North Korea claims to have tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb Wednesday. And while many experts are highly skeptical that it really happened, the test would be very troubling if it were true.
Hydrogen bombs are substantially more powerful than their atomic forefathers, a dubious distinction gained by effectively using the standard atomic "fission" reaction to trigger a second, much larger "fusion" explosion.
Simply put, fission releases energy by splitting atoms apart. Fusion releases much, much more energy by melding two atoms together. While an atomic bomb is fission only, a hydrogen bomb uses both processes -- making it much more deadly.
To help you get an idea of just how dangerous a hydrogen bomb is, here's a colored box to visually represent the power of "Little Boy," the 15-kiloton bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. It killed around 140,000 people and caused horrific suffering and devastation:
And here's a slightly bigger box to represent "Fat Man," the 21-kiloton atomic weapon dropped on Nagasaki three days later. It killed around 70,000 people:
Last month, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at Rand Corp., speculated North Korea hasn't built a true hydrogen bomb, but a "boosted" atom bomb that only uses a small amount of fusion to increase its yield. If that's the case, North Korea's weapon would likely be around 50 kilotons:
For comparison, here's a visual representation of the most powerful hydrogen bomb currently in the US arsenal. Its yield is 1.2 megatons -- equivalent to about 80 Hiroshimas:
Or, in terms of Hiroshima again, imagine something 80 times more destructive than this:
Hiroshima before and after "Little Boy:"
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