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From: rpw3@redwood.UUCP (Rob Warnock)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.misc
Subject: Re: Those funny lines
Message-ID: <64@redwood.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Oct-84 07:36:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: redwood.64
Posted: Sat Oct 13 07:36:25 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Oct-84 01:47:55 EDT
References: <170@hocsj.UUCP> <412@amd.UUCP>
Organization: Rob Warnock, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 23
Xref: 1839 5970

+---------------
| Air can only move and compress at a limited rate when compared to
| the speed of the shock wave from the nuclear explosion.  As a result
| standing waves ('pressure fronts') are created in the air.  At the
| dividing line between the high and low portion of the standing
| wave 'clouds' are formed, thus your vapor trails.  
+---------------

Gee, and I always thought those vapor trails were the smoke-emitting
weather rockets they shot up just before the blast to create visible
markers so the pretty pictures could record the shape of the blast
waves. (They also do something similar with colored smoke trails
on towers to look at vortex patterns behind jumbo jets. See the
pretty picture on the cover of Scientific American a while back.)

Does anybody out there KNOW what they were (instead of all our guesses)? ;-}

Rob Warnock

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