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2009 comment

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Created a new article for Operation Fishbowl to replace the former redirect to the article on the much larger Operation Dominic program. This article has been badly needed to fill the gap between other articles such as the Starfish Prime article and the article about the much larger Operation Dominic nuclear testing program. Many other articles mention Operation Fishbowl without having an article to link to. Operation Fishbowl was responsible for many important scientific discoveries due to the uniqueness of some of the phenomena related to high-altitude nuclear explosions. These phenomena include high-altitude electromagnetic pulse and the generation of aurora in the opposite hemisphere of the high-altitude detonation. In addition, the Starfish Prime article is badly in need of a re-write, and this Operation Fishbowl article will make the re-write of that article, and others, much easier. X5dna (talk) 06:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Time Zones

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I have corrected the local time zone in the main table in the article. It had shown LINT, which is Line Island Time. The Line Islands are actually now on the opposite side of the International Date Line from Johnston Island (due to a change made in the 1990s) although the Line Islands are east of Johnston Island. (During the era of above-ground nuclear testing, the Line Islands were east of the International Date Line, and now they are on the west side.)

Johnston Island currently observes Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time, which is UT minus 10 hours, although I have seen conflicting information regarding whether this time was observed in 1962. Some sources indicate that, in 1962, Johnston Island Time was UT minus 11 hours. (In any case, Johnston Island has always been east of the International Date Line.) If anyone has conclusive information about the time zone that was observed by Johnston Island in 1962, please leave that reference on this talk page or give it as a reference in the main article. X5dna (talk) 10:27, 3 February 2014 (UTC

I found one of the references for Johnson Island time in 1962. It is: Hoerlin, Herman "United States High-Altitude Test Experiences: A Review Emphasizing the Impact on the Environment" Report LA-6405, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. October 1976.
This is one of the references in the main text. According to it, Johnston Island time was UT minus 11 hours, or Hawaii time minus one hour, at the time of the high-altitude tests of both 1958 and 1962. X5dna (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Great find, X5dna. I'll adjust my table data, "inventing" the name JIT for Johnston Island Time. It must have been a pain to be working both Johnston at -11 and Kiritimati at +14 at the same time during Dominic. SkoreKeep (talk) 16:37, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, Kiritimati wasn't on UT+14 at the time of the nuclear testing. They switched to the opposite side of the International Date Line on January 1, 1995 and became UT+14 on that date. See International_Dateline#Eastern_Kiribati.
What I found even more strange was that, according to the Herman Hoerlin report, the Hardtack Yucca test was done using Eniwetok Daylight Saving Time. I was surprised that a region that close to the equator would use DST. (They haven't used DST for the past several years.) I would like to get a second reference for the Eniwetok time for the Hardtack Yucca test. Herman Hoerlin should know what he is writing about with respect to Johnston Island, though, since he was actually on the island documenting things during all of the high-altitude testing. It looks like there were probably a lot of time zone changes in the Pacific in the first decades after World War II, especially as jurisdictions changed, and especially during the Pacific Proving Grounds era. X5dna (talk) 07:06, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The table on this page is generated by database

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The table on this page and the contents of any nuclear tests infobox are generated from a database of nuclear testing which I have maintained and researched for a number of years. The table is automatically generated from that database by a Visual Basic script, and then has, periodically, been inserted into the page manually. I began doing this in October of 2013.

Recently a user complained (politely) to me about the practice. It seems to him that it removes control from all editors besides myself over the content. He believes it is tantamount to WP:OWNED of the pages affected. He also points out that there is no public mention of the fact anywhere on wikipedia, and that is true, through my own oversight, until now.

There was no intent that the pages affected should be owned by myself; in fact, one of my reasons for building these pages was to solicit (in the wikipedia way) criticism and corrections to the data, perhaps additional references that I had been unable to locate. I have regenerated the tables twice in the days since they were originally placed. Each time I did so, I performed a diff between the current version and the version that I put up in the previous cycle; all corrections were then either entered into the database or corrected in the programming, as appropriate. As may be guessed, the programming corrections were frequent to start out as suggestions about the table formatting were raised, and most incorporated. I have not made judgements on the "usefulness" of corrections; all have been incorporated, or I have communicated directly with the editor to settle the matter. In fact it was in pursuing such a correction that this matter came up.

I am posting this comment on the Talk page of every page containing content which is so generated. If you would like to comment on this matter, please go to the copy on Talk:List of nuclear tests so the discussion can be kept together. I will also be placing a maintained template on each Talk page (if anyone would like also to be named as a maintainer on one or all pages, you are welcome). I solicit all comments and suggestions.

SkoreKeep (talk) 04:45, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Van Allen? Belts

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An early edition of the How and Why Wonder Book of Rockets and Missiles described how radiation belts (the Van Allen Belts perhaps?) had been created by early high-altitude tests. This was perhaps not true! But obviously someone in the USA believed it at the time. If we could source this little cold-war factoid it would be an interesting addition to whatever tests these were. I think they were before Fishbowl and closer to the North Pole but I could be wrong. Andrewa (talk) 00:40, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The tests referred to were mainly the Operation Fishbowl and Operation Argus series of US tests and the Soviet Project K nuclear tests. Fishbowl was above Johnston Island in the Pacific, Argus in the Southern Atlantic, and the K series above Kazakhstan, all temperate latitudes. The van Allen belts are radiation contained and shaped by the Earth's_magnetic_field. The tests certainly enhanced the belts radiation for a time, but the radiation in the belts leaks out into outer space and also onto Earth, and so within a year or so the belt essentially resumes normality. SkoreKeep (talk) 16:28, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • First point, by "radiation" we'd have to mean "charged particles".
The Van Allen belts are several and distant, well above the early '60s tests. Those tests were "high atmosphere", about 80km and below the Kármán line. As this is still within the atmosphere, particles up there don't stay up there too long. OTOH, the Van Allen belts are from well above the atmosphere, to about a quarter of the way to the Moon. They're long-lasting, although they do vary in their density over time, and have to be well clear of the atmosphere to survive.
The "test belts" were similar in behaviour to the Van Allen belts, but short-lived (because of the atmospheric effects). A "natural" belt (particles from the solar wind) wouldn't last (or even build up) that low down. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:09, 4 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Andy Dingley. Fascinating! Is this documented anywhere? Andrewa (talk) 07:56, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, SkoreKeep, that's exactly the information I was after... the exact tests to which the book referred, and confirmation that they were observed to have created new "radiation belts" as they were called at the time. Do you know of any sources that confirm this?
From memory, the book did raise the prospect that a new hazard had been created that might affect future space flights. It was early days. Andrewa (talk) 07:56, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The tests themselves are in lots of lists of the tests all over the internet. Look to the references on the various Wikipedia articles. As for the radiation belts they may have created, I'd just go straight to google and try searches to find documentation on them. I don't know what book you maybe referring to. Quite a time ago I had to write up an essay on what the high altitude tests did and what the practical results were, but I can't locate that now.
The belts are magnetically shaped and contained, but that means they're rather leaky. Particles enter and exit all the time. As Andy Dingley says, the natural belts are maintained by more-or-less constant solar wind, while the artificial ones just leaked away in time, pretty much within a year. SkoreKeep (talk) 20:13, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All very interesting, and none of it surprising... and it answers my minor question, the How and Why Wonder Book was wrong, as I thought (and I'm a bit surprised that you don't know what book you maybe referring to, see the post that started this section!).
But the major question is, how widely was it believed at the time? I've tried various Googles but no gold as of yet. I'll persevere. Thanks! Andrewa (talk) 04:42, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See the article List of artificial radiation belts for more information about this subject. X5dna (talk) 08:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Flat earth?

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Flat earthers have told me this ties with flat earth. How? 80.187.123.90 (talk) 18:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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