[HN Gopher] Los Alamos is capturing real-time images of explosio...
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Los Alamos is capturing real-time images of explosions at 7mths of
a second
Author : LAsteNERD
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-08-05 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lanl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lanl.gov)
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| Fascinating look into the dynamic imaging capabilities at Los
| Alamos National Lab--essentially, how the U.S. is able to analyze
| nuclear-level explosive events without actually conducting
| nuclear tests.
|
| The Lab uses multiple systems to image these high-speed events:
|
| * pRad uses proton radiography to get 20-40 frames of a
| detonation, with material-level resolution based on density.
|
| * DARHT uses dual-axis x-ray imaging to create 3D snapshots from
| two angles, ideal for testing whether the computational models
| built from pRad hold up.
|
| * Scorpius (in development) will take this a step further by
| using subcritical plutonium in a new accelerator at NNSS,
| capturing multiple high-resolution frames just nanoseconds apart.
|
| The fact that they can tailor experiments based on frame-by-frame
| behavior of individual materials under explosive stress feels
| like the real-world version of "bullet time" physics modeling.
| The margins of error come down to billionths of a second.
| josh2600 wrote:
| Thank you for contextualizing this. We are truly living in a
| wild part of the space time continuum.
| sci-designer wrote:
| Wow, this is wild. billionths of a second?!
| scrlk wrote:
| I'm reminded of Grace Hopper's famous nanoseconds lecture:
| https://youtu.be/gYqF6-h9Cvg?t=78
| LosAlamosNerd wrote:
| Oh, I haven't watched that before.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 1 ns * c = 1 ft, to put in perspective: 7 ms * c is 1.3
| miles.
|
| (Protip: just type "7 ms * c in miles" into Google)
| chasd00 wrote:
| 7 ms is also the time it takes light to travel about 1,400
| Ariana Grandes.
| rkomorn wrote:
| In which direction? Presumably side to side?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Due to relativity the length of Ariana Grande will appear
| to change such that all observers agree on the same speed
| of light.
| rkomorn wrote:
| But... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_to_Side
| BearOso wrote:
| Not quite. The article says hundreds of nanoseconds, which
| would be in the 10 millionths range. Or if you take the title
| literally, 143ns per image. That's in line with the fastest
| CCDs, so not unimaginable.
| mapt wrote:
| "Millionths", abbreviated "mths of a second" here for...
| reasons...
|
| Known to the entire world, including American STEM people, as a
| microsecond.
| bombela wrote:
| Anything to avoid using the proper units, you wouldn't want
| the Americans audience to be enlightened wouldn't you.
| stavros wrote:
| What irks me is that they could have abbreviated "7mths of
| a second" to just "7us" while ADDING clarity!
| jjk166 wrote:
| 7ms is 7 milliseconds. Unfortunately 7ms is difficult to
| type and there isn't a good universal way to abbreviate
| it in ascii.
| stavros wrote:
| Eh, 7us is fine.
| dez11de wrote:
| Pics or it didn't happen.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You could watch it, but you'd die of natural causes before it
| finished
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| depending on the experiment, could be unnatural causes.
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
| paradox460 wrote:
| For more on this, look at the DAHRT project. It occurred up the
| hill a bit from LANSCE, in DX instead, but did similar things
| tandr wrote:
| Pardon for the old meme here, but... "Pics, or did not
| happened!"?
| meager_wikis wrote:
| Every time I read about one of the national labs doing this
| research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I
| feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean
| this output will fade away in time.
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| I worry about this, but these capabilities are hard to replace.
| This kind of research hasn't historically been something you
| can outsource to private companies. Or--at least--it hasn't
| been until now. Even if this administration wants to open that
| door, the infrastructure investment required for the
| accelerators alone is staggering: easily in the multiple
| billions.
| sfilmeyer wrote:
| Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but you seem like you're
| talking about privatizing this research whereas the other
| commenter seems to be talking about public cuts leading to a
| reduction of research. Just because something gets cut
| doesn't mean it gets outsourced elsewhere.
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| I guess my point is that it's hard to simply cut research
| that's essential for certifying that the stockpile is safe
| and works. I'll avoid making any predictions, because who
| the hell knows what's going to happen, but I think dynamic
| imaging work may prove a tough target for DOGE.
| toast0 wrote:
| Why not just rubber stamp the certification and save all
| that money?
| gosub100 wrote:
| What if DOGE savings create more money for important science?
| What if it led to meaningless bureaucrats being given the slip
| so that skilled scientists could be hired with the savings?
| Would you support DOGE then? Your answer to this question
| determines whether you believe in ideology or data.
| baxtr wrote:
| Can you share any data on your "What ifs"?
| gameman144 wrote:
| > Your answer to this question determines whether you believe
| in ideology or data.
|
| I mean, you're _technically_ right, but that doesn 't
| invalidate anything the parent commenter said.
|
| I could equally ask "What if it turned out that turpentine
| was actually _healthier_ than water?".
|
| Like, yeah, if that assertion turned out to be the case and
| you rejected the new data, you'd be following dogma rather
| than data. That doesn't mean that the assertion is likely to
| _actually_ be true though.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >What if DOGE savings create more money for important
| science?
|
| >Your answer to this question determines whether you believe
| in ideology or data.
|
| I've upvoted your comment to give you time to show us your
| data.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| A recent senate report says the government spent >$21
| billion in the last 6 months on salaries for people who
| cannot work because of DOGE.
|
| There's one data point against the original comments
| assumption or intention
| baxtr wrote:
| Interesting reason to upvote. Would have never thought of
| it but kinda makes sense!
| dekhn wrote:
| If there was a coherent plan in DOGE to make more money
| available to do important science, maybe that could work.
| However, nothing DOGE has done has shown any sort of logic in
| terms of outcome maximization. The collection of activities
| (partly DOGE, partly Trump org) applied to scientists has
| been super-impactful (in an entirely negative way) for
| science we already know is important
|
| The pool of skilled scientists to be hired shrinks when you
| cut funding in arbitrary ways.
| nemomarx wrote:
| has doge actually saved any money overall? it seems like
| spending is still up, so
| e2le wrote:
| Basic research is important science and is in societies best
| interest to support it.
|
| A quote from Carl Sagan's, Demon Haunted World.
|
| > We are rarely smart enough to set about on purpose making
| the discoveries that will drive our economy and safeguard our
| lives. Often, we lack the fundamental research. Instead, we
| pursue a broad range of investigations of Nature, and
| applications we never dreamed of emerge. Not always, of
| course. But often enough.
|
| https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| He's absolutely right. Long-shot research with little to no
| immediate applicability has been the basis for innumerable
| breakthroughs over the years. If DOGE existed back in the
| 70s, 80s, or 90s, we wouldn't have mRNA vaccines[0],
| Google[1] (or the modern internet for that matter[2]), and
| many modern cancer treatments[3], to name but a few
| examples of research that would have been easy to brand as
| wasteful and not "important science".
|
| [0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9975718/
|
| [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016
| 975529...
|
| [2]: https://www.nsf.gov/impacts/internet
|
| [3]: https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/impact-nih-
| research/improving-...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Your framing of the question suggests you believe in
| ideology, because you're posing a purity based based on
| hypotheticals alone. Where _is_ the actual data for DOGE, in
| any department doing science?
| gosub100 wrote:
| That's a great way to always be right: just claim the data
| that disputes your position is non-existent.
| wewtyflakes wrote:
| You have not made an argument based on data, you made an
| argument based on having wishful thinking about Doge and
| what the government will do with "the savings".
| mhh__ wrote:
| Show me someone without ideology and I'll sell you a clock
| in London
| jjk166 wrote:
| What if we found leprechauns and they gave us their pots of
| gold, think of all the scientists we could hire then!
| Certainly we should be prioritizing the leprechaun search.
| gopher_space wrote:
| There's no scenario where messing with a working system
| people rely on and then getting rid of everyone who
| understood it will produce a savings. What DOGE has done
| would simply destroy a corporation, and we know this because
| we've helped corporations perform this kind of system
| analysis and understand the cost of change.
|
| We're at a point right now where we can't even calculate the
| damage Musk has done, where the discovery process on that
| issue _alone_ will be a multi-million years long effort. We
| 're looking at large-scale remediation projects on every
| system Trump gave him access to because the cost of not doing
| that is functionally _unknowable_. E.g. every table DOGE had
| the ability to change is now a legal liability _per row_.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What if DOGE savings_
|
| These savings are not material. And if they were they
| wouldn't matter--the Congress blew out our deficit by
| trillions irrespective of anything DOGE did.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| What if doge does something it's not doing? Yeah that might
| make it good, but they're not.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I don't think defense budget is facing cuts. They are getting
| even more money.
| dralley wrote:
| The national labs are absolutely getting budget cuts.
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| For sure. But depending on what Congress does, think
| defense budgets could grow, which would mean more money for
| defense-positioned Labs like Los Alamos.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Nuclear research is done under the Department of Energy,
| not DoD. Los Alamos is a DoE lab, and the DoE received
| major cuts in the recent budget bill, though that shifts
| energy efficiency research into weapons research and net
| increases lab funding.
| bobmarleybiceps wrote:
| I have heard that their internal review processes for
| papers have started telling people to not say stuff like
| "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an
| alternative energy source that's environmentally
| friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from
| talking about climate stuff at all lol.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me. Getting rid of the other research
| programs won't be great for the labs though. The weapons
| research has a bunch of weird incentives because of the
| geopolitical context it exists in. The goal usually isn't
| to operationalize research, it's to have credible
| evidence of a functioning nuclear program, maintain the
| arsenal, and act as a jobs program for nuclear physics.
| The other programs act as a way to operationalize things
| in socially acceptable ways. If you get rid of them, I
| suspect the labs aren't going to be better-off for it
| even with more funding.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| Los Alamos is an NNSA lab; NNSA is a semi-autonomous
| component of DOE and its weapons activities budget is
| distinct from the general DOE budget. NNSA's
| nonproliferation budget has been cut but they're still
| very well funded on the weapons side even if they've lost
| quite a lot of people in the last few months.
|
| The national labs are organized under the Office of
| Science (17 labs), NNSA (LANL, LLNL, Sandia), the Office
| of Nuclear Energy (INL), the Office of Environmental
| Management (Savannah River), Office of Fossil Energy
| (NETL), and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
| Energy (NREL). Some offices are doing better than others
| re: funding in the current environment!
| dttze wrote:
| That's going to the MIC grift though.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| It's for bombs, it's untouchable.
| elygre wrote:
| It might end up financing a gold-plated airplane for a
| library.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Labs like this also have huge black budget spending that we
| don't get to see.
|
| I'm guessing we'll see more hidden spending in future as the
| nukes and the engineers that made them get older. its worth
| asking if they even work (in some countries arsenals at least)
| bombela wrote:
| 7mths? What unit is that. Did they mean 7ms resolution? How is
| that special? I see youtubers doing nanoseconds.
|
| edit: here is the important information in this article.
|
| > Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada
| National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that
| can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and
| capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart.
|
| So 0.1ms or 100ns temporal resolution 3D X-ray.
| tngranados wrote:
| The first line of the articles says "seven-millionths of a
| second", which would be 1/7ms or 0,14ms. They also mention that
| the camera shot 16 frames in that period, so that would be once
| every 0,00875ms or once every 8,75ns
|
| Youtubers are a couple of magnitudes away from that, AFAIK
| SECProto wrote:
| I would say you described "one seven millionth" of a second
| (1/7,000,000 s)
|
| "Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7ms). They take 20
| to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given
| camera might be as low as 1.4ms per frame.
| alberth wrote:
| Saying ~140k photos per second would have been a more
| understanding stat if only the article framed it that way.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yes, but they said seven-millionths of a second, not seven
| millionths of a second. Technically they're right that
| that's what it means, but I'd expect an editor to recommend
| against that phrasing in favor of the one you used to avoid
| confusion.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, it's true that the article says "seven-millionths".
|
| I would guess it's a lot more likely that this is an
| editing failure, introducing a hyphen where no hyphen
| should be, than that they meant to divide a second into
| seven million equal parts.
|
| For one thing, as SECProto alludes to, English would
| normally require you to say "less than a seven-millionth
| of a second" if that was what you meant. There's no such
| thing as saying "less than weeks". You have to specify
| less than how many weeks. less than
| (seven) (millionths of a second)
|
| ordinary grammar, ordinary unit choice
| less than (seven millionths of a second)
|
| improper grammar, bizarre unit choice.
| thfuran wrote:
| I agree based on the whole sentence in the article that
| that was probably an editing error.
| montag wrote:
| I understood the article just fine, despite the spurious
| hyphen. The HN title could be improved immensely if it just
| said 7 microseconds.
| rhdunn wrote:
| The slow mo guys did a video [1] at 10 trillion FPS. They
| also recently did another video [2] at 5,000,000 FPS. Their
| other videos vary between 50,000 FPS and 850,000 FPS.
|
| Edit: They mention in [2] that the Phantom camera they have
| can go to a 95ns exposure up to 1,750,000 FPS.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ys_yKGNFRQ&pp=ygUMc2xvdy
| Btb...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTkZ36g4GOs
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 7 months/seconds - Its both a dimensionless quantity _and a
| variable_. Very impressive. Los Alamos is taking the USA 's
| 'anything but metric units for measuring' to new levels.
| isatty wrote:
| I read it as months. Super confusing.
| abainbridge wrote:
| While we're nit-picking the title, what does the "real-time"
| part mean? How would it be different if it wasn't real-time?
|
| Dictionary.com defines "real-time" like as, "the actual time
| during which a process or event occurs", eg "along with much of
| the country, he watched events unfolding in real time on TV".
| Or in the domain of Computing, "relating to a system in which
| input data is processed within milliseconds so that it is
| available virtually immediately as feedback to the process from
| which it is coming, e.g. a missile guidance system might have
| "real-time signal processing".
|
| Neither definition work here. It seems like they took a
| sequence of pictures very quickly, and then, some time later,
| played them back at an enormously slowed-down rate.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Error 404.
| cco wrote:
| Why are science communicators so consistently missing the mark?
|
| Is it not obvious that if you're writing an article proclaiming
| to capture _explosions_ at 7mths of a second, people want to see
| some pictures of said explosions?
|
| Clearly they're understanding that explosions are a hook to grab
| the reader's attention, but then they just don't include any of
| the resulting pictures?
|
| C'mon y'all! We need to do better here!
| LAsteNERD wrote:
| https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-sto...
| junon wrote:
| 404 for me in Germany.
| qingcharles wrote:
| https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-
| sto...
| LosAlamosNerd wrote:
| http://bit.ly/45hDNnK
| ooterness wrote:
| Page not found :(
| qingcharles wrote:
| https://www.lanl.gov/media/publications/1663/prad-future-
| sto...
| nxobject wrote:
| I imagine this falls under the remit of "nuclear warhead research
| without actual warheads".
| rtkwe wrote:
| > When it's ready, experiments at Scorpius will be similar to
| DARHT but with the added complexity of using subcritical
| amounts of plutonium instead of surrogate materials.
|
| They basically explicitly say that without just coming out and
| saying it. This kind of hyper fast explosion analysis and
| photography is a big part of making implosion bombs work
| properly.
|
| edit: actually they just say it, they don't have to be coy
| everyone knows the US and other countries study this and it
| doesn't violate the NTBT because it's sub critical.
|
| > essential to the Lab's stockpile stewardship mission because
| it helps scientists test and understand the fundamental
| characteristics of materials and explosive events to inform
| computational models and analyses without ever detonating an
| actual weapon.
| getpost wrote:
| It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but I'm reminded of the
| ~10^12 fps (1.7 ps exposures) demonstrated in work at MIT[0],
| which was for a completely different application.
|
| [0] https://web.media.mit.edu/~raskar/trillionfps/
|
| EDIT: Video with explanation.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk
| avodonosov wrote:
| Are the images available?
| amelius wrote:
| Do the images match the simulations?
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(page generated 2025-08-05 23:00 UTC)