the atomic weapon that sets off the fusion reaction.)
I don't understand your point. The earliest devices used a pie shape with a wedge cut out. The actual geometry is rather unimportant to getting a fission reaction - but it *is* important if you want to maximize your yield. --
Wrong. If you are using a uranium fuelled bomb, then you are right. As long as you thump together two barely sub-critical masses, it will go boom. However, if you try this with plutonium, it will fizzle. In the time that it takes for a standard gun type triggering mechanism to operate, the plutonium will become critical, and then release most of it's energy harmlessly, instead of going super-critical. This is the reason for using fast-triggering bomb geometries.
Wrong. If you will notice, I said "the earliest devices". They didn't use plutonium for nuclear devices until much later. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel! -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"