double flash

See also: double-flash

English

Etymology

double +‎ flash

Noun

double flash (plural double flashes)

  1. The characteristic visual phenomenon produced by the atmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon, consisting of a very brief, bright flash of light which dims rapidly, followed by a second, gradually brightening flash.
    • 2010 May, Dombey, Norman, “Double Flash”, in London Review of Books‎ (blog), London: LRB Limited:
      On 22 September 1979 at about 1 a.m. GMT, a US Vela satellite passing over the South Atlantic detected a double flash of light in the vicinity of Prince Edward Island.
    • 2015 July, Patterson, Eileen, “The Double Flash Meets the Bhangmeter”, in Clay Dillingham, editor, National Security Science‎, Los Alamos National Laboratory, page 12:
      One of the sensors on satellites in the U.S. Nuclear Detonation System uses a relatively simple device to detect the “double flash” of a nuclear detonation anywhere on earth.
    • 2019 September, Burr, William; Cohen, Avner; De Geer, Lars-Erik; Gilinsky, Victor; Polakow-Suransky, Sasha; Sokolski, Henry; Weiss, Leonard; Wright, Christopher, “Blast From the Past”, in Jonathan Tepperman; Ravi Agrawal; Dan Ephron; Cameron Abadi; Sasha Polakow-Suransky; Kathryn Salam; Sarah Wildman; James Palmer; Benjamin Soloway; Nina Goldman, editors, Foreign Policy‎, The Slate Group:
      The detected signal was a “double flash” characteristic of nuclear test signals recorded on 41 previous occasions by Vela satellites.

Further reading
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