A mushroom cloud is a distinctive pyrocumulus mushroom-shaped cloud of condensed water vapor or debris resulting from a very large explosion. They are most commonly associated with nuclear explosions, but any sufficiently large blast will produce the same sort of effect. They can be caused by powerful conventional weapons, like vacuum bombs, including the ATBIP and GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. Volcanic eruptions and impact events can produce natural mushroom clouds.
Mushroom clouds form as a result of the sudden formation of a large mass of hot, low-density gases near the ground creating a Rayleigh–Taylor instability. The mass of gas rises rapidly, resulting in turbulent vortices curling downward around its edges, forming a vortex ring and drawing up a column of additional smoke and debris in the center to form the "mushroom stem". The mass of gas eventually reaches an altitude where it is no longer of lower density than the surrounding air and disperses, the debris drawn upward from the ground scattering and drifting back down (see fallout).
Other articles related to "mushroom cloud, mushroom clouds, clouds, cloud":
... Nuclear mushroom clouds are often accompanied by short-lived vapor clouds known variously as "Wilson clouds", condensation clouds, or vapor rings ... When the pressure and temperature return to normal, the Wilson cloud dissipates ... nuclear tests in 1946 at Bikini Atoll named that transitory cloud a "Wilson cloud" because of its similarity to a Wilson cloud chamber the cloud chamber uses condensation from a ...
Famous quotes containing the words cloud and/or mushroom:
“You say, It is dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“It looks as if
Some pallid thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with overeagerness
To see what people found so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
Of its own stupid lack of understanding,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the windowpane.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)