So … sushi for the crew at dinner tonight?
Seriously though, the damage to marine life must have been catastrophic.
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Far less yield individually and total (hey, this was 1946), but a lot more ships “tested”, and 4.8 kg of unfissioned plutonium (plus 1.4 kg of fission products) scattered around the area to boot, yay.
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Proving again that our Navy has nothing useful to do except harass marine life.
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And inspire a whole new genre of monster movies!
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Yeah, 18 kilokilograms. They got all confused. I mean, there’s a word for a thousand kilograms: metric ton.
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I take issue with that statement on multiple levels. I’ve edited and reedited a response and ultimately decided that simple disagreement suffices. Axiomatic statements like that are pithy, but only rarely have any substance.
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Well, there’s no bonus, so they have to settle for a medal. They’ll pin it in the middle.
US Navy starts an earthquake to see how its newest carrier withstands combat conditions
Following the recent decision by the United States Air Force to assassinate four snails and 90 giant clams in the name of missile research, the US Navy obviously felt that it, too, should be doing something faintly bizarre with its shiny, expensive equipment.
[…]
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I agree. And in fact our Navy has a lot to do, or rather provides a lot of useful power-projection capabilities. But this test seems egregious.
Or even easier: tonnes
Pretty good Pynchon introduction. Gravity’s Rainbow is the masterpiece but V. is a treasure too.
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Which was inspired by a real tragedy at sea. Involving a fishing boat and H-bomb test
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Or even easier: Megagrams (the proper metric unit).
Calling a Megagram a “metric Ton” is like calling a liter a “metric Quart.”
That’s bad enough, but the ton/tonne/long ton/short ton business and all the predictable confusion that ensues is inexcusable.
“Megagram” is precise and unambiguous.
(I mean, come on: two different measures that are almost (but not quite) the same mass, that differ only in spelling but are pronounced the same? Sure, now there’s a good idea… /s)
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Ooh, ooh, how many fluid ounces of water would an ounce of TNT displace when exploded? And how much would that water weigh in ounces?
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Astrronomers describe supernovas in terms of ergs and dynes.
An erg is approximately the amount of work done (or energy consumed) by one common house fly performing one “push up”, the leg-bending dip that brings its mouth to the surface on which it stands and back up. source
So, you have Core collapse supernovas radiating 10^53 ergs/sec worth of neutrinos, etc etc. Granted, it’s still impressive as 10^46 joules, but still.
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I see. And do these same astronomers measure distance in beard-seconds? @nixiebunny
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Do ships experience metal fatigue like aircraft? It would be ironic if surviving the test explosion stressed the metal hull so much it couldn’t sustain another.
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I always recommend Lot 49 as an intro to the weirdness that is Pynchon without forcing to commit to hundreds of pages.
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I was fascinated years ago in a civil engineering course by the term “kip” for one thousand pounds, presumably deriving from ‘kilopound’.
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