Fergie's Tech Blog

Supercomputers Help, But Can't Mimic a Real Nuclear Blast

An AP newswire article by Angelina Charlton, via USA Today, reports that:

While North Korea was testing a nuclear bomb, France was verifying its nuclear arms, too — with a battalion of soundless, black, cabinet-sized calculators buried beneath a meadow.

The world's established nuclear powers have for the past decade foregone real test blasts for the onscreen kind, harnessing the world's most powerful computers to simulate as best as possible what happens when a nuclear bomb explodes.

So why should any nation test-blast weapons anymore if supersimulators can do the job? Because, nuclear experts say, it has turned out to be tougher than most people thought to mimic the "real thing."

posted by Fergie @ 10/17/2006 11:30:00 AM