Los Alamos is capturing real-time images of explosions at 7mths of a second
71 comments
·August 5, 2025bombela
tngranados
The first line of the articles says "seven-millionths of a second", which would be 1/7μs or 0,14μs. They also mention that the camera shot 16 frames in that period, so that would be once every 0,00875μs or once every 8,75ns
Youtubers are a couple of magnitudes away from that, AFAIK
SECProto
I would say you described "one seven millionth" of a second (1/7,000,000 s)
"Seven millionths" would be 7/1,000,000 s (7μs). They take 20 to 40 images in that period using 7 cameras, so any given camera might be as low as 1.4μs per frame.
thfuran
Yes, but they said seven-millionths of a second, not seven millionths of a second. Technically they're right that that's what it means, but I'd expect an editor to recommend against that phrasing in favor of the one you used to avoid confusion.
alberth
Saying ~140k photos per second would have been a more understanding stat if only the article framed it that way.
1970-01-01
7 months/seconds - Its both a dimensionless quantity and a variable. Very impressive. Los Alamos is taking the USA's 'anything but metric units for measuring' to new levels.
getpost
It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, but I'm reminded of the ~10^12 fps (1.7 ps exposures) demonstrated in work at MIT[0], which was for a completely different application.
meager_wikis
Every time I read about one of the national labs doing this research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean this output will fade away in time.
LAsteNERD
I worry about this, but these capabilities are hard to replace. This kind of research hasn’t historically been something you can outsource to private companies. Or—at least—it hasn’t been until now. Even if this administration wants to open that door, the infrastructure investment required for the accelerators alone is staggering: easily in the multiple billions.
sfilmeyer
Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but you seem like you're talking about privatizing this research whereas the other commenter seems to be talking about public cuts leading to a reduction of research. Just because something gets cut doesn't mean it gets outsourced elsewhere.
LAsteNERD
I guess my point is that it's hard to simply cut research that's essential for certifying that the stockpile is safe and works. I'll avoid making any predictions, because who the hell knows what's going to happen, but I think dynamic imaging work may prove a tough target for DOGE.
kjkjadksj
It’s for bombs, it’s untouchable.
elygre
It might end up financing a gold-plated airplane for a library.
mythrwy
I don't think defense budget is facing cuts. They are getting even more money.
dralley
The national labs are absolutely getting budget cuts.
LAsteNERD
For sure. But depending on what Congress does, think defense budgets could grow, which would mean more money for defense-positioned Labs like Los Alamos.
dttze
That’s going to the MIC grift though.
gosub100
What if DOGE savings create more money for important science? What if it led to meaningless bureaucrats being given the slip so that skilled scientists could be hired with the savings? Would you support DOGE then? Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data.
anigbrowl
Your framing of the question suggests you believe in ideology, because you're posing a purity based based on hypotheticals alone. Where is the actual data for DOGE, in any department doing science?
gosub100
That's a great way to always be right: just claim the data that disputes your position is non-existent.
JumpCrisscross
> What if DOGE savings
These savings are not material. And if they were they wouldn’t matter—the Congress blew out our deficit by trillions irrespective of anything DOGE did.
lawlessone
>What if DOGE savings create more money for important science?
>Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data.
I've upvoted your comment to give you time to show us your data.
baxtr
Interesting reason to upvote. Would have never thought of it but kinda makes sense!
MeetingsBrowser
A recent senate report says the government spent >$21 billion in the last 6 months on salaries for people who cannot work because of DOGE.
There’s one data point against the original comments assumption or intention
gosub100
[flagged]
dekhn
If there was a coherent plan in DOGE to make more money available to do important science, maybe that could work. However, nothing DOGE has done has shown any sort of logic in terms of outcome maximization. The collection of activities (partly DOGE, partly Trump org) applied to scientists has been super-impactful (in an entirely negative way) for science we already know is important
The pool of skilled scientists to be hired shrinks when you cut funding in arbitrary ways.
gameman144
> Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data.
I mean, you're technically right, but that doesn't invalidate anything the parent commenter said.
I could equally ask "What if it turned out that turpentine was actually _healthier_ than water?".
Like, yeah, if that assertion turned out to be the case and you rejected the new data, you'd be following dogma rather than data. That doesn't mean that the assertion is likely to actually be true though.
e2le
Basic research is important science and is in societies best interest to support it.
A quote from Carl Sagan’s, Demon Haunted World.
> We are rarely smart enough to set about on purpose making the discoveries that will drive our economy and safeguard our lives. Often, we lack the fundamental research. Instead, we pursue a broad range of investigations of Nature, and applications we never dreamed of emerge. Not always, of course. But often enough.
tart-lemonade
He's absolutely right. Long-shot research with little to no immediate applicability has been the basis for innumerable breakthroughs over the years. If DOGE existed back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, we wouldn't have mRNA vaccines[0], Google[1] (or the modern internet for that matter[2]), and many modern cancer treatments[3], to name but a few examples of research that would have been easy to brand as wasteful and not "important science".
[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9975718/
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016975529...
[2]: https://www.nsf.gov/impacts/internet
[3]: https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/impact-nih-research/improving-...
gopher_space
There's no scenario where messing with a working system people rely on and then getting rid of everyone who understood it will produce a savings. What DOGE has done would simply destroy a corporation, and we know this because we've helped corporations perform this kind of system analysis and understand the cost of change.
We're at a point right now where we can't even calculate the damage Musk has done, where the discovery process on that issue alone will be a multi-million years long effort. We're looking at large-scale remediation projects on every system Trump gave him access to because the cost of not doing that is functionally unknowable. E.g. every table DOGE had the ability to change is now a legal liability per row.
LAsteNERD
Fascinating look into the dynamic imaging capabilities at Los Alamos National Lab—essentially, how the U.S. is able to analyze nuclear-level explosive events without actually conducting nuclear tests.
The Lab uses multiple systems to image these high-speed events:
• pRad uses proton radiography to get 20–40 frames of a detonation, with material-level resolution based on density.
• DARHT uses dual-axis x-ray imaging to create 3D snapshots from two angles, ideal for testing whether the computational models built from pRad hold up.
• Scorpius (in development) will take this a step further by using subcritical plutonium in a new accelerator at NNSS, capturing multiple high-resolution frames just nanoseconds apart.
The fact that they can tailor experiments based on frame-by-frame behavior of individual materials under explosive stress feels like the real-world version of “bullet time” physics modeling. The margins of error come down to billionths of a second.
josh2600
Thank you for contextualizing this. We are truly living in a wild part of the space time continuum.
tandr
Pardon for the old meme here, but... "Pics, or did not happened!"?
cco
Why are science communicators so consistently missing the mark?
Is it not obvious that if you're writing an article proclaiming to capture _explosions_ at 7mths of a second, people want to see some pictures of said explosions?
Clearly they're understanding that explosions are a hook to grab the reader's attention, but then they just don't include any of the resulting pictures?
C'mon y'all! We need to do better here!
nxobject
I imagine this falls under the remit of "nuclear warhead research without actual warheads".
rtkwe
> When it’s ready, experiments at Scorpius will be similar to DARHT but with the added complexity of using subcritical amounts of plutonium instead of surrogate materials.
They basically explicitly say that without just coming out and saying it. This kind of hyper fast explosion analysis and photography is a big part of making implosion bombs work properly.
edit: actually they just say it, they don't have to be coy everyone knows the US and other countries study this and it doesn't violate the NTBT because it's sub critical.
> essential to the Lab’s stockpile stewardship mission because it helps scientists test and understand the fundamental characteristics of materials and explosive events to inform computational models and analyses without ever detonating an actual weapon.
paradox460
For more on this, look at the DAHRT project. It occurred up the hill a bit from LANSCE, in DX instead, but did similar things
dez11de
Pics or it didn’t happen.
sci-designer
Wow, this is wild. billionths of a second?!
mapt
"Millionths", abbreviated "mths of a second" here for... reasons...
Known to the entire world, including American STEM people, as a microsecond.
null
scrlk
I'm reminded of Grace Hopper's famous nanoseconds lecture: https://youtu.be/gYqF6-h9Cvg?t=78
HPsquared
1 ns * c = 1 ft, to put in perspective: 7 μs * c is 1.3 miles.
(Protip: just type "7 μs * c in miles" into Google)
chasd00
7 μs is also the time it takes light to travel about 1,400 Ariana Grandes.
LosAlamosNerd
Oh, I haven't watched that before.
BearOso
Not quite. The article says hundreds of nanoseconds, which would be in the 10 millionths range. Or if you take the title literally, 143ns per image. That's in line with the fastest CCDs, so not unimaginable.
throwaway290
Error 404.
7mths? What unit is that. Did they mean 7μs resolution? How is that special? I see youtubers doing nanoseconds.
edit: here is the important information in this article.
> Scorpius is a new accelerator project planned for the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) that will use an electron beam that can be broken into customized pulses to deliver x-rays and capture multiple images only hundreds of nanoseconds apart.
So 0.1μs or 100ns temporal resolution 3D X-ray.