I see your July 4th fireworks, and raise you a nuclear explosion in space:
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:
“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’ve just discovered something new about the planet,” he told us.
Van Allen described how the Earth is surrounded by belts of high-energy particles — mainly protons and electrons — that are held in place by the magnetic fields. There are two Van Allen radiation belts that circle the Earth: an inner belt and an outer belt. The belts are contained by the Earth’s magnetic field.
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.“
Wow, sounds like a great plan! Go science! Go military!
In the words of Professor Fleming, “this is the first occasion I’ve ever discovered where someone discovered something and immediately decided to blow it up.”
