Nuclear explosions in space

Moderator note: Beaconator has been warned, yet again, for posting pseudoscientific nonsense to our forums. This follows a long history of previous warnings for essentially the same thing.

This is the Free Thoughts subforum. Nevertheless, Beaconator's long record of making claims that he must - at some level - know are nonsensical rubbish, makes a mockery of the overriding ethos of this forum. He cannot be completely unaware of what kind of place sciforums is or what it is intended to be.

Due to accumulated warnings, it seems that Beaconator has reached 100 active warning points. Therefore, he will be leaving us permanently.
 
Beaconator said:
A nuclear explosive is set off in space?

does it consume more space and is therefore larger?

or is it perhaps less likely even to occur because there is no oxygen?
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I've wondered about that, in the context of using nukes to divert asteroids.

A nuclear explosion in space would release the same amount of energy I guess. But it wouldn't produce an atmospheric blast wave. Since it's the pressure wave that exerts mechanical force on a nearby object, I wonder if a nuclear explosion would be of any use against an asteroid.
 
Yazata said:
I wonder if a nuclear explosion would be of any use against an asteroid.
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It generates a small amount of material - but that material is moving VERY fast. So the impulse would be large.

A nuclear explosion inside a jacket of material would be even more effective.
 
Yazata said:
I've wondered about that, in the context of using nukes to divert asteroids.

A nuclear explosion in space would release the same amount of energy I guess. But it wouldn't produce an atmospheric blast wave. Since it's the pressure wave that exerts mechanical force on a nearby object, I wonder if a nuclear explosion would be of any use against an asteroid.
Click to expand...
If you were using a nuclear device to deflect an asteroid, you'd have it detonate at the surface of the object, vaporizing a region of it, turning it into ejecta which would act like the exhaust of a rocket engine.
 
I was about to say something similar to Janus, before reading the post above.

A nuclear explosion releases a lot of energy as things like gamma rays, x-rays and the like. Those cause heating. Inside the Earth's atmosphere, they cause rapid heating of the surrounding air, which then expands suddenly, causing the pressure or shock wave that Yazata mentioned.

In space, energy from a nuclear explosion cannot be transferred by conduction or convection, but the radiation can still heat things. So, an explosion near an asteroid could transfer enough heat to vaporise part of the surface. Then, as Janus said, the ejection of material from the surface would have the effect of "pushing" the asteroid away from where the explosion happened.

The heating due to radiation release in the form of gamma rays etc. is a separate effect from any momentum transfer caused by direct impact from fragments of the exploding bomb itself. Those would also give the asteroid a bit of a kick, because they would be travelling very quickly, as billvon said. However, I suspect that this is far less significant than the heating effect of the released radiation. (I could be wrong.)
 
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