Revisiting Taylor and the Trinity Test

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Mone, Elizabeth, Seshadri, Pranay
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Mone, Elizabeth
Seshadri, Pranay
author_facet Mone, Elizabeth
Seshadri, Pranay
contents The atomic bomb uses fission of heavy elements to produce a large amount of energy. It was designed and deployed during World War II by the United States military. The first test of an atomic bomb occurred in July of 1945 in New Mexico and was given the name Trinity; this test was not declassified until 1949. In that year Geoffrey Ingram Taylor released two papers, detailing his process in calculating the energy yield of the atomic bomb from pictures of the Trinity explosion alone. Many scientists made similar calculations concurrently, though Taylor is often accredited with them. Since then many scientists have also attempted a to calculate a yield through various methods. This paper walks through these methods with a focus on Taylor's method -- based on first principles -- as well as redoing the calculations that he performed with modern tools. In this paper we make use of the state-of-the-art computer vision tools to find a more precise measurement of the blast radius, as well as using curve fitting and numerical integration methods. With more precise measurements we are able to follow in Taylor's footstep towards a more accurate approximation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_19657
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Revisiting Taylor and the Trinity Test
Mone, Elizabeth
Seshadri, Pranay
History and Philosophy of Physics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Fluid Dynamics
The atomic bomb uses fission of heavy elements to produce a large amount of energy. It was designed and deployed during World War II by the United States military. The first test of an atomic bomb occurred in July of 1945 in New Mexico and was given the name Trinity; this test was not declassified until 1949. In that year Geoffrey Ingram Taylor released two papers, detailing his process in calculating the energy yield of the atomic bomb from pictures of the Trinity explosion alone. Many scientists made similar calculations concurrently, though Taylor is often accredited with them. Since then many scientists have also attempted a to calculate a yield through various methods. This paper walks through these methods with a focus on Taylor's method -- based on first principles -- as well as redoing the calculations that he performed with modern tools. In this paper we make use of the state-of-the-art computer vision tools to find a more precise measurement of the blast radius, as well as using curve fitting and numerical integration methods. With more precise measurements we are able to follow in Taylor's footstep towards a more accurate approximation.
title Revisiting Taylor and the Trinity Test
topic History and Philosophy of Physics
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19657