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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
edit
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Davidxyz. Peer reviewers: Cmedvid, Emily rodriguez.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Co-ordinates
editI've corrected the co-ordinates in the "specifics" section, but don't know how to do it at the top, where the link is. Can anyone help. The true site (round scar) is within a few hundred metres of the co-ordinates I have cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theeurocrat (talk • contribs) 10:21, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, that round scar is not the site of 596. Based on the satellite photographs (http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/China/LopNor700c15.jpg) taken just after the blast, the correct coordinates (as far as Google earth can place them) is 40.8121,89.79386, about 2.8 km to the NW of the scar. The cause of the scar is unknown but obviously man-made; there were about 24 drops made in this area (known as the drop area of Lop Nur, separate form the underground test areas of Nanshan, Beishan and Qinggir), 16 of which have no known coordinates, and for which no ground proof seismic disturbances have been noted (including 596 itself). These unplaced drops were up to 3 MT in yield, and might be responsible for the scar. See http://www.rdss.info/cgi-bin/resdb_ent?dbtype_id=GTD SkoreKeep (talk) 06:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
- PS: A close look with the latest data in Google Earth shows a faint circular scar around the new placement as well. I didn't see that until after editing the page. :) SkoreKeep (talk) 07:05, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
- Very good sleuthing, Skorekeep, and that is a great tool. An ex-Air Force friend of mine has already told me that the scar I mentioned is no scar at all, but rather a bombing target. There is another one a few miles west. As to the 596 site, we reckon it is about 500 metres west of the point you calculate, and probably within the margin of error of the tool - if you go into Bing Maps, you can clearly see the base of the tower, the instrumentation bunker, and even the road that the device was rolled down.Theeurocrat (talk) 13:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
- I concur with your adjustment. Thanks for the correction. SkoreKeep (talk) 04:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
Photo of the mock-up bomb
editI think that this cannot be the right photo. 596 was a tower shot, and there are small pictures of it as a large cylindrical object being pushed down a road to the site. Perhaps the image shows an early weaponised device derived from 596, but it cannot be 596 itself. Skorekeep, any comments? Theeurocrat (talk) 13:22, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
- Sorry, I have no information on that. It seems very unlikely that the Chinese would have made a tower shot item look like a drop bomb; that's too much "gilding the lily". SkoreKeep (talk) 04:01, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
UD3 Thing
editIn the 1980's China explored and then abandoned the idea of UD3 fusion via highly symmetrical implosion. They used techniques that weren't available in 1965 to achieve a very small neutron signal. This path was ultimately abandoned because it wasn't reliably reproducible for scientific purposes using 1980's Chinese technology. But then we are supposed to believe the Chinese of 1965 got this working so reliably that they were using it in production nuclear weapons for their military??
We already know what China was using to initiate neutron cascades back then. We know they received it from the Soviet Union who used it in their second generation designs. I'm not certain why the need for the retrocon of UD3?
“Fusion Produced by Implosion of Spherical Explosive” by Q.-D. Dong, J.-C. Zhang, G.Z. Liu, and H.-Z. Jiang, presented at the 1989 Shock Compression of Condensed Matter conference and published in 1990, explores the concept of achieving fusion reactions through the spherical implosion of an explosive material.