An engineer who trained US soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can’t detonate the type of bomb that was used in the Boston Marathon. It’s an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan.
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In the search for rogue nukes, researchers have discovered an unlikely tool: radio telescopes used by astronomers.
Working with astronomers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), researcher have analyzed historical data from the Very Large Array (VLA), a constellation of 27 radio telescopes near Socorro, New Mexico–and discovered that the VLA recorded a very similar pattern of disturbances during the last two American underground nuclear tests, which took place in Nevada in 1992.
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If we could see the future, we would be able to head off potential nuclear strikes. Now researchers have discovered how to use a crystal ball to protect homeland security: They’ve developed crystals that can be used to detect nuclear threats, radioactive material or chemical bombs. If this technology had been in place in Oslo, the bomb that was detonated in the center of the city might have been detected ahead of time.
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We recently wrote about bombs on a sunken ship near Londonthat could blowany time. Now an officer whose plane crashed in 1958 haslocated the lost hydrogen bomb that was aboard?it’s off thecoast of Savannah, Georgia.
Good Morning American reports that when Air Force lieutenantcolonel Derek Duke had to crash land his B-47 at Hunter AirForce Base in Georgia, he first jettisoned the nuclear bombit was carrying into the Atlantic Ocean. After searching fornine weeks, the Air Force declared the bomb “irretrievablylost,” but Duke never stopped looking for it?and now he’sfound it.
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