WWII Bombs Had Rippling Effect on the Edge of Space

[Judi Lynn]

By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor | September 26, 2018 07:40am ET

Nearly 80 years on, impacts from the violent bombings of World War II are still felt around the globe. Christopher Scott would know —two of his aunts were killed at just 9 and 11 years of age during the London Blitz, Nazi Germany's eight-month onslaught against the British.

Those aerial raids didn't just have rippling effects through generations of families. Scott, who is a space and atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading in the U.K., recently found that the bombs were felt at the edge of space, too.

By combing through archival data, Scott discovered that shock waves from the bombs briefly weakened the ionosphere, the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere. [10 of the Most Powerful Explosions Ever]

From lightning to bombs
Between around 50 and 375 miles (80 and 600 kilometers) above the ground, the ionosphere is where auroras are created and where astronauts on board the International Space Station live. Atoms of gas in this layer of the atmosphere get excited by solar radiation, forming electrically charged ions. The density and altitude of electrons, the negatively charged particles, in the ionosphere can fluctuate. [Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom]

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[exboyfil]

1. What about the post-WWII above

ground hydrogen bomb tests.

Total tonnage by allies of conventional bombs during WWII:

2.7 Megaton in Europe
0.7 Megaton in the Pacific

One Soviet hydrogen bomb, the Tsar, was 50 Megaton. Total of all nuclear tests was 500 Megaton.