Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: "Red Lightning (A Thunder and Lightning Novel)" by John Varley
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2025 19:29:36 -0500
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 56
Message-ID: <vpgehg$nq4p$1@dont-email.me>
References: <vpdehg$4dmg$2@dont-email.me>
 <slrnvrkpg2.2rm7.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de> <vpe18r$7h20$1@dont-email.me>
 <9pimrj9doa4vl2rq3h385f2sj0d14t8q57@4ax.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 01:29:37 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="28710c393e9b15eb46c27f8d4d7c489f";
	logging-data="780441"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18gntGjUshSKgnf/4obrtA/g7oun3+ULgE="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:Y4g/qdDjyCDquQt2upvjKULvSKE=
Content-Language: en-US
In-Reply-To: <9pimrj9doa4vl2rq3h385f2sj0d14t8q57@4ax.com>
Bytes: 3656

On 2/23/2025 11:23 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Feb 2025 20:30:51 -0600, Lynn McGuire
> <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2/22/2025 6:04 PM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>>> On 2025-02-22, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The book starts off with a space ship hitting the Earth at 0.999999 of
>>>> light speed in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.  Millions dead
>>>> with the 300 foot tsunami that washed over Florida and Caribbean.
>>>
>>> They seem to come off rather lightly.  In _The Killing Star_,
>>> relativistic bombardment causes a gamma flash that sterilizes the
>>> hemisphere.  (More projectiles are coming.)  As in, there are dead
>>> whales on the beach and they don't rot, because there are no more
>>> living bacteria.
>>>
>>> I wonder which is the more realistic scenario.
>>>
>>> IIRC, the _Hostile Takeover_ trilogy also featured a big-ass railgun
>>> in orbit around the planet Bakunin to shoot projectiles at relativistic
>>> speed, however plausible that is, and they weren't so much about
>>> making holes in the ground but creating a plasma tunnel and a
>>> resulting X-ray flash to sterilize any pesky nanomachines.
>>>
>>> There seems to be a school of thought out there that hitting a
>>> planetary atmosphere with a relativistic missile will make Chicxulub
>>> look like a mere unpleasantness.  How realistic that is, I don't
>>> know.
>>
>> Robert Oppenheimer was seriously worried that the first nuclear
>> explosion was going to set Earth's atmosphere on fire.  Luckily, he was
>> wrong.
> 
> Fusion bomb, IIRC -- the kind that turns hydrogen into helium with
> explosive effects.

No, it was the Trinity fission test:

from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)#Personnel

"Enrico Fermi offered to take wagers among the top physicists and 
military present on whether the atmosphere would ignite, and if so 
whether it would destroy just the state or incinerate the entire planet. 
   [93][94] This last result had been previously calculated by Bethe to 
be    almost impossible,[95][96][e] although for a while it had caused 
some of    the scientists some anxiety. Bainbridge was furious with 
Fermi for    frightening the guards, some of whom asked to be 
relieved;[98] his own    biggest fear was that nothing at all would 
happen, in which case he    would have to return to the tower to 
investigate.[99]  "


pt