the explosion, it produced its OWN light. No flash can carry 7 miles. Call 1-800 GET-A-BRAIN.
[...] is a thousandth of a second). But that doesn’t really matter. This stuff is fascinating. Check out the full site here. [...]
I learned 3 things from stumbling this page:
1. Amazing and terrifying pictures.
2. Some people are unable to read and do not know how to recognize spelling/typing errors and therefore assume the errors in question are there because of ignorance.
3. Some americans are so incredibly dumb that they should not be allowed to go outside on their own (yes I am talking about “LastSkeptic”). It’s people like him that makes me think the world would be better off if the russians won the cold war… At least then Fucks News wouldnt be corrupting the agenda.
From Oxford Dictionary:
liberal
• adjective
1 willing to respect and accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own.
2 (of a society, law, etc.) favourable to individual rights and freedoms.
3 (in a political context) favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate reform.
Hm… Sounds a lot like the principles supported and written down by what you americans call your “founding fathers”…
Thank you for almost a more entertaining thread of comments than the original pictures posted. I found it thoroughly enlightening about the state of humanity and their incessant need to prove themselves better than others. The icing on the cake being mike’s “how could you even photograph light?”, truly awesome.
@n0s: Nicely put…
Comments like Bob’s which argue that the English created the language and thus have the right to use is whichever way they please, then type, “undersatanding… amererica… herassed… awa… timeing” amuse me to no end. Please, if you’re going to berate someone’s intelligence ensure that your own is comparable.
And back to the subject at hand, my father has often told me stories of when he was working with Dr. Edgerton at EG&G (the doctor was actually my dad’s sponsor to get his green card) and seeing these pictures warms my heart. To be reminded that you are inextricably connected to not only that which occurs within your perceived sphere of influence but also to some of the famous/infamous events in history is humbling to say the least.
Also I must say Mike’s comment about the nuclear explosion being the size of a galaxy is… intriguing. I would love to find how our planet, let alone solar system, survived a galaxy-sized explosion.
As Einstein (I think) once said, “There are two infinite things: human ignorance and the universe. And I am not so sure about the latter.”
nilss last blog post..I Can Makes Lolz?
@nils. This is a great connection. You to Edgerton and now me to you.
Note to self…Next time I take a photo of a nuclear explosion don’t tell anybody.
@Andy, why didnt u correct the last sentence typo? “In another millionth of a second” should be in another milisecond or thousandth of a second
And one more thing: this is internet, where intelligent and ignorant people meet and trade information. so i think you should try to make your post as informative as possible, explaining 1,000,000,000th of a second is referrering to the shutter speed or exposure time, because not everyone know about it. if u had done that, all this discussion would be minimized for sure…
I must admit, this has been the most entertaining 30 minutes I’ve had in a long time. Andy, I bet you never imagined the simple posting of a few pics would generate the intellectual and emotional ramblings that it did. The pics were a great find, thank you. The comments are an eye-opening window into the state of humanity.
@lee said: ‘why didnt u correct the last sentence typo? “In another millionth of a second” should be in another milisecond or thousandth of a second’..
What? And spoil all the fun? You have a point but some of the discussion that ensued was quite fascinating. See Ozzy’s comment here…
The billionth of a second thing sounds a little bit – No, extremely – illogical.
Suppose that the circumference of the lens of the camera was 2 inches. I would assume that it was larger than that for this camera, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it was 2 inches. For the shutter to cover 2 inches in 1 billionth of a second (0.000000001 seconds), it would have to be moving at 166,666,666 feet per second. That’s about 1/6th of the speed of light (983,571,056 ft/s), or 113,636,363 MPH. The fastest known shutter speed of any camera is 1/4000 of a second (0.00025 s) by the CP5000 from Nikon. The lens circumference of this camera is 3.34645669 inches. For the shutter to move those 3.34645669 inches in those 0.00025 seconds, it would have had to be moving at 1115.4 feet per second.
TL;DR -
Fastest shutter speed ever recorder of a camera: 1115.4 feet per second.
Alleged shutter speed of Harold Edgerton’s camera: 166,666,666 feet per second.
(The one billionth of a second part can not be true.)
Please feel free to check my math.
@ jay
Dude, it has already been explained: this camera uses a polarized lens, NOT A SHUTTER. THAT MEANS IT CAN GET INSANE SHUTTER SPEEDS. YOUR MATH IS IRRELEVANT.
@ jake3988
You are also completely off. It has been explained over and over again: this camera used a polarized lens and can get shots of 10 nanoseconds. Try using Google.
I think it’s great that you don’t let them discourage you. i thought the article was great. i actually enjoyed science.
It’s all those people who are convinced they are right that amuses me. Some of them are so dogmatic and unimaginative. And of course, if they ploughed through all of the comments they would find they have nothing new to add and that yes… they ARE wrong.
Uh-Oh Hot Dog!