Related: last month's [0] gamma-ray burst also had interesting, measurable effects on the ionosphere,<p><a href="https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn3/32744.gcn3" rel="nofollow">https://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn3/32744.gcn3</a> (<i>"GRB221009A: Detection as sudden ionospheric disturbances (SID)"</i>)<p><a href="https://www.qsl.net/df3lp/grb221009/KLM_grb221009a_magnitudes.png" rel="nofollow">https://www.qsl.net/df3lp/grb221009/KLM_grb221009a_magnitude...</a> (from the above link)<p><a href="http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-DHO.png" rel="nofollow">http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-DHO.png</a><p><a href="http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-NAA.png" rel="nofollow">http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-NAA.png</a><p><a href="http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-NSY.png" rel="nofollow">http://abelian.org/vlf/grb221009a-NSY.png</a><p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33215572" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33215572</a> (<i>"Record-breaking gamma-ray burst possibly most powerful explosion ever recorded"</i>)<p>This was detected with VLF radio, but I wonder if this kind of event also has an effect on GPS signals? The time-of-arrival of astrophysical gamma rays isn't uniform across the earth.
What I wonder about is all of the technologies that go into ICBM's with nuclear weapons. My layman's guess is that there is active support and collaboration of the NK nuclear program from outside. North Korea is a headache for the US and other western powers, one more thing to consume policy bandwidth and military preparedness. This would seem to be in the interests of China and Russia, and perhaps others. I don't worry too much about the threats that periodically emanate from North Korean; if they start to exceed their utility from the perspective of China and Russia, the needed resources to maintain a viable nuclear program can be quickly shut off. I do hope that I will live to see a "1989" moment in which the North Korean regime is overthrown, and relegated to a horrible and sad footnote in human history.
Here is the code which generated the linked video: <a href="https://github.com/tylerni7/missile-tid" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tylerni7/missile-tid</a>
Isn't the ionosphere already past the burn-out phase of a ballistic missile? I.e. by the time the rocket gets there it is just a glorified harpoon. Or perhaps that doesn't matter as anything of this size travelling at this speed would cause detectable disturbance?
Fun fact: the arecibo radio telescope was funded to study ionosphere disturbances so the US military could explore the possibility of detecting ICBMs passing through the ionosphere. To my knowledge no such system was actually built but apparently it wasn't as ridiculous a proposal as I thought.
>Missiles make ionospheric disturbances that GPS records. The yellow ripple is the ionospheric disturbance.<p>Where can I read more about the meta level concept of "isopheric disturbances"? (Because I suspect I'll find this has been done by military intelligence for a long time then rediscovered by so called "arms control" wonks who insist on putting their code into the public domain.)