Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll consisted of the detonation of 23 nuclear weapons by the United States between 1946 and 1958 on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The video is a remastered version of a newsreel report about the second detonation called Baker in the operation Crossroad.
Crossroads consisted of two detonations, each with a yield of 23 kt of TNT (96 TJ). Able was detonated over Bikini on July 1, 1946, and exploded at an altitude of 520 ft (160 m), but was dropped by aircraft about 1,500 to 2,000 ft (460 to 610 m) off target. It sank only five of the ships in the lagoon. Baker was detonated underwater at a depth of 90 ft (27 m) on July 25, sinking eight ships. The second underwater blast created a large condensation cloud and contaminated the ships with more radioactive water than was expected. Many of the surviving ships were too contaminated to be used again for testing and were sunk. The air-borne nuclear detonation raised the surface seawater temperature by 99,000 °F (55,000 °C), created blast waves with speeds of up to 26 ft/s (7.9 m/s), and shock and surface waves up to 98 ft (30 m) high. Blast columns reached the floor of the lagoon, which is approximately 230 ft (70 m) deep.
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The video has been restored and colorized using state-of-the-art machine learning methods.
The restoration steps included:
- noise reduction
- colorization
- upscaling to 4K
- adding ambiance sound
The source video is from the Internet Archive under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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