Credit: Reporter: Robert Krulwich, Producers: Jessica Goldstein, Maggie Starbard Supervising producers: Vikki Valentine, Alison Richards Production Assistant: Ellen Webber Researcher: Meagen Voss<\/em><\/p>\n(Some of the images in this video were until recently top secret. Peter Kuran of Visual Concept Entertainment collected them for his documentary Nukes In Space.)<\/p>\n
If you are wondering why anybody would deliberately detonate an H-bomb in space, the answer comes from a conversation we had with science historian James Fleming of Colby College:<\/p>\n
“Well, I think a good entry point to the story is May 1, 1958, when James Van Allen, the space scientist, stands in front of the National Academy in Washington, D.C., and announces that they\u2019ve just discovered something new about the planet,” he told us.<\/p>\n
Van Allen described how the Earth is surrounded by belts of high-energy particles \u2014 mainly protons and electrons \u2014 that are held in place by the magnetic fields.<\/p>\n
Today these radiation belts are called Van Allen belts. Now comes the surprise: While looking through the Van Allen papers at the University of Iowa to prepare a Van Allen biography, Fleming discovered “that [the] very same day after the press conference, [Van Allen] agreed with the military to get involved with a project to set off atomic bombs in the magnetosphere to see if they could disrupt it.”<\/p>\n
Discover It, Then Blow It Up<\/strong><\/p>\nThe plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth’s atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see: a) If a bomb’s radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and \u2014 most peculiar \u2014 d) if a man-made explosion might “alter” the natural shape of the belts.<\/p>\n
The scientific basis for these proposals is not clear. Fleming is trying to figure out if Van Allen had any theoretical reason to suppose the military could use the Van Allen belts to attack a hostile nation. He supposes that at the height of the Cold War, the most pressing argument for a military experiment was, “if we don\u2019t do it, the Russians will.” And, indeed, the Russians did test atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs in space.<\/p>\n
In any case, says the science history professor, “this is the first occasion I’ve ever discovered where someone discovered something and immediately decided to blow it up.”
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nCode Name: Starfish Prime<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Americans launched their first atomic nuclear tests above the Earth’s atmosphere in 1958. Atom bombs had little effect on the magnetosphere, but the hydrogen bomb of July 9, 1962, did. Code-named “Starfish Prime” by the military, it literally created an artificial extension of the Van Allen belts that could be seen across the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
In Honolulu, the explosions were front page news. “N-Blast Tonight May Be Dazzling: Good View Likely,” said the Honolulu Advertiser. Hotels held what they called “Rainbow Bomb Parties” on rooftops and verandas. When the bomb burst, people told of blackouts and strange electrical malfunctions, like garage doors opening and closing on their own. But the big show was in the sky.<\/p>\n
To hear eyewitness accounts of what it looked like, listen to our broadcast on All Things Considered by clicking the Listen button on the top of this page.<\/p>\n
Why Starfish Prime Created Rainbow Skies<\/strong><\/p>\nTo understand where the colors come from in Starfish Prime, you first have to know a little bit about Earth’s atmosphere. Nitrogen and oxygen are the two most abundant gases in our air. The concentration of each gas is different depending on the altitude.<\/p>\n
When Starfish Prime detonated, charged particles \u2014 electrons \u2014 were released from the explosion. According to NASA astrophysicist David Sibeck, those particles came streaming down through the Earth’s atmosphere, energizing oxygen and nitrogen atoms, causing them to glow in different colors.<\/p>\n
But why?<\/p>\n
As electrons collide with the atoms, energy is transferred to the atoms. After holding onto it for a moment, the excess energy is released as light. When many excited atoms release energy together, the light is visible to the naked eye. Depending on the type of atom and the number of atoms, you get different colors.<\/p>\n
It’s similar to what causes the aurora borealis, although those electrons are coming from the solar wind pounding into Earth. The electrons first encounter a high concentration of oxygen at the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, causing the atoms to release a red light. Then green appears as the electrons travel to lower altitudes where there are fewer oxygen atoms. Even lower, where more nitrogen atoms are present, the collisions throw off a blue light.<\/p>\n
But in the Starfish Prime explosion, charged particles went in every direction. That’s why you see the sky filled with a rainbow of colors nearly all at once in the footage. \u2014 Meagen Voss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Check out this scary story from NPR about the atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. from Kalama (Johnston Atoll) approximately 800 miles from O’ahu.\u00a0\u00a0 I have heard stories of people watching the “light show”.\u00a0\u00a0 I wonder what the fallout may have been and if it had health affects. There were several nuclear test shots … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “NPR story on America’s H-bomb explosion in space”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-7411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oahu","tag-nuclear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7413,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411\/revisions\/7413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}