Using GPS To Detect Secret Nuclear Tests

Harperdog writes "This article details how GPS can help detect secret nuclear tests, giving the US more reason to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Here's a quote about the 2009 North Korea test: 'At the time, however, the May 25 bomb also sent a different signature, this one into the atmosphere. It did not release radioactive gas or dust, as would be the case for a bomb detonated on the Earth's surface. Rather, it released a shockwave — a bubble of disturbed air that spread out from the test site across the planet and high into the ionosphere. ... We quickly gathered data from 11 GPS receivers — six belonging to the South Korean GPS network and five belonging to the International GNSS Service and scattered around Eastern Asia. The data indicated a sudden spike in atmospheric electron density just after the underground test.'"

Total Electron Content

[dtmos]

This work [ctbto.org] actually measured Total Electron Content [wikipedia.org], not electron density (a related, but different, phenomenon).

Maps of vertical and slant atmospheric electron density over the U.S. are here [noaa.gov].

US GPS satellites also have photodetectors

[daveschroeder]

The US GPS constellation (NAVSTAR) has photodetectors to detect the distinctive flash of an above-ground nuclear test [wikipedia.org], among other detectors.

Not useful for an underground test, but a little known function nonetheless.

Re:

[GameboyRMH]

That's the only method I knew of detecting (out of sight) nuclear explosions until this.

Secret Nuclear Test...somehow it just doesn't sound right.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

I thought we could already detect underground tests with seismographs. That was how we identified the semi-successful .5 kT NK test, and identified a previous explosion in NK of similar magnitude as being non-nuclear in origin.

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[ColdWetDog]

I thought we could already detect underground tests with seismographs. That was how we identified the semi-successful .5 kT NK test, and identified a previous explosion in NK of similar magnitude as being non-nuclear in origin.

Yep, that's in TFA and in fact what they used to 'calibrate' this new system. However, having multiple methods of detecting something that people don't want to be detected is often useful.

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[smellsofbikes]

The Vela Hotel [wikipedia.org] and Advanced Vela satellites had photo, x-ray, neutron, and gamma ray detectors and silicon photodiodes set up as Bhangmeters [wikipedia.org] for detecting nuclear tests. Presumably those would all be outer space/atmosphere/ground explosions.

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[thogard]

There are other detectors on Navstar as well. Part of the design criteria for the detectors was to be able to tell which side of the Berlin wall went boom first. The detectors time stamp when they detect something and send that in the data stream. In theory your car GPS could show you were bombs were going off.

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[NateTech]

Little-known? It's been in Clancy's books for a couple of decades, as well as many other military-thriller author's books. It's been documented six ways from sideways since way back into the Cold War.

Little-known because folks don't pay any attention at all outside of military circles, but even though it's probably still under some level of Classification, it's certainly well-known by even the laziest military-thriller or "President deals with a crisis" fictional novel reader since the late 1980's at leas

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[Riceballsan]

wow dosn't that seem to be bad planning? Just ask japan how nuclear materials and fault lines mix.

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[trum4n]

Not to mention they will sink into the oil. Wait....this might be a good thing. SOMEONE GET A MOP!

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[Xaositecte]

You don't seem to understand exactly what happened in japan.

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[Riceballsan]

I don't disagree that it took far more then an earthquake to cause the issues in the nuclear plant, I also highly doubt Iran has 1/10th of the shielding or safety measures that the Japanese plant had.

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[TheTurtlesMoves]

yes. But good luck getting a 100 thousand tons of normal explosives down a hole without anyone noticing--just to fake a nuclear bomb. It would be easier to make a real one.

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[Zen Punk]

100 thousand tons? A kiloton is only one thousand tons.

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[TheTurtlesMoves]

Nukes are not that small--about 3-5kT is the smallest and its hard to make that small. Even the first ones where about 10-25kT. And fusion needs to be bigger to work.

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[RockDoctor]

It is likely they'll will also do an underground nuclear test... and then blame it on an earthquake, as the nuclear sites do lye close to fault lines.

My school text books had long articles on how the seismic signatures of earthquakes and explosions differed.

That was in 1978.

Yeah but

[Stargoat]

I still have not heard any definitive proof that it was not a large about conventional explosives. There are many examples of conventional explosions large enough in the past, such as the Texas City explosion or the Lochnagar mine during WWI.

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[LtGordon]

"Why is HAARP such an attractive target for conspiracy theorists? HAARP is a gigantic, high-energy, Pentagon-funded gizmo located in the remote Alaskan wilderness that plays around with the Earth’s ionosphere, but whose purpose seems deeply mysterious to the scientifically uninformed." [skeptic.com]

Overkill and/or reduncancy?

[G3ckoG33k]

Doesn't this sound like overkill and/or reduncancy?

There must be more efficient ways, e.g. Twitter...

http://mashable.com/2011/08/25/animated-map-twitter-earthquake/ [mashable.com]

Yes, Twitter of all hyped crap.

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[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

So, you would propose watching for tweets about secret underground nuclear tests?

Better. I'd get government funding for it. =)

Re:

[Belial6]

I always find comments like your funny. We know that conspiracies happen. We know that our government takes part in them. Enough of them have been uncovered to make that clear. We know that the government will use a lie about nuclear weapons as an excuse to go to war. How is your comment any less crazy than the the people you are referring to?

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[LtGordon]

You assume that the United States is the only country capable of nuclear detonation monitoring.

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[Belial6]

That was a total non sequitur.

What does this have to do with the Test Ban Treaty

[Attila Dimedici]

I am confused as to what this has to do with the Test Ban Treaty. The primary argument against the Test Ban Treaty is that it does not allow for the testing of new designs of nuclear weapons. It, also, does not allow for the testing of existing stockpiles to see if they are still functional.
It has been U.S. policy from the beginning to maintain a nuclear stockpile that can function as a deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons by any and all others that have them. If the U.S. does not know whether or

Re:What does this have to do with the Test Ban Tre

[_0xd0ad]

When the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was formalized in 1996, the United States was among nine nations that did not ratify it. In part, US officials objected that technologies of the time were not reliable enough to ensure accurate detection of secret nuclear tests.

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[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Thank you. That makes the summary much more sensible.

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[Symnron]

Interestingly AFTAC has been monitoring nuclear weapons testing worldwide since long before 1996 and had/has the means to measure them very accurately. Too bad the USA didn't look to its own technology(/sarcasm). Get Moose and Squirrel!

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[KiloByte]

It has nothing, but the poster has an axe to grind. I'm thoroughly sick of those "that evil nucular stuff will doom us" crowd.

Nukes, and even more, nuclear power plants, are dangerous but efficient. And that vile ban treaty is what destroyed the most promising project for interstellar travel.

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[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> It has been U.S. policy from the beginning to maintain a nuclear stockpile that can function as a deterrent against the use of nuclear weapons by any and all others that have them.

To be fair, it was US policy at the beginning to build the bomb and win the second world war.

Any policies about stockpiles as a deterrent came later--I would guess the instant the Russians set off an A-bomb.

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I set up my Nuvi to detect bomb blasts?

Re:

[NeverVotedBush]

Just watch it. When it melts and catches on fire - quickly - odds are good that it detected a nuclear explosion.

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[treeves]

Well, on the Magellans you go to Menu...Settings...Alerts...Underground Nuclear Tests, and choose ON. Garmins might be different.

"one man's noise is another signal"

[peter303]

As they say in the observation sciences. Its known that the position of ionosphere, humidity, atmospheric charge, etc. can affect GPS signal timing slightly. In turn these erors can be inverted (tomographically) to give maps of these phenomena.

GPS sats already used to detect nuclear detonation

[Symnron]

GPS satellites contain a package called NDS or Nuclear detonation Detection System. They have since the very first launch of the very first satellite. I know this because I was in the USAF and worked the ground station for NDS starting with Block 1 GPS satellites when they were just early test platforms to prove the GPS technology. So, this is absolutely nothing new to me. Sincerely, Symnron Get Moose and Squirrel!

This isn't NUDET, but posters have been part right

[JohnnyComeLately]

The article is describing how you can use the receivers to determine ionospheric and other disturbances by measuring the rate of deviation in radio frequency reception. GPS and ionoshperic modeling is common in GPS to determine how much interference is affecting the timing, and so you can then measure an "approximate additional" disturbance. These are all things any civilian who is a math geek can theoretically do.

What is being described here, AFTAC and NUDET, are onlyp performed by military organizatio