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How Do We Know the Nukes Still Work?:
Though the treaty explicitly banning all nuclear weapons tests has not yet entered into force, the United States has not detonated a nuclear weapon since 1992. The American nuclear strategy still relies on the nuclear weapons working, but without full-scale tests, the Department of Energy's National Labs now operate the Stockpile Stewardship program, which relies on theory, simulations, and experiments to deliver annual weapons assessments to the federal government.
[...] "The [Stockpile Stewardship program] has gone through a number of administrations, and the Defense Department hasn't said that we have to go back to testing," Victor "Vic" Reis, former assistant secretary of energy for defense programs at the Department of Energy and one of the program's architects, told Gizmodo. "We understand enough of what's happening with the current stockpile of weapons—they're safe and reliable."
Reis teamed up with senior scientists and military personnel to draft a program that could validate the performance of the weapons and simulate the effects of aging on the weapons and their safety—what he called Science Based Stockpile Stewardship. [...] However, there wasn't nearly enough computing capacity to run all of the required simulations. Fortunately, Reis had previously been the director of DARPA and convinced a manager there to lead what would become the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, a program that would significantly increase the computing power available to the weapons labs. Today, the Stockpile Stewardship program operates on a three-pillared approach, combining theory, simulation, and experiment, and runs mainly out of those three labs as well as the Nevada National Security Site.
[...] Understanding how the weapons age is a crucial component to the simulations. "There's a whole aspect of what happens to various materials and how they interact with metals, or with components of the devices themselves, that's all aging. We have no data on what happens when something is 40 years old," Irene Qualters, associate laboratory director for simulation and computation at Los Alamos National Lab, told Gizmodo.
[...] Reis told Gizmodo that he thinks the strategy should last at least another generation. The U.S. has found an effective workaround to true nuclear testing—it's not quite as showy as nuking ships in the Pacific, but scientists each year report to Congress with 100 percent confidence that the nuclear arsenal is reliable.
"But beyond 20 to 25 years, who knows," Reis said. Future politicians will eventually have to decide what to do about the aging nuclear arsenal.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday May 16 2020, @10:13AM
This is denomination based.
Catholics believe you might or might not go to heaven depending on whether you've committed a mortal sin (compared to a venial sin) and if you've confessed or not. If you die between committing the mortal sin and confession, you're burning for eternity.
On the other hand, a lot of protestants (I thinking Baptists, but there are other denominations too) believe "If you believe in Jesus [that Jesus is "the Son of God"], then you're going to heaven". This, of course, gets mocked by some people because this could in theory allow Baptists to commit all sorts of horrific sins and still get into heaven. The counter to that is that Jesus knows if you're really trying to be good -- which goes against their simple "if only you believe in Jesus" argument. (This is all overly simplified, of course.)
I haven't even dived into the "What if a baby dies before being baptised? Can he/she go to heaven?" question. That's an interesting set of arguments to listen to (assuming you don't auto-retch when listening to religious arguments).
It also doesn't get into whether you're talking to a guy on the street or a fully trained theologian. (My explanation is a combination of both street and official doctorine.)
Both belief systems I mentioned have their basis from parts of the Bible.
When you add scientific / logical perspective into the fray, both arguments have a very difficult time holding up. (For the Catholics: space-time is based on the universe we live in, so how can the when we confess affect our afterlife? For the Baptists: Reality has taught us to be reserved about what we believe (is time really a constant?), thus how can we just simply believe in something without proof? Was Jesus just a man or was he part / all god? How can God have a son and still be one entity?)
Disclaimers: Answers are the compliments of my upbringing, but not necessarily my current view points. Answers are here not to be taken as a challenge, but only for information / entertainment value.