> Or it might have ignited a fusion reaction in the atmosphere and destroyed the world
Someone's got to explain to me how this was even remotely plausible.
We've had orders of magnitude more energetic events in earth's history that they would be aware of (dinosaur slaying asteroid for instance). These didn't manage to destroy the earth by turning the atmosphere into a fusion reactor. Surely they were aware of this.
So was the theory that neutrons are somehow special in a non-thermal way for causing fusion (not fission). And specifically that a concentrated neutron burst could somehow set off a chain reaction? And I guess that [edit: solar] neutrons weren't concentrated enough to cause this even at a detectable level?
Someone's got to explain to me how this was even remotely plausible.
We've had orders of magnitude more energetic events in earth's history that they would be aware of (dinosaur slaying asteroid for instance). These didn't manage to destroy the earth by turning the atmosphere into a fusion reactor. Surely they were aware of this.
So was the theory that neutrons are somehow special in a non-thermal way for causing fusion (not fission). And specifically that a concentrated neutron burst could somehow set off a chain reaction? And I guess that [edit: solar] neutrons weren't concentrated enough to cause this even at a detectable level?