What would happen if we shot a nuke at the moon?
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XOIIO (
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February 27th, 2011
If we shot a nuke of equal power to the Hiroshima nuke into the moon, what would happen? Would it be obliterated? Would only half of it be left?
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It would make a rather insignificant crater. The energy released would be quite small compared to the energy of a fast meteor. I seem to remember that it is often stated as being the equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT, but I’ve no idea what that is in joules (actual SI units of energy). To the explosive energy, you have to add the kinetic energy of the bomb but I think this would be quite small, as a lot of the kinetic energy would have been used up in climbing out of the gravity well of the Earth.
I just had a check and 10 kilotons of TNT releases about 10,000,000,000,000 joules (usually written as 10^13 i.e. a 1 followed by 13 zeros). Lets say a 200 tonne meteor smacks into the moon at a speed of 10 km/s, that has an energy, using the formula E = (mv^2)/2, of (2 * 10^5 * 10^8)/2 = 10^13, which is the same as the bomb. This is a small meteor moving at the slower end of the speed range, so basically the bomb is no big deal on the scale of Moon explosions.
@markferg Then what would it take to blow up the moon?
Something way more powerful than it would take to destroy an entire country.
If you could blast giant hunks out of the moon (and not hit Terra with ‘em) you would see our tides getting messed up, leading to ecosystem collapse.
@Nullo Exactly why i want to find out how much it would take…
MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Actually, the tides would take years before any noticeable changes would happen. The inertia of their back and forth movement would continue long after moon was no longer around.
10^24 joules might dislodge a noticeable amount of the Moon. That’s the equivalent of – a f***ing big explosion. We’re no where near being able to do that. BTW – I’m your man for maximum death and destruction, just let me know the parameters and I’ll work out some of the more optimum delivery mechanisms. If you just want to blow bits off the Moon, that’s not specifically achieving an objective that controls human behavior, so it’s not really in my menu of service offerings. YMMV.
First, they’re not designed to hit the moon. So it’d miss, and/or not have enough energy to get there, and/or malfunction in outer space.
Second, even if you designed one to be able to make it there, “nukes” have such a big effect on Earth largely because of the atmosphere, which is not there on the moon. So you’d have an explosion and release some radioactivity, but it would just make a relative small crater, which the moon has many many of, not to mention much bigger ones.
Third, even if you had the same explosive effect as on the Earth, no, the moon is a substantial fraction of the size of the Earth, and a city or nuclear explosion is not. Not even close. So, “no big whoop”.
There are some web sites… er, and earlier threads on Fluther, discussing what it takes to destroy a planet, and what would happen to the Earth if the moon vanished, etc.
We would have to go and stand in a corner of the galaxy for a thousand years for being so stupid.
What would it take to blow up the moon? The human civilization as of 2010 is currently somewhere around 0.72 on the Kardashev scale. Looking at the numbers I’d say we need at least 1.5 on this scale, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Energy_use
Maybe a zettawatt or yottawatt laser can do the trick targeting the same spot on the moon for several hours or days. An alternative would be a large antimatter bomb. But we’d have to invest all these yottajoules to produce a large enough amount of antimatter plus a sophisticated antimatter trap before we can deploy the bomb.
But I’m sure there will be some hippies taking to the streets trying to protect the moon. Bunch of damned peaceniks ;-)
@mattbrowne You mean that they’ve actually dragged that poor metric magnitudes business out to absurd names? “Peta-” was already kinda pushing it.
@Nullo – Yes, the SI prefixes are mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta, xona, weka, vunda, uda, treda, sorta, rinta, quexa, pepta, ocha, nena, minga, luma absurd !
But sometimes they come in handy.
We won’t get a peptabyte external hard drive, but what’s the combined stellar power of our universe?
About 100 rintawatts !
I’ll go as far as peta. After that everything is wanka. wot?
@mattbrowne – I only read them going as far as yotta based on the 1991 update (which I think is still the most recent). Where do the rest come from?
@mattbrowne – Ok – A site that states – “So here is what I say:” and a link that doesn’t work, isn’t the same as an international body that certifies these things. I’ll stop at ‘yotta’ until told otherwise.
@markferg – I tried the links again and both seem to work. Where do you think the yotta came from? Somebody had an idea and the SI people made the idea official. But you are right, we need to be aware of the parts that are official and the parts that are a proposal.
@mattbrowne – ultimately you are right. If enough people use it, it will become the standard. Seems to me bankers bonuses will push the limits first! Just being a bit grumpy and pen pushing.
With current rockets the nuke wouldn’t make it half way to the Moon.
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