How many megatons does it take to destroy the moon?

How many megatons does it take to destroy the moon?

To destroy the moon, you would need to provide at least 1.24×1029J of energy to exceed the Moon’s gravitational binding energy. (This provides a lower bound on the energy to “blow up” the moon.) A megaton of TNT releases 4.184 PJ of energy. Put this together, and you would need at least: 2.96×1013 megatons of TNT.

Can nuclear bomb destroy moon?

The moon is roughly 2000 miles across with a surface area of 17 million square miles. A typical nuclear detonation could produce a crater much less than a square mile in area. It would then take at least 100 million of today’s nuclear weapons to just stir up the surface of the moon to a depth of around 100 m.

What would it take to destroy the moon?

The binding energy of a smaller object, like our moon is a tidy little 1.2 x 10^29 joules. It takes about 1800 times more energy to destroy the Earth than it takes to destroy the moon. This event released 1.3 x 10^26 joules of energy, carving out this giant pit. It’s a thousandth of the binding energy of the moon.

How much TNT would it take to destroy the moon?

Well the biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated was Russia’s Czar Bomba, or King Bomb, which had a yield of 50 megatons. Please nerds, check my math, but I believe you’d need approximately 600 billion King Bombs to blow up the moon.

Why did NASA nuke the moon?

In December of that year, Apollo scientist Gary Latham suggested detonating a “smallish” nuclear device on the Moon in order to facilitate research into its geologic make-up. The idea was dismissed, as it would interfere with plans to measure the Moon’s natural background radiation.

What would happen to the ocean if the moon disappeared?

What would happen to the oceans if the Moon disappeared? Earth’s oceans would have much smaller tides – about one-third the size of what they are now. Tides churn up material in the oceans, which allows coastal ecosystems to thrive. Temperatures could potentially be more extreme on the Earth without this influence.

How powerful is 200200 gigatons of dynamite?

200 gigatons of TNT (dynamite) contains roughly the energy equivalent of about 10 million Hiroshima-size bombs. It’s also about 10 times more energy than previous estimates of what it would take to destroy an asteroid of this size.

How many nuclear weapons would it take to destroy an asteroid?

You’d need the power of 4,000 of those to annihilate a 20-kilometer-wide asteroid. But even then, you couldn’t just launch 4,000 nuclear weapons to destroy the asteroid.

How would you detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon?

Ideally, the bomb would be detonated on the edge (known as the terminator) of the dark side of the Moon, so the sun’s light would silhouette the trademark mushroom cloud from behind. It would be totally rad. Problem was, that wouldn’t happen.

Did the United States ever have a missile that could hit the Moon?

Not all the specific technical details of early American ballistic missile technology are clear (some things are still classified), but during an interview Reiffel gave later in life, he insisted we had the capability to hit a target on the moon with an accuracy of within two miles.