Seeing two guys like Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump bragging on Twitter about "who has it bigger" puts the hairs like spurs to the bravest. The alleged detonation by North Korea of a hydrogen bomb is a qualitative leap in an escalation of unpredictable consequences .
Without wishing to enter into geopolitical aspects that are not in our editorial line, we have liked (and worried) a Wired article that analyzes the "scientific" reach of North Korea in nuclear energy and its military application. The memes on the Internet about the current supreme leader of North Korea and those of his predecessor, his father, portrays them little more than as "clowns", but very carefully, he is mistaken who thinks that this is a circus.
Scientific analysis of the situation confirms without doubt that North Korea is now a nuclear power, also with capacity for military application. The government says its sixth known nuclear test corresponds to the aforementioned detonation of a hydrogen bomb light enough to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile. This assertion is being proven by researchers in the middle of the world.
Hydrogen pump, a giant step
What is already confirmed by sensor groups in South Korea, China and the United States is that anything that exploded underground last week was more powerful than the atomic weapons used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. A benchmark that North Korea had never surpassed before.
"It looks like the test was about 10 times larger than the previous one in September 2016," says Abraham Denmark, Asia program director for the Wilson Center and former deputy defense secretary for East Asia during the Obama administration. "Scientists will be studying the data closely over the next few days, but it's clear that the blast was much bigger than anything North Korea has tested before. This means that North Korea has given a credible nuclear capability that threatens all of East Asia and the United States. "
The United States Geological Survey found that the quake had a magnitude of 6.3, while the South Korean Ministry of Defense detected a magnitude of 5.7. Even the lowest estimate, it still indicates an explosion many times more powerful than the 2016 tests . US and Chinese sensors detected a second explosion of magnitude 4.1, which could have been caused by a structural collapse in the underground facility.
Although the North Korean dictatorship warned of the detonation of a hydrogen bomb in 2016, third-party investigations discarded it, explaining as more likely experimentation with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that serves to increase the power of conventional atomic bombs. The bomb detonated this week can be.
Many answers remain unanswered and - for now - are not likely to have launch capability, but the scientists cited believe that from a geopolitical point of view it is time to assume that North Korea has the capability to possess thermonuclear weapons operating by stages and all that this entails.
The above image is illustrative. An H-pump is much more powerful than a conventional one . It is based on obtaining the energy released by merging two atomic nuclei, instead of fission, with an explosion without comparison with a conventional one and temperatures similar to those reached in the nucleus of the Sun. In addition, would not have that to reach a specific territory, its detonation in height on a city would be enough to cause great damage.
Common sense prevails, though there is no guessing between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump. The "tough hand" and multiple sanctions do not seem to have paid off, except to make the North Korean people even more miserable. The new heavy-gauge multiple rocket system (MLRS) that North Korea will deploy in 2018 on the border with South Korea and a few kilometers from Seoul, will not be able to stop it or the best US missile systems. From there to the hydrogen bomb there is a long stretch for any responsible, but seeing the "chief generals" of both countries, is to be scared.