The Teller–Ulam design is the technical concept behind thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs. The design relies on the radiation implosion principle, using thermal X-rays released from a
Physicist Edward Teller was for many years the chief force lobbying for research into developing fusion weapons.
A view of the "Sausage" device casing, with its instrumentation and cryogenic equipment attached. The long pipes were for measurement purposes; their function was to transmit the first radiation from the "primary" and "secondary" stages (known as "Teller light") to instruments just as the device was detonated, before being destroyed in the explosion. The man seated lower right shows scale.
Fireball of the Tsar Bomba (RDS-220), the largest weapon ever detonated (1961). Dropped from over 10 km and detonated at 4 km high, its fireball would have touched the ground were it not for the shock wave from the explosion reflecting off the ground and striking the bottom of the fireball, and nearly reached as high as the altitude of the deploying Tu-95 bomber. The RDS-220 test demonstrated how "staging" could be used to develop arbitrarily powerful weapons.
Photographs of warhead casings, such as this one of the W80 nuclear warhead, allow for some speculation as to the relative size and shapes of the primaries and secondaries in US thermonuclear weapons.
Stanisław Ulam
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Stanisław Marcin Ulam was a Polish-American mathematician who made important contributions in advancing the understanding of nuclear physics and computer science. He participated in the Manhattan Proj
History of the Teller–Ulam design
…This is in contrast to the simpler design and usage of nuclear fusion in boosted fission weapons. The design is named for scientists Edward Teller and Stanisław Ulam, who originally devised the concept in January 1951 for the United States nuclear weapons program, though their individual roles have been subsequently…
Ulam in c. 1945
The Scottish Café's building in Lviv, Ukraine, now houses the Szkocka Restaurant & Bar (named for the original Scottish Café).
Ulam's ID badge photo from Los Alamos National Laboratory
Stan Ulam holding the FERMIAC