Scientific Disciplines in Isolation, 2: Those with Less Obvious Connections to Nuclear War
Scientific Disciplines in Isolation, 2: Those with Less Obvious Connections to Nuclear War
Nuclear war analysts often compared nuclear detonations to volcanic eruptions. The connection between volcanic eruptions and climatic changes, suggested long ago by Benjamin Franklin and others, received serious interest from researchers only in the early twentieth century. Today, however, a direct comparison between volcanic eruptions and nuclear war is deemed inappropriate owing to the different absorption properties of sulfuric acid and silica dust than dark smoke. Furthermore, the distributions of particle sizes are different, and warfare would give rise to fine particles from a variety of sources rather than a single location. This chapter examines scientific disciplines with less obvious connections to nuclear war, including volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, planetary studies, dinosaur extinction, and the asteroid impact hypothesis.
Keywords: nuclear war, scientific disciplines, volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, planetary studies, dinosaur extinction, asteroid impact hypothesis
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