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North Korean blast seems small for a nuke

News@nature.com looks at how much we know about the country's nuclear abilities.

On Monday morning, North Korea announced it had performed an underground test of a nuclear bomb, apparently warning China about 20 minutes beforehand. North Korea has been asked to step back from nuclear ambitions; the news of this first test has brought widespread international condemnation.

Read the briefing here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on October 09, 2006
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I was wondering whether the NASA SWIFT satellite which is a gamma ray burst detector would see anything from such an explosion. I went and checked for such a burst and the closest event timewise was a 01:18 UTC event. The USGS seismic event was at 01:35:28 UTC. Does anyone know for sure whether SWIFT or any other GRB satellite was in position to detect a signature?

Posted by: Gerald Pao | October 10, 2006 07:13 PM

Gamma rays have very low penetrating power and do they'll be absorbed by the ground before making it into the atmosphere, let alone into space; so Swift wouldn't pick up anything.

As it happens, gamma ray bursts were originally discovered in the 1960s by satellites designed to pick up the radiation from nuclear tests, but those satellites were looking for clandestine tests in orbit, where the gamma rays are a dead giveaway

Posted by: Oliver | October 11, 2006 03:20 PM

It's "pore over," not "pour over."

Posted by: John | October 13, 2006 01:21 AM

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