Would a nuclear bomb work in a vacuum?

[dragonstar57]

a shock wave is more like wind than sound

and to get rid of a large asteroid we cold hit it with a chunk of antimatter = to half its mass

[Moontanman]

a shock wave is more like wind than sound

and to get rid of a large asteroid we cold hit it with a chunk of antimatter = to half its mass

 

 

Ummm, where would you get the anti-matter? And how would you protect the earth from such a huge blast? just a few grams of anti-matter/matter would be equal to a multimegaton blast, a meteor several miles across would be enough to wipe life off the earth.... even if it were many thousands of miles away....

[Leader Bee]

I'm not so sure about this. A nuclear bomb is so powerful that our atmosphere cannot absorb the blast. It unleashes an EMP due to this (by knocking electrons from the gases in our atmosphere). The fact that the blast wave isn't absorbed is also why the bomb is detonated above the target to increase it's effectiveness

 

This is true as evidenced by Operation: Starfish Prime. This was a nuclear test that took place in space and caused an EMP so powerful it caused a blackout over Hawaii.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

[rigney]

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news146.html <thats the asterid your talking about. its only 400 meters

 

400 miles would be very very visible.

 

Let's just hope this little giant never falls into a near earth orbit?

 

From: Wakipedia.... "Ceres" is the largest body in the asteroid belt and is classified as a dwarf planet. It has a diameter of slightly under 1000 km, and a mass large enough for its own gravity to pull it into a spherical shape. Ceres was considered a planet when it was discovered in the 19th century, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s as further observation revealed additional asteroids. It was again reclassified in 2006 as a dwarf planet.

[forufes]

look at it like this, a shockwave is a solid wall of air.

the explosion pushes a wave of air..

the wave ahead of it doesn't have enough time to move ahead..

..while the explosion is still pushing.

so the two waves become one, they become harder like that; denser.

one wave plus another and a third and forth, all pushing eachother and tightly crammed, slam into something, say, you.

it'll be like being slammed by a train, or a BIG pan or shovel.

add to it the air is scorching hot, so you're cooked on the way, like the big pan is just took of the fire, yeah, that's it..

 

 

but as for the nuke in vacuum, the bomb goes off with an energy release of heat, if there's air, it'll conserve/convert it into kinetic energy. and the rest would stay as heat[depending on how far you're from the bomb. at one point it'll be a cool gust of wind.]

if there isn't air, wouldn't that mean the energy would be 100% emitted as heat?

doesn't sound less destructive to me, only different.

one would send you flying away, well done.

the other turn you to a carchoal statue in your place.

Edited August 30, 2010 by forufes

[Mr Skeptic]

a shock wave is more like wind than sound

and to get rid of a large asteroid we cold hit it with a chunk of antimatter = to half its mass

 

Looks like someone here wants to vaporize our solar system

[PaulS1950]

Using positrons would only affect the electrons in an asteroid - wouldn't it?

so what would happen the the neutrons and protons in the asteroids make up?

To completely get rid of the asteroid wouldn't you have to use the antimater in a composition that was the polar opposite of the mater to be affected?

and yes, the resulting reaction would be carastrophic to an astronomically area.

[dragonstar57]

a nuke uses a c4 detonation to start the fission reactions and the c4 wouldn't work without o2. so a classical nuke would not work at all. but I doubt it would be difficult to add some supplied 02 to the c4 to make it work.

 

and a bunch of how powered rail gun shots probably would be enough to change its course

[Moontanman]

a nuke uses a c4 detonation to start the fission reactions and the c4 wouldn't work without o2. so a classical nuke would not work at all. but I doubt it would be difficult to add some supplied 02 to the c4 to make it work.

 

c4 like most high explosives, including gun powder BTW, contains it's own oxidizer so it would work in a complete vacuum.

 

and a bunch of how powered rail gun shots probably would be enough to change its course

 

You could attach the rail gun to the asteroid and use it change the asteroids course as well...

[dragonstar57]

"Looks like someone here wants to vaporize our solar system"-mr. skeptic

 

it depends on the size of the asteroid and the distance from the earth. if the asteroid is the size of a semi it would just cause a 1 million megaton detonation. remember that to destroy an asteroid you have to blow it up hard enough to not let the pieces reform into a molten ball of lava on a collision course with the earth

[swansont]

a nuke uses a c4 detonation to start the fission reactions and the c4 wouldn't work without o2. so a classical nuke would not work at all. but I doubt it would be difficult to add some supplied 02 to the c4 to make it work.

 

 

If you relied on atmospheric oxygen you would be very limited in the size of the explosion you could make, so I'd be very surprised if C4 didn't have its own oxidizer. In any event there are explosives that do and work underwater and should work in a vacuum.

[insane_alien]

C4 is primarily RDX. and the explody bit is entirely RDX. RDX doesn't require any external compounds to go boom, it'll go quite happily on its own.

 

not to mention its entirely possible to use other types of explosive to initiate the nuclear detonation.

[Mr Skeptic]

"Looks like someone here wants to vaporize our solar system"-mr. skeptic

 

it depends on the size of the asteroid and the distance from the earth. if the asteroid is the size of a semi it would just cause a 1 million megaton detonation. remember that to destroy an asteroid you have to blow it up hard enough to not let the pieces reform into a molten ball of lava on a collision course with the earth

 

You said a large asteroid, not a tiny one. So take for example the asteroid Apophis, which has a slight chance of hitting Earth a few decades from now, and is big enough that we would want to deflect it if it were. It weighs about 2 X 10^10 kg, and to hit it with an amount of antimatter half that would be an explosion of 1.8 X 10^27 Joules or 430,000,000,000 megatons. Where you would get that much antimatter or how you would throw it at the asteroid would both be insurmountably problematic.

 

The escape velocity of a large asteroid like Apophis would be about 0.14 m/s or 0.31 miles per hour. So long as you can get the fragments to move faster than half a mile an hour, they aren't going to reform into the same asteroid. This perhaps gives you an idea of how much overkill half its mass in antimatter would be.

[dragonstar57]

"The escape velocity of a large asteroid like Apophis would be about 0.14 m/s or 0.31 miles per hour."-mr skeptic

 

is that before or after it looses half its mater due to antimatter/mater annihilation?

 

so would just a few lbs of antimatter work?

[D H]

We don't even have a few pounds, cipher.

 

From http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

Can we make antimatter bombs?

No. It would take billions of years to produce enough antimatter for a bomb having the same destructiveness as `typical' hydrogen bombs, of which there exist more than ten thousand already.

 

Let's ignore that and assume you did manage to come up with 2.7×10¹⁰ kg of antimatter and assume that you somehow could use it to utterly annihilate Apophis. The resultant explosion would yield 2.4×10²⁷ joules of energy in a very, very short period of time. That is the energy from the total amount of sunlight that hits the Earth over a span of 436 years! Even worse, that energy would be in the form of extremely energetic gamma rays. That would probably kill us all.

[DJBruce]

DH:

 

Wouldn't the annihilation of 2.7x10¹⁰ kg of antimatter result in a 4.86x10²⁷ J explosion?

[D H]

Nope. It's 2.4×10²⁷ joules. E=mc². Here m=2.7×10¹⁰ kg, and c² is 9.0×10¹⁶ m²/s².

The resultant explosion will most likely be a lot less than 2.4×10²⁷ joules. Some annihilation will occur when the asteroid and anti-asteroid collide. However, that initial explosion will generate shock waves that will break the asteroid and anti-asteroid apart. Most of the material will survive that initial explosion. Some of the material will be in the form of vaporized gas, some will be ejected from the solar system, but a lot of little chunks of matter and antimatter asteroid will survive -- and will still be orbiting the Sun. End result: thousands, maybe millions, of little near Earth antimatter asteroids. I don't want to be around when one of those antimatter chunks hits the Earth's atmosphere.

[DJBruce]

Nope. It's 2.4×10²⁷ joules. E=mc². Here m=2.7×10¹⁰ kg, and c² is 9.0×10¹⁶ m²/s².

The resultant explosion will most likely be a lot less than 2.4×10²⁷ joules. Some annihilation will occur when the asteroid and anti-asteroid collide. However, that initial explosion will generate shock waves that will break the asteroid and anti-asteroid apart. Most of the material will survive that initial explosion. Some of the material will be in the form of vaporized gas, some will be ejected from the solar system, but a lot of little chunks of matter and antimatter asteroid will survive -- and will still be orbiting the Sun. End result: thousands, maybe millions, of little near Earth antimatter asteroids. I don't want to be around when one of those antimatter chunks hits the Earth's atmosphere.

 

Ahh, Ok, I double the mass since I assumed an equal quantity of matter would also be annihilated. Regardless, I'd prefer to be no where near any type of antimatter explosion as well.

[D H]

Ahh, Ok, I double the mass since I assumed an equal quantity of matter would also be annihilated.

You're right. The energy yield, assuming complete annihilation, is 4.9×10²⁷ joules (to two decimal places).

 

 

 

[dragonstar57]

then you could hit the asteroid with something very large moving very fast

the American way

[dragonstar57]

Nope. It's 2.4×10²⁷ joules. E=mc². Here m=2.7×10¹⁰ kg, and c² is 9.0×10¹⁶ m²/s².

The resultant explosion will most likely be a lot less than 2.4×10²⁷ joules. Some annihilation will occur when the asteroid and anti-asteroid collide. However, that initial explosion will generate shock waves that will break the asteroid and anti-asteroid apart. Most of the material will survive that initial explosion. Some of the material will be in the form of vaporized gas, some will be ejected from the solar system, but a lot of little chunks of matter and antimatter asteroid will survive -- and will still be orbiting the Sun. End result: thousands, maybe millions, of little near Earth antimatter asteroids. I don't want to be around when one of those antimatter chunks hits the Earth's atmosphere.

I don't think I ever heard a concept as frightening as millions of near earth antimatter asteroids. it would almost be better to just let the asteroid hit than to antimatter it lol