China has a new hydrogen pump. It is so destructive that it seems nuclear

The hydrogen pump is The most terrifying weapon created so far by the human being. A conventional atomic bomb as the ones that launched the USA about the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and with which The Second World War concluded In 1945, it triggers a very powerful explosion and the release of a huge amount of energy by firing a uranium -235 or plutonium -239 nucleus. However, a hydrogen pump is even more devastating.

It is also known as the thermonuclear weapon, and, very broadly, it uses a small atomic fission pump as a detonator device for induce fusion of the fuel composed of two hydrogen isotopes: deuterium and tritium. The energy that is able to release one of these bombs can be much higher than that of a conventional atomic weapon. In fact, the “Tsar bomb”which is the most powerful thermonuclear weapon so far, was thrown by the Soviet Union on the Barents Sea in 1961 and reached a power of 50 megatones.

China has just tested a new type of hydrogen pump

To understand with some precision how the bomb that China has developed works and why it is not a nuclear weapon it was necessary to briefly review what are the principles of operation of atomic bombs and thermonuclear weapons. The Complete Prohibition Treaty of Nuclear Essays approved by the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 1996 prohibits any type of nuclear test. Unfortunately, this agreement has not come into force because it has not been ratified by all countries that have nuclear weapons.

In any case, as I mentioned, the bomb that China has tried is not a nuclear weapon. Unlike the hydrogen pump in which we have investigated a few lines above this weapon uses as a magnesium hydride fuel (MGH₂) because it is a chemical compound Able to store hydrogen in solid way. This fuel is stable from a thermodynamic point of view, but it has a peculiarity: it reacts in a violent way when it comes into contact with water or acidic substances, releasing hydrogen.

Once its release has occurred, this chemical element enters into combustion, reaching a temperature of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. However, its destructive capacity is not the consequence only of the temperature reached by the fireball it produces; His devastating power is also linked to the fact that he calls her lasts for more than 2 seconds. It may seem little time, but it is not. It is a long time. In fact, the flame of a TNT explosion hardly lasts 0.12 s, so its destructive capacity is much lower.

Of course, the explosion of this hydrogen pump is approximately 60% less powerful than that of a TNT device in terms of pressure. What China has carried out for the moment is just a test, but this country already has a factory capable of producing 150 tons of magnesium hydride per year. It is evident that this nation is serious with this weapon.

Presumably it can be used to destroy drone swarms, end objectives endowed with state -of -the -art shields or ravage a wide area of ​​land, among other possibilities. Hopefully neither China nor any other country decides to use this type of weapons in the future. One last note: we do not know what the appearance of this pump is, although it weighs 2 kg, so it is not very large. Of course, the explosion you can see in the cover image of this article is real.

Image | 705 Research Institute | PFC Lukas J. Blom

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