Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
>Seismologists estimate the size of the North Korean explosion at
between 1 and 15 kilotons. My bet: 1 kt. I mean literally, 1000
tons of explosive.
Then they obviously registered something, and clearly not natural.
Yes. But several people have suggested it may be a chemical explosion.
"something comes out of the ground; we would seen some signature
after 24 hours." I suppose the material migrates up the instrument lead-wires.
They would need to have something in orbit wouldn't they?
No. As I suggested, trace amounts of radioactive material migrate out
via the instrument leads. See:
http://www.slate.com/id/2151214/nav/tap2/
The New York Times reports that small underground nuclear explosions
actually tend to release a little more radioactive material.
QUOTES:
Blast May Be Only a Partial Success, Experts Say
It will probably take several days to determine with confidence if
the explosion was in fact nuclear, the official said. He added that
so far, sensors had not detected radiation leaking from the blast
site. But federal and private experts said it seemed unlikely that
the North Koreans had faked an underground nuclear blast with a large
pile of conventional high explosives.
. . . federal and private analysts said, the United States has long
had spy satellites observing the North Korean site and appears to
have found no signs of chemical explosives being unloaded.
"It's difficult to fake it when you know people are looking down on
you," said Dr. Richards of Columbia. "The execution of a chemical
explosion would be hard to hide."
Dr. Coyle, the former director of nuclear testing at Livermore, said
small tests were more likely to leak radioactivity than large ones,
because the intense heat and gigantic shock waves of bigger blasts
tended to melt and pulverize nearby rock into impregnable barriers.
- Jed
