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In 1961, the largest nuclear explosion in history shook the planet. Learn about the Soviet thermonuclear device that changed the course of the Cold War, and its effects that are still felt today.
They were 11:32 a.m. on October 30, 1961 when the world witnessed an unprecedented event: the test of the largest nuclear device ever built, carried out on the archipelago of Nova Zembla, north of the then Soviet Union. With a destructive power equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT, the detonation exceeded in 1.570 times the sum of the devices used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The prototype, known as “Tsar”, was so devastating that it was nicknamed “the second sun” by those who witnessed its flash.
Launched from a bomber at 10.500 meters of altitude, the device generated a mushroom cloud that reached impressive 64 km high, surpassing the stratosphere. The impact was felt in unimaginable ways: people 270 km away reported feeling the heat of the explosion on their skin, and windows were shattered more than 900 km from the epicenter — equivalent distance from São Paulo to Brasília.
How did we get here?
To understand how humanity came to conceive such a destructive device, we must go back to the end of the 19th century, when scientists discovered the process of nuclear fission — the splitting of heavy atoms such as uranium, which releases enormous amounts of energy. The energy released by a single gram of uranium can power 45 houses for a whole month.
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The first successful fission experiment was performed in 1938 by Otto Hahn, in Berlin. Then came the Second World War and with it the fear that Nazi Germany would develop a weapon of mass destruction. This threat led Albert Einstein to sign a letter to the president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning about the risk. The warning resulted in the creation of the Manhattan Project, which culminated in the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — marking the beginning of the nuclear age.
From Fission to Fusion: A New Era of Destruction
The nuclear devices used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were based on fission. The device tested in 1961 used the Nuclear fusion — that is, it was a thermonuclear device. In this type of weapon, two light atoms (usually hydrogen) are fused under absurdly high temperatures, similar to those in the core of the Sun (about 15 million °C), generating an even more intense release of energy.
To reach these temperatures on Earth, an initial fission stage is used (as in the first devices), whose explosion heats the second stage, initiating fusion. In the case of the Soviet device, the explosion temperature reached 100 million °C, six times hotter than the solar core.
A test with global consequences
The mushroom cloud is over 60 km high and visible hundreds of kilometers from ground zero.
The bomber that carried the device had to be painted with reflective paint to withstand the extreme heat. Even so, the crew received only 50% chance of survival. The detonation was so intense that generated an earthquake that circled the planet three times and released atmospheric debris that remains in our bodies to this day, in the form of radioactive isotopes.
Despite its power, the artifact was never created for direct military use. It was a symbolic message: a reminder to the world of what technology could do if used without limits.
Between horror and hope: the nuclear legacy
The nuclear age left deep scars, but also lessons. Today, the same science used to destroy is applied to create. nuclear energy, despite being controversial, is one of the most promising sources of clean and efficient electricity, especially with advances in controlled nuclear fusion — that could one day free us from our dependence on fossil fuels.
Mastering this technology safely could be the definitive step towards humanity becoming a advanced level energy civilizationAccording to Kardashev scale. But to do this, we need to learn from past mistakes.
