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Comment by profmonocle | Hacker News Reader

Is there any reason to believe they actually tested an H Bomb? Wouldn't that be a pretty big leap from low-yield atom bombs? It seems like the only evidence it was thermonuclear is that the North Korean government said so, and they're not exactly reliable.

Meanwhile, CNN is proclaiming "N. KOREA TESTS H-BOMB" on their front page, which is a pretty far cry from them claiming to have tested one.

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If Jeffrey Lewis says it's "definitely not a successful staged device" (meaning a fission primary and thermonuclear secondary) you can take that to the bank.

https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/68457996242311987...

Who is he?

A nuclear weapons expert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Lewis_(nonproliferatio...

Depends, there is a tritium booster, essentially a little bit of tritium in the bomb improves the neutron economy. That could be called an H-Bomb, if we are not too pedantic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon

I don't think it's being pedantic at all to use the widely accepted terminology - "H-bomb" has implied staging since the 1950s.

If we were being pedantic we'd never use the term h-bomb - we'd be calling them thermonuclear weapons or Teller-Ulam devices if we're being really pedantic. Half the fusion fuel in a thermonuclear weapon starts out as lithium and half the energy comes from fast fusion neutrons fissioning the depleted uranium shell.

Listen to the audio of the event:

http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/5170265

http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/

Yeah, that sounds like a bomb going off.

For comparison, here is the link to the recent quake off the BC coast. You don't need to be an expert to realize the differences between a bomb and a natural quake.

Natural: http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/5169662

Bomb: http://ds.iris.edu/ds/nodes/dmc/tools/event/5170265

indeed, this north korean 'seismic event' is different than other 'normal' seismic events, with exponential dampening.

but is it still a proof of h-bomb? maybe just ordinary (if you could call it so) nuclear bomb test?

CNN front page 5 minutes after you posted this: http://i.imgur.com/JtenBY2.jpg

The colon I guess denotes that what is to the right was said by what is to the left. Perhaps thats a tricky way to say it.

They changed it. When I wrote my post it literally said "N. KOREA TESTS H-BOMB".

Yes, a colon nearly always means "said this..." in journalism headlines.

I had to pull out my AP stylebook since I couldn't find a copy online, but the colon does mean that in headlines -- along with a few other things. Best link I could find below.

[1] http://web.ku.edu/~edit/heads.html

people are saying it's likely that it was a boosted bomb instead (deadly but far far cry from a proper h-bomb)

and cnn is as usual profiting off FUD

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