This is 4K video. Open it up to full screen. It repeats twice…each time slower motion.
Annually, the world produces and stores enormous amounts of ammonium nitrate—more than 20 million tons in 2017. But for the compound to figure in an explosion of this magnitude, chemists and explosives experts say a lot has to go wrong.
The most interesting thing to me – technically – is noting the shock wave travels through the earth, through solids…faster than it does through the air. You can see near(er) objects judder frame-by-frame in the last slo-mo before the airborne blast arrives in the vicinity of the videographer.
No surprise there. Just didn’t think of it till I saw it.
” Normally, Betelgeuse is among the 10 brightest stars in the sky. However, the red giant began dimming in October, and by mid-December, the star had faded so much it wasn’t even in the top 20, Villanova University’s Edward Guinan reported in an Astronomer’s Telegram.
“Now the outline of Orion is noticeably different with Betelgeuse so faint,” he says…
” To be clear, dimming alone isn’t all that odd for a star like Betelgeuse. It’s what’s known as a variable star, and its shifts in brightness have been closely studied for decades. However, it is unusual for one of the sky’s most prominent points of light to fade so noticeably, prompting scientists to consider the possibility that something more exciting could be about to happen: Betelgeuse might explode and die, briefly blazing brighter than the full moon before vanishing from our night sky forever.
Huge, red stars like Betelgeuse live fast and die violently, exploding in stellar events called supernovae that are visible across vast distances. So, while Betelgeuse is a relatively young star—only about 8.5 million years old—astronomers know that it is nearing the end of its life.
Don’t hold your breath, waiting. Our Fake President will stop lying – or the GOP will tax wealth — before this star probably goes supernova.
Roadside condom vending machine destroyed by the thieves
❝A man died on Christmas Day in Germany after he was hit in the head by a flying piece of metal from a condom machine that he and two accomplices blew up in an apparent robbery attempt…
❝The 29-year-old man was taken to hospital in the western town of Schöppingen, near the Dutch border, by the two other men who fled the scene of the explosion in a car, leaving behind condoms and money scattered around the gutted vending machine.
❝The two men told hospital officials that their friend had fallen down the stairs, injuring his head. Suspicious of their story, the officials called the police.
During questioning, police said, one of them admitted that the three had blown up the condom machine, and that their fellow conspirator was hit in the head by metal as he tried to take cover.
The USS The Sullivans got more than it expected during a test launch of a SM-2 “Standard” missile…The DDG-68 ship was sailing off the coast of Virginia performing when the missile was boosted out of the Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer’s Vertical Launch System cell and the SM-2 detonated in spectacular fashion…
Here is the official Navy statement:
On July 18 at approximately 9 a.m. (EDT) a Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) test missile exploded after suffering a malfunction as it was fired from the guided-missile destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) during a planned missile exercise off the coast of Virginia. There were no injuries and only minor damage to the port side of the ship resulting from missile debris. The ship returned to Naval Station Norfolk for assessment. An investigation into the malfunction has been ordered and is being conducted by the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems, which is part of Naval Sea Systems Command. It is too early to determine what, if any, effect this will have on the ship’s schedule.
Click to enlarge
I like the understated style of that last sentence. Wonder what they’d say if it took out the aft end of the ship?
The explosion was seen nearly 200 miles away, the shock waves felt practically 100 miles away, and 70 years later, America’s first atomic bomb test – code-named Trinity – still reverberates in the tiny towns and secluded hamlets that ring the edges of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico…
New Mexicans and their families who lived downwind of the Trinity fallout zone say the U.S. government should be held accountable for poor health, high rates of cancer, and early death like downwinders at other nuclear sites in Utah, Nevada and Arizona. However, with little to no medical proof definitively linking their illnesses and the blast, a rapidly aging and dying population, and little support from Congress, the hope for compensation, or even an apology, may take another generation to materialize.
Their story began…70 years ago. On the early morning of July 16, 1945, there was a bright flash and massive explosion at the Alamagordo Air Base at White Sands. The first test of an atomic weapon had occurred. However, officials were quick to cover up what had happened. The Associated Press reported that “a remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded.”
The AP also reported that “weather conditions affecting the content of the gas shells exploded by the blast may make it desirable for the Army to temporarily evacuate a few civilians from their homes.”
According to a Centers for Disease Control report, those civilians were never warned nor evacuated. Many locals reported “a white substance like flour” that fell for days. The night after the test, it rained; the water was collected in cisterns by locals and consumed later on.
“There have been plenty of people who’ve said: ‘why didn’t you move away?’” said Tina Cordova, a cofounder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. “We didn’t know, first of all, we were at risk of anything. And by the time we knew were all so overexposed.”
Cordova is recovering from thyroid cancer and says her father passed away nearly two years ago after a long cancer battle that ended with heavy facial surgery…
Cordova has been conducting surveys and compiling the medical histories of every downwinder she can find. The file is huge…
Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) of 1990, uranium mill workers, miners, transporters, and on-site workers in states across the West are all eligible for compensation. In Nevada, Utah and Arizona, downwinders and on-site workers at nuclear test sites — including those working at White Sands Missile Range — are also eligible. However, New Mexican downwinders are not covered. They hope New Mexico Senator Tom Udall will make it right.
“New Mexicans have been left out for a long time,” Udall said. “We hope there will be a situation where justice comes to this case and people be compensated and they will get that apology from the United States of America.”
Sometimes I have to wonder why our government, especially military types, beancounters in Congress, take pride in being such miserable, low-life human beings. We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. Our government will drop billions on some of the most useless, backwards hardware, politics, agencies and other foolishness. But, when it comes it compensating ordinary folks who “probably” had their lives ruined by criminal behavior by official decisions – perish the thought we give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Contemptible behavior. Disgusting. Another example to the rest of the world how little this powerful nation actually cares about our own citizens – much less the population of workers and farmers, citizens of this planet outside our borders.
Most folks in New Mexico who study history beyond batting averages for the Albuquerque Isotopes know this story. RTFA for tales of just a few of the individuals and families destroyed by the side effects of that test.
UPDATE: NM Senator Tom Udall is battling with Senate blivets and backwards chickenhawks to aid Tularosa downwinders.
The new design offers a fresh solution to the engineering challenge that the Harvard Gazette claims “has plagued soft robotics: the integration of rigid and soft materials.”
“The vision for the field of soft robotics is to create robots that are entirely soft,” said senior author Robert J. Wood. “But for practical reasons, our soft robots typically have some rigid components — things like batteries and control electronics. This robot is a demonstration of a method to integrate the rigid components with the body of the soft robot through a gradient of material properties, eliminating an abrupt hard-to-soft transition that is often a failure point.”…
To initiate movement, the robot inflates its pneumatic legs to tilt its body in the direction it wants to go. Then butane and oxygen are mixed and ignited, exploding the robot into the air.
Perhaps we could design something like this on a smaller scale to hunt grasshoppers. Or something like that.
CALAIS, Maine — A local man was killed instantly Saturday when he placed a fireworks mortar tube on his head and set it off…
Devon Staples, 22, of Calais was with friends in a friend’s back yard on South Street when the accident occurred at approximately 10 p.m. The explosion caused a fatal head injury and Staples died instantly, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
A train derailment Monday afternoon in West Virginia caused multiple explosions and a massive fire, and the CSX-owned train is leaking crude oil into the Kanawha River…
Nearly three hours after that declaration, the fire was still burning, and 1,000 people had been evacuated, according to Lawrence Messina, the state’s public safety spokesman…
At least one home near the derailment in Fayette County caught fire and was destroyed, Messina said.
The derailment happened about 1:20 p.m. Eastern time as the 109-car train carrying Bakken crude oil was going from North Dakota to Yorktown, Va., Messina said. As many as 15 train cars were involved in the derailment and fire…
Crude oil from at least one of the rail cars is leaking into the Kanawha River, Messina said.
West Virginia American Water shut down its Montgomery treatment plant because the facility draws water from an area near the incident…
The plant will not be reopened until it is confirmed the water is safe, it said.
“Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts.”
Unexploded military ordnance detonated Saturday afternoon near Chaparral, NM, critically injuring two El Paso, TX, women who were looking for scrap metal…Apparently this was something they tossed into their pickup truck.
The Otero County Sheriff’s Office said the ordnance went off near Landing Stripin Road just west of U.S. Highway 54 about 1 p.m.
The kind of ordnance that exploded was not identified.
The two El Paso women were airlifted to University Medical Center and are in critical condition, hospital officials said.
Fort Bliss and Department of Defense officials detonated the remaining unexploded ordnance in an area off of the highway around 6:30 p.m. after removing it from a vehicle…
Jethro Armijo, a University Medical Center spokesman, said two women arrived at the hospital at about 2 p.m. Saturday…Armijo did not provide any specifics about the injuries. He said one of the women being treated at the hospital is 50 years old. The age of the other woman is not known, Armijo said…
Officials reopened the highway sometime between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.
“We did close the highway for the general safety of the public because we did have the unexploded ordnance,” Undersheriff Daron Syling said. “For anybody driving past that area we had to respect that blast radius of the potential danger of it. We had to shut it down.”
Fort Bliss has had Tank and Artillery battalions stationed there over the years. They could have anything up to and including 155mm howitzer rounds laying around unexploded from training exercises.
You’d think even the dumbest of crooks might recognize something that looks like a helluva big bullet to be dangerous, eh?
Eideard 