How many nukes would it take to blow up Jupiter?

Will Tingle took this question on from listener Sebastian with the help of University of Cambridge Public Astronomer, Matt Bothwell...

Will - How many nuclear bombs would it take to destroy Jupiter? Have you ever woken up and wanted to wreak havoc on a cosmic scale, but realised you didn't know how much of your personal nuclear arsenal to bring with you? Me too. So, fortunately for us, the public astronomer at Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, Matt Bothwell, is here to take us through the physics and forces required.

Matt - It's harder than you might think. The Earth is a big ball of iron and rock that weighs a billion, trillion tons since the earth formed. It's been hit by billions of asteroids and, not only has the earth not been destroyed, they've barely left a scratch. So what would it take in order to destroy anything? The general rule is you need to put in enough energy to overcome whatever forces are holding that thing together. If you take something held together by pretty weak forces like a cake for example, you don't really need much energy to pull it to pieces. If something's held together more strongly like a rock, then smashing it to bits is going to be hard work. So what about a planet? Well, the force that holds planets together is gravity. And if you want to destroy a planet, you're going to have to put in enough energy to overcome the gravity of a whole planet. Scientists actually have a special term for this. We call it the 'gravitational binding energy.' If you take anything that's held together by gravity, whether it's a planet or a star or a whole galaxy, and you add enough energy to equal the gravitational binding energy, that thing is going to be destroyed. You want to destroy Jupiter, and that's going to be pretty hard work. The gravitational binding energy of Jupiter is about as much as a hundred billion trillion nuclear bombs. That's a one followed by 23 zeros. Earth is smaller and has weaker gravity, so it is going to be easier to destroy. It would only take maybe 10 billion trillion nuclear bombs. So, happily for astronomers and stargazers everywhere, I think the planets are safe from your evil plans for the time being.

Will - We hope that answered your question, Sebastian, thank you very much for sending it in. And thank you very much to Matt Bothwell. His upcoming children's book covering topics like this, and many more, 'Astrophysics for Super Villains' is out July of next year. Keep an eye out for that.