The mushroom cloud wasn’t a physical object, an icon, like the masks. It was a mantra calling Americans to spill their blood and treasure on the sands of Iraq.

The Other Mushroom Clouds By JONATHAN FETTER-VORM AUG. 7, 2015 A column of debris was all that remained of Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

Notice the mushroom cloud forming immediately after the explosion. (Image credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) When a bomb goes off, energy is shot out indiscriminately in all directions.

The enduring shorthand of the mushroom cloud has taken on different meanings over the decades, reflecting fantasies and fears as it boomed and bloomed across American culture, including, most ...

The scientists found that mushroom shapes only occur in “head-on” collisions – when the incoming gas cloud’s trajectory is no more than 5° away from being perpendicular to the galactic plane.