Word: megaton
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...amount of uranium 238 in the outer layer of ABM warheads and add more tritium, which raises the temperature of the blast, to the fissionable material. As a result, nearly 80% of the energy released by the explosion of the new warheads, believed to be in the one-megaton range, is in the form of high-energy X rays. To extend the lethal range of these rays, which are quickly absorbed or attenuated when traveling through air, the ABM warhead will be carried high above the atmosphere by the new Spartan missile and exploded in space in the vicinity...
...instant of the nuclear explosion (which lasts only five ten-millionths of a second), X rays traveling at the speed of light emanate from the center of the blast. Although their effect diminishes sharply at increasing distances even in the vacuum of space,* the X rays from a one-megaton blast are intense enough to destroy an ICBM caught within a sphere extending two miles from the exploding ABM warhead...
...only a small portion of X-ray energy is used to form the plasma sheath. Most of the remainder is converted into a shock wave that races through the missile. At a distance of two miles, the impact of the shock wave on a 6½-ft. dia. 30-megaton warhead would be equivalent to the explosion of 2 or 3 Ibs. of TNT within the missile, which may be enough to set off some of the lens-shaped charges of conventional explosives inside (see diagram). These, in turn, would cause the remaining lens-shaped explosives to detonate. Because...
...lead held until the third quarter. Eli quarterback Dave Henley, wasn't moving well in short spurts, so he went to the 20-megaton pass. Henley hit Earl Downing for a 53 yard TD. The quarterback carried around the left for the two point conversion...
Nature's most catastrophic events are supernovae-rare stars that burst with a brilliance 100 million times more luminous than the sun, releasing the equivalent of 200 trillion trillion 100-megaton hydrogen bombs. Swiss Astronomer Paul Wild has just added a new one to the stellar log-the first supernova seen from the earth in the unnamed galaxy N.G.C. 4189 in the constellation Virgo...