Implosion & Explosion

Implosion (pronoubced im-ploh-zhuhn)

(1) The act of imploding; a bursting inward (opposite of explosion).

(2) In phonetics, the occlusive phase of stop consonants; the nasal release heard in the common pronunciation of eaten, sudden, or mitten, in which the vowel of the final syllable is greatly reduced.

(3) The ingressive release of a suction stop.

(4) In clinical psychiatry, a type of behavior therapy in which the patient is repeatedly subjected to anxiety-arousing stimuli while the therapist attempts to extinguish the patient's anxiety and anxious behavior and replace them with more appropriate responses.

1829: The construct (modelled on explosion) was im- + (ex)plosion.  The im- prefix was from the Latin im-, an assimilated form of in- and used to express negation (not).  The prefix -in is quirky because it can act either to negate or intensify.  The general rule is that when pre-pended to a noun or adjective, it reinforces the quality signified and when pre-pended to an adjective, it negates the meaning, the latter mostly in words borrowed from French.  The Latin prefix in- was from the Proto-Italic en-, from the primitive Indo-European n̥- (not), the zero-grade form of the negative particle ne (not) and was akin to ne-, nē & nī.  In Modern English it is from the Middle English in-, from Old English in- (in, into), from the Proto-Germanic in, from the primitive Indo-European en.  Plosion was a word from the jargon of phonetics meaning the pronunciation of a consonant characterized by completely blocking the flow of air through the mouth and was a derivative of explosion, first coming into use in 1915–20 as a shortened form of explosion.  Implosion, coined as an opposite of explosion, was first published the Westminster Review in 1829.  There was a technical need for the word because, in popular use, many chemical reactions which resembled explosions were described thus, even though, as in the case of a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, instead of an enlargement of bulk, a positive quantity, the result was is a negative one, tending towards a vacuum.

OceanGate’s diagram of Titan.

In response to the questions raised after it was confirmed OceanGate's Titan submersible had suffered a catastrophic implosion event, US Navy sources commented on the process:  When a submarine collapses (implodes), the hull material moves inward at a speed of around 1500 mph (2400 km/h) or 2200 feet (670 m) per second and the time required for a complete collapse is about 1 millisecond.  Typically, the human brain responds instinctively to stimulus at about 25 milliseconds and those with untypically fast reaction responses can begin to act at around 150 milliseconds.  The atmosphere inside a submarine contains a relatively high concentration of hydrocarbon vapors and this contributes to the space behaving something like the compression cycle in a very large diesel engine: The air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion.  A human in these circumstances is transformed into large blobs of fats and these the extreme temperature incinerates and turns to ash in little more than a second.  Navy sources also expressed scepticism at the desirability of constructing a hull from a mixture of materials (titanium and carbon-fibre) in vessels operating at depths where the pressure is extreme (where the wreck of the Titanic lies it’s some 400 times that which prevails at sea level).  The argument is that wherever the two materials meet is the point at which, over time, a weakness is most likely to form.  Because the Titan's tubular hull was made from carbon fibre, it's thought that rather than behaving like the metals used in submarine construction, it would to some extent fragment although the nature of the disintegration won't be known until the wreckage is examined.

Engineers however noted the consequences of the explosion (for both machine and people) could differ greatly from the historic experiences of such events at depth because they all involved vessels made from metal which tends to retain its inherent integrity, even as the structural integrity of the construction fails.  Additionally, many of the previous examples were spherical so the internal forces were equalized for the split-second during the critical event whereas Titan was tubular with what would, under the stresses imposed, become detachable titanium end-caps.  Titan's hull was built from carbon-fibre which, under the specific pressure encountered would have behaved differently from metal and may have fragmented.  The physics of all of this means the temperatures and dynamic forces experienced within Titan in that split-second may have been very different from the models generated by historic experience but until the wreckage and any human remains are examined, the details of the brief event will remain unclear.  The incident however is anyway likely to discourage the use of carbon-fibre hulls in submersibles but whether it has any implications for use in aviation will be interesting.  Building the fuselages of passenger airliners from carbon-fibre has many advantages and the stresses imposed are very different to those at depth but there is no real-world data to assess how the material will behave over the decades the airframes may operate.        

Historically, the difference between a “submersible” and a “submarine” was that a submersible was a vessel which operated usually on the surface but was able to submerge for short periods for purposes such as launching attacks on other vessels or attempting to avoid detection while a submarine was able to operate underwater for extended periods.  The definitions were (more or less) formalized after 1945 when “true” submarines were developed, rendering obsolete the traditional submersibles which gained their name as a clipping of “submersible boat”.  When nuclear propulsion was adopted, the duration of the craft was extended further, the primary limitation being the volume of food able to be stored.

The definitions have shifted somewhat although traces of the older distinctions remain.  For practical purposes, a submarine is a large, complex vessel able to undertake independent and extended underwater operations and although most associated with navies, there are many civilian operators of submarines.  In recent decades, submersibles have no longer been designed for sustained surface use (although some of the recent creations by drug smugglers appear to be exactly that) and are dedicated to and optimized for the undersea environment.  They can be just about any type of vehicle or apparatus capable of operating underwater, crewed or un-crewed and in an array of sizes and configurations for use in fields such as scientific research, exploration or underwater photography.

Implosions: Implosions do occasionally afflict storage tanks and the Mythbusters television series (past masters at explosions, on this one episode they forsook blowing stuff up and imploded something instead) attempted to create the conditions which “naturally” would provoke the phenomenon.  It proved difficult and the implosion eventually was induced by artificially reducing the internal pressure.

Explosion (pronounced ik-sploh-zhuhn)

(1) An act or instance of exploding; a violent release of energy resulting from a rapid chemical or nuclear reaction, especially one that produces a shock wave, loud noise, heat, and light (or the noise itself).

(2) A sudden, rapid, or great increase.

1615-1625: From the French explosion, from the Latin explōsiōnis, a genitive form of explōsio, from explōdo (I drive out by clapping) from explōdere (to explode), the construct being ex- (the prefix from Middle English from words borrowed from Middle French from the Latin ex (out of, from), from the primitive Indo-European eǵ- & eǵs- (out). It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐξ (ex) (out of, from), the Transalpine Gaulish ex- (out), the Old Irish ess- (out), the Old Church Slavonic изу (izu) (out), and the Russian из (iz) (from, out of)) + plōdo (I clap or I strike).  The figurative of "going off with violence and noise" is from 1660s and some sources insist the sense of "rapid increase or development" wasn’t noted until 1953 when it came to be used in commerce (describing both the extraordinary proliferation of consumer products in what would later come to be known as the “affluent society” and spikes in demand).  In the mid 1940s, the US conducted a number of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific and when asked about his choice of “bikini” as the name for the fetching swimwear he trademarked (patent #19431) in 1946, the designer is reported to have at the time remarked he expected an "explosive commercial and cultural reaction" as dramatic as one of the Pentagon’s A-bombs.  The figurative use thus dates from at least the 1940s and it would seem at least plausible that in that vein the word had been used for a long time, centuries of wars exposing millions to explosions surely likely to have inspired the linguistic imagination.

In Ancient Rome, at the conclusion of a play, the actors would turn to the audience and command plaudite! (literally "clap your hands!); that's the source of the English plaudits (a mark or expression of applause; praise bestowed) and of the idea of the plausible (something to be applauded).  However, if the performance was a dud, the audience would explodo (the construct being ex- (out) + plaudo (clap), the idea being the actors is the dreadful performance would be "clapped off then stage" and as late as the seventeenth century the phrase persisted, surviving reports from critics recording "the crowd exploded him off the stage".  Indeed, even now, phrases like "the theory has long been exploded" are still sometimes seen although whether the writer has in mind the idea or "clapped away" or "blown up" may be uncertain. 

Figurative use: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson, the photograph taken in Mexico and dating from October 2008.

In figurative use, "implosion" and "explosion" frequently are used to describe different events or phenomena, the former often related to sudden and dramatic changes and while the latter can be used in this way, implosions can be imagined as gradual things which unfold over a long time, sometimes even years.  That said, there are some “explosions” which are regarded so only because of their peculiar context, such as the “Cambrian explosion” which was sudden and dramatic only against the measure of the evolutionary history of life on Earth.  The Cambrian Period, while a relatively brief period in the planet's four and a half billion years-odd of existence still encompassed in excess of forty million years (circa 540-485 million years ago).  During this time, there was a remarkable diversification and proliferation of complex multi-cellular life forms in the oceans and it was “explosive” in the sense nothing like it had happened before and in evolutionary terms, the appearance and diversification of an array of complex organisms (including the first appearance of animal groups or phyla which remain extant) was rapid indeed.  Still, that sort of figurative use of “explosion” tends to be restricted to evolutionary biologists and their ilk and it’s more familiar when used to describe something short & sharp like the rapid acceleration of a running back on the football field.  That would be over in seconds but in sport, something like the innings of a cricketer might be called “explosive” even if it unfolds over an hour or more.  It’s all a matter of context and literal explosions tend by their nature to be fast, brief events.

Just about any dictionary would define an explosion as something like “a rapid and forceful outward expansion or release of energy”, conveying the idea of something bursting forth or erupting with great intensity, impact, or noise and that’s familiar from the event associated with impacts, bombs and even volcanic eruptions which, although they can last for weeks are really only an explosion of short duration, following by consequential events like mud or lava flows which can last weeks.  However, far away (and long ago by the time we find out), there are explosions which are on such a scale they can take months.  There are lots of stars and sometimes, they explode.  In a sense, nothing lasts forever, yet at the same time, matter is, in one form or another, eternal.  Explosions are part of this process.  Quite how many stars exist is unknown and given we can observe only part of the universe, any estimate beyond a certain point is meaningless although, given calculations based on observable data suggest that there are at hundreds of billions of galaxies, each of which probably contains millions or billions of stars.  So, estimates (guesses) vary but the fact 1 septillion (1 followed by 24 zeros) is thought credible is interesting, not for the specific value it represents but because it means whatever might be the answer, it’s a very big number.  The time it takes for a star to explode depends on the type of star and the point it’s reached in its evolution but the two most significant types of stellar explosions are (1) supernovae and (2) stellar novae.  The mechanics and time absorbed by each in their explosions varies greatly.

A supernova is a powerful and catastrophic explosion which occurs at the end of the life of a massive star (or in a binary star system) and it can take (as seen from Earth) from a few weeks to several months.  As a prelude, over millions of years, the star will undergoes various stages of nuclear burning and fusion, culminating eventually in a catastrophic collapse and explosion.  Less energetic is a stellar novae which occurs in binary systems where a white dwarf star accretes matter from its companion star.  The accumulation of matter on the surface of the dwarf can lead to a sudden and rapid release of energy, resulting in a nova explosion.  Novae typically brighten over a short period, reaching peak brightness in a matter of days or weeks, after which they gradually fade away over several months.  Not all stars end with an explosion.  Less massive bodies (like our Sun) don’t explode but kind of fade away through a process cosmologists call stellar evolution, expanding into red giants, shedding their outer layers, eventually to be become white dwarfs on the path to dark, dead obscurity.  Back on Earth, the figurative use extends from a rapid increase in popularity of someone or something to sudden outbreaks of violence by individuals or entire societies and something said or done which might induce either of the latter can be said to be “potentially explosive”.

Conversely, “implosion” is used figuratively to describe an internal collapse or inward sinking, rather than an outward burst although the latter may be consequent upon the former.  It’s suggestive of a situation or event where there is (suddenly or gradually) failure, disintegration, or decline, typically accompanied by a loss of control or power and implosions are often associated with the gradual accumulation of pressures or internal forces that eventually lead to a collapse or breakdown.  Individuals, institutions or societies may be said to have imploded because they lacked the strength, internal cohesion or resources to resist pressures which may be externally imposed, generated internally or a combination of both.  However, although both explosion and (probably more frequently) implosion are among the general population commonly used terms when discussing aspects of metal health (usually of others), they’re officially not part of the lexicon of clinicians or other professionals in the field.  It may be that the words are sometimes in their thoughts when faming a diagnosis but neither appears in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which for decades has provided a standardized classification and criteria for diagnosing mental disorders.

An explosion: A simulation of the detonation of the Soviet Union’s AN602 Царь-бо́мба (Tsar Bomba), a thermonuclear gravity bomb which was the most powerful nuclear weapon yet built (as far as is known) or tested.  It was detonated on 30 October 1961 on a remote island in the Barents sea and the Russian claim of a yield equivalent to 50 megatons of TNT is now generally accepted (the contemporary US estimate of 57-60 was based on more remote observations).

Delivery

Delivery (pronounced dih-liv-uh-ree (U) or dee-liv-er-ree (non-U))

(1) The carrying and turning over of letters, goods, etc to a designated recipient or recipients.

(2) A giving up or handing over; surrender.

(3) The utterance or enunciation of words.

(4) Vocal and bodily behavior during the presentation of a speech.

(5) The act or manner of giving or sending forth.

(6) The state of being delivered of or giving birth to a child; parturition.

(7) Something delivered.

(8) In commerce, a shipment of goods from the seller to the buyer.

(9) In law, a formal act performed to make a transfer of property legally effective.

(10) In printing, the part of a printing press where the paper emerges in printed form (also called delivery end).

(11) The act of rescuing or state of being rescued; liberation.

(12) In various ball sports, the act or manner of bowling or throwing a ball

(13) In machinery design, the discharge rate of a compressor or pump.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English delyvere & delyvery from the Anglo-Norman delivrée, from the Old French delivrer, from the Latin līberō, from līber (free), from the Old Latin loeber, from the Proto-Italic louðeros, from the primitive Indo-European hléwdheros, from hlewdh- (people) + the prefix de- (from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from).  It was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἐλεύθερος (eleútheros), the Sanskrit रोधति (ródhati), the Dutch lieden, the German Leute and the Russian люди (ljudi) (people); the Old English æf- was a similar prefix.  The word was a noun use of the feminine past participle of delivrer (to deliver) with the suffix assimilated to –ery.  Delivery, deliverer, deliveree, deliverance & deliverability are nouns, deliver & delivered are verbs & adjectives, deliverable is a noun & adjective, delivering is a noun & verb; the noun plural is deliveries. 

Delivery systems

The definition of delivery systems tends to be elastic, ranging from simple, single-se devices to entire trans-national human and industrial processes.  A hypodermic syringe can be thought a delivery system for a vaccine yet that vital machine is just one, small, inexpensive part in the delivery system for a vaccination programme in response to a pandemic.  Such a global programme demands a delivery system with many human and mechanical components: research, development, testing, multi-jurisdiction legal & regulatory compliance, production, distribution, software, hardware, refrigeration, storage and administration, all before the first nurse has delivered even one injection.

The Manhattan Project's uranium-based Little Boy (left & dropped on Hiroshima) and the plutonium implosion-type Fat Man (right & dropped on Nagasaki).  So confident was the project team in the reliability of the uranium bomb it wasn't tested prior to use while the worlds first nuclear explosion was the "Trinity Test" conducted in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945 when a plutonium device was detonated.  For decades, as a uranium device, the Hiroshima was a genuine one-off, all the nuclear weapons built using plutonium but it's possible that more recent entrants to the club such as the DPRK (North Korea) and Pakistan may have been attracted to uranium because of the speed and simplicity of construction. 

Delivery systems can thus be very expensive and it's not uncommon for the cost vastly to exceed whatever it is they were created to deliver.  The Manhattan Project (1942-1947) which produced the first nuclear weapons officially cost some two billion dollars ($US2,000.000,000) at a time when a billion dollars was a lot of money.  Expressed as pre-pandemic (2018-2019) money, the A-bomb project probably cost the equivalent of some US$30 billion and somewhat more once adjusted for recent inflation.  Given the physics and engineering involved, the cost seems not unexceptional but remarkably, the development of the best-known component of the bomb's delivery system was more expensive still.  Between the first studies in 1938 and its eventual commissioning in 1944, Boeing’s B29 Superfortress absorbed over three billion dollars even though, unlike the bomb which was revolutionary and startlingly new, conceptually, the bomber was an evolution of the existing B17.  It was however a collection of challenges in engineering which grew in extent and complexity as the project progressed and it was soon realized the initial specifications would need significantly to be upgraded to produce a machine which reliably could carry the desired bomb-load at the necessary altitude over the vast distances missions in the Pacific would demand.

The Boeing B29 (Enola Gay) used to deliver "Little Boy" to Hiroshima.  It was one of the "Silverplate" run which integrated a number of weight-saving measures and aerodynamic improvements as well as the modified bomb-bay.

It was the B29's engines which were the cause of much of the effort.  Early modelling suggested the use of six or even eight engines was viable in terms of a flyable airframe but the approach would so compromise the range and load capacity it would render the thing useless for the intended purpose so the four-engine configuration had to be maintained.  Jet engines would have been the answer but at that stage of their development, they lacked power, reliability and their fuel consumption was too high so a new piston engine was needed and that it would need to be of larger capacity was obvious.  However, it needed also to be of a design which didn't significantly increase frontal area so the only solution was effectively to couple two engines, one sitting behind the other.  That delivered the necessary power and the weight increase could be tolerated but induced a tendency to overheat because the rearward components received so much less of the cooling air-flow.  What made the consequences of that worse was the use of so much weight-saving but highly combustible magnesium and although ameliorated during development and in service, the inherent problem was never entirely solved and it was only in the post-war years when a different engine was fitted that the issue vanished.  As a quirk of history, although now thought of as the A-bomb's delivery system, the B29 was obviously never designed with it in mind and when the time came, it was found it didn't fit in the bomb-bay.  The Royal Air Force's (RAF) Avro Lancaster could have carried it but the US military declined to consider that option and a special run (the "Silverplates") of B29s was constructed with the necessary modifications.

The 18-cylinder, two-row Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial used in the war-time B-29s (left) and the 28-cylinder four-row Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial adopted post-war.    

However, although a wartime necessity, the big piston engines were a military cul-de-sac but an innovation in the B-29 which was influential was the use of what would now be understood as a "computer-directed" (not "computer-controlled" as is sometimes stated) fire control systems which allowed two crew remotely to operate the four-turret defensive armament.  Systems like that, of which there were a few, were a reason the B-29 venture was so expensive but there have been analysts who have looked at the records of both it and the Manhattan Project and concluded the costs of the latter were probably understated because, as something for years top-secret until the bombing of Hiroshima was announced in August 1945, a significant proportion of the real expenses were charged elsewhere (notably distributed among the military's many other activities) to hide things from congressional view, everyone involved knowing that if something needs to be kept secret, the last people who should be told are politicians.  Estimates of the extent of the accounting slight-of-hand have varied but it has been suggested it may have been as high as 25%.  In industry, such thing are far from unknown.  It's long amused some that the failure of Ford's doomed Edsel (1958-1960) could be attributed to it being little more than a superficial variation of existing Ford & Mercury models (sharing engines, transmissions, platforms & assembly plants) yet when the brand was dumped Ford booked a loss of US$250 million (US$2.6 billion in 2023 dollars).  There were all sorts of corporate advantages in stating the loss as it was done and it involved things like charging the cost of developing one of the engines used wholly against the Edsel programme, even though it would serve in millions of Fords and Mercury models until 1976.

Beware of imitations: The US Boeing B-29 and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 clone.

One unintended beneficiary of the huge investment in the B29 was the Soviet Air Force.  Three B29s had fallen into Russian hands after emergency landing on Soviet territory and these, despite repeated requests, Moscow declined to return to their rightful owners, instead taking one apart and meticulously, part-by-part, duplicating every piece and from this, assembled their own which was released as the Tupolev Tu-4 (NATO reporting name: Bull).  In production between 1949-1952, the reverse-engineered clone remained on the active list of the Soviet military until 1964 and some were still in service with the Chinese PLA (People's Liberation Army) in 1987.  Although the Tupolev lacked some of the Boeing's advanced electronics, the Russian engineers managed to deliver an aircraft close in weight to the original despite not have access to some of the more exotic metals although it was later admitted to achieve that there were some compromises in the structural redundancies fitted.

The German V2 (one of the Vergeltungswaffen ("retaliatory weapons" or "reprisal weapons")), the worlds first ballistic missile.  As a delivery system, although inaccurate, even in 1945 it would have been effective had a nuclear warhead been available but its small payload limited its application as a strategic weapon and it was able to be produced at scale only because of the use of expendable slave labor. 

In a more conventional use of the spoils of war, the Americans were also the beneficiaries of the development of someone else's delivery system.  Nazi Germany’s big V2 (A4) rockets were (more-or-less) perfected at a cost which after the war was revealed to be higher even than the official number booked against the Manhattan project and that was not surprising given it was in its way just as ambitious.  In what was a hastily organised effort, the Allied occupation forces in 1945 rushed to grab as much of the material associated with the V2 as they could lay their hands on, train-loads of components, drawings, machine tools and test rigs sent westward from territory which, under the terms agreed at the Yalta Conference (February 1945) were to be handed to the Russian.  Just as significantly, there was a major round-up of German scientists, engineers and technicians who has worked on the V2, most of whom were anxious to be "rounded-up" by the Americans, the alternative being a career in Russian "employment".  The round-up (operation paperclip) remains controversial because matters like a Nazi past or complicity in the use of slave labor were often overlooked if an individual's contribution to the Cold War was thought to be of value and the V2 certainly saved the US from having to spend much money and perhaps a decade or more developing its own delivery system for nuclear warheads and not only were the ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) lineal V2 descendents, so was the Saturn V delivery system for the Apollo missions which enabled a dozen men to walk on the moon.

Post delivery: Lindsay Lohan's nursery in a theme of aquatic blue & white.

In humans, the female of the species is final component of the delivery system and on 17 Jul 2023 Lindsay Lohan announced she had delivered a baby boy, named Luai (an Arabic name which can be translated as “shield” or “protector”).  The child’s career in commerce has already begun, Ms Lohan partnering with Nestig to design not only her nautically-flavored nursery, but also a collection of baby products inspired by the imagery of the sea.  The nursery is a functional space in that the brand’s Wave dresser is adaptable to dual-use as a changing table and Nestig's cloud crib is modular and may later be converted into a toddler bed.

Lindsay Lohan with Nestig Aviator Mobile.  The aviator mobile was said to be “designed in partnership with Lindsay Lohan” and “handcrafted and hand-assembled by artisans in Brazil from wood, felt and locally-sourced wool” each “thoughtfully packaged in a Nestig gift box” (US$85; attachment arm sold separately).