Terrorism panic goes too far at Area 51

[Ivan Seeking]

Main Question or Discussion Point

http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2003/MERC-Jun-26-Thu-2003/21596133.html

 

[selfAdjoint]

Mr. Knapp justifies his and Chuck's activities as "patriotic" and he carefully never mentions felony. Like it or not, the secrecy at Area 51 and elsewhere is supported by Federal law, and persistent lawbreakers, however justified they feel, are going to get tossed in the clink, and no judge in the land will buy their patriotism defence.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Mr. Knapp justifies his and Chuck's activities as "patriotic" and he carefully never mentions felony. Like it or not, the secrecy at Area 51 and elsewhere is supported by Federal law, and persistent lawbreakers, however justified they feel, are going to get tossed in the clink, and no judge in the land will buy their patriotism defence.

YUP!

 

[FZ+]

Really, though, what is at area 51 anyways? Considering the amount of public interest, the government must be pretty stupid to hide anything of reasonably secret value in there. It is really pretty much the least secret "top secret" sites in the world.

 

[PhysicsRocks88]

There couldn't possibly be trouble at area 51; it doesn't exist.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by PhysicsRocks88
There couldn't possibly be trouble at area 51; it doesn't exist.

Whoops. I forgot.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Back in the old days it was where they tested the stealth aircraft like the SR-51 and I believe the B-2. What they are doing now, I don't want to know, and I don't want al Quaida to know either. Being a nation means having some secrets from the public. You can't find out anywhere online the real secret of making a hydrogen bomb, although there are scads of pretenders.

 

[PhysicsRocks88]

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Back in the old days it was where they tested the stealth aircraft like the SR-51 and I believe the B-2. What they are doing now, I don't want to know, and I don't want al Quaida to know either. Being a nation means having some secrets from the public. You can't find out anywhere online the real secret of making a hydrogen bomb, although there are scads of pretenders.

It may or may not be that making a hydrogen bomb is not online. However, there are more than enough instructions in books.

It's no secret, just like it's no secret how to fly to pluto. It's the doing it part that is difficult.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by PhysicsRocks88
It may or may not be that making a hydrogen bomb is not online. However, there are more than enough instructions in books.

It's no secret, just like it's no secret how to fly to pluto. It's the doing it part that is difficult.

So what is your point? We all know this.

 

[FZ+]

I remember a case during the cold war where two students were used to test how easy it was to design a nuke with basic lab technology, and undergraduate level physics.

Read...
http://www.beloitdailynews.com/303/nuke17.htm [Broken]


Summary... they managed to design a implosion based nuke with the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Yes, when you say "students" they were physics graduate students, at least one of them had his Ph.D. And I never said that fission bombs were secret, they are straight physics as this example shows, which is why Korea and Iran and for all I know Nauroo are on the trail of them.

But getting a fission device to set of a thermonuclear device is not obvious or easy. It took the Americans and the Russians both several years to figure out - just on paper. And that was top physicsits like Teller and Sakharov. The trick is to get the trigger to do something to cause fusion in the microsecond before its explosion blows everything apart.