Why does a mushroom shaped cloud form after a nuclear bomb explosion?
Ashish Nath Shahdeo, Bellary, Karnataka ANSWER 1: When a nuclear weapon explodes, there is a rapid release of a large amount of energy within a small volume. This results in significant increase in temperature and pressure. The temperature may be a few tens of million degrees and pressure a few million times the atmospheric pressure. At this temperature, all the material present in the weapon will be converted into hot compressed gases. Within a fraction of a millionth of a second of the explosion, the weapon’s residues emit large amounts of energy mainly in the form of X-rays. The surrounding atmosphere absorbs this energy. This results in the formation of a blazing, highly luminous, spherical mass of air and gaseous weapon residues called the fireball. Within an extremely short time after the explosion, the fire ball from a high yield nuclear weapon will be about 130 metres across increasing to about 1700 metres in ten seconds. The fireball expands rapidly engulfing the surrounding a
