In order to work, it relied on a fission explosion that would trigger fusion in liquid deuterium, a heavy hydrogen isotope. At a. The detonation resulted in a massive explosion, equivalent to Accompanied by a brilliant light, the heat wave was felt immediately at distances of thirty to thirty-five miles.
The tremendous fireball, appearing on the horizon like the sun when half-risen, quickly expanded after a momentary hover time. The fireball reached about 3. The mushroom cloud was m. At that point in it was the largest nuclear explosion ever. Today it still ranks fourth largest among all U. News of the test leaked immediately , but went unconfirmed. A TIME reporter called the Atomic Energy Commission and a LIFE reporter called the Department of Defense, both requesting confirmation of an H-bomb less than three hours after the test—both reporters gave the correct time of detonation, which was highly secret information—but nonetheless news of Ivy Mike was not publicly acknowledged until April 1, , when a minute television film was released to the public.
Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives. Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies. Built under the Truman administration, Ivy Mike was - at its construction - the largest, heaviest and most powerful bomb in existence.
The device detonated in the test, nicknamed "The Sausage", was the first true hydrogen bomb ever tested, that is, the first thermonuclear device built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion. Hydrogen bombs rely on nuclear fusion to source their destructive power.
Two atoms of smaller elements, like Hydrogen, combine to make an atom of a larger, heavier element; thereby releasing immense amounts of nuclear energy. The problem is that such a process requires tremendous heat and pressure to be initiated. In , Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller produced a design that could theoretically generate such conditions within a bomb and initiate nuclear fusion. The idea was to put a bomb on top of a bomb Fig. The heat and force thus generated would be channeled downwards and hit the store of hydrogen - the second bomb - placed beneath Fig.
Ivy Mike was the test created to prove Teller-Ulam's brainchild. It used a TX-5 fission bomb as the primary stage, and a secondary stage consisting of liquid deuterium fusion fuel stored in a cylindrical Dewar flask. Surrounded by a natural uranium tamper weighing more than 5 metric tons, the Dewar had a plutonium "spark-plug" rod running down its center that ignited the fusion reaction.
The inside surface of the casing was lined with sheets of lead and polyethylene to form the radiation channel that conducted heat from the primary bomb to the secondary source. To keep the liquid deuterium from evaporating, over 18 tonnes of cryogenic cooling was attached to the assembly. Before Ivy Mike, no one exactly knew what a man-made thermonuclear explosion would create; only hypotheses existed.
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