Atom blast at Yucca Flat, Nev. March 17, 1953
(Credit: U.S. National Archives) Odds are that not many folks out there have seen a nuclear explosion up close. And it turns out that most of the films we've seen are dubbed or contain stock blast sound effects, a point I wasn't aware before coming across a blog curated by Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science at the American Institute of Physics.
Most films of nuclear explosions got dubbed. If they do contain an actual audio recording of the test blast itself (something I'm often suspicious of -- I suspect many were filmed silently and have a stock blast sound effect), it's almost always shifted in time so that the explosion and the sound of the blast wave are simultaneous.
This is, of course, quite false: the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound, and the cameras are kept a very healthy distance from the test itself, so in reality the blast wave comes half a minute or so after the explosion. Basic physics that even a non-technical guy like me can understand.
Me included. So it is that the U.S. National Archives has digitized footage of an atomic blast which took place at Yucca Flat, Nev. March 17, 1953.
Listen to an atomic bomb explosion
Listen closely... [Read more]
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