Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Pseudoscience-is-malarkey on 26/06/2021 04:17:38
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Even if the Tunguska event was 200x, let alone 2,000x more powerful than the bombs my country dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how did it not wipe out life on Earth, and how come only a few people noticed the event actually happen? I know it was in the desolate Siberian wilderness, populated by some farmers and Tsarists political prisoners, but still...
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The atom bombs were in the 20 kiloton range. People have exploded 10-megaton bombs since then, with almost nobody else noticing.
Humanity at its worst is puny compared with a decent hurricane or tsunami.
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Also the Tunguska event didn't produce radioactive fallout.
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The blast radius increases as the cube root of the energy exploded (all other things being the same)...
- So if you had an explosion 1,000 times larger, the blast radius would only increase by a factor of 10
- This is because the blast energy expands outwards in 3 dimensions
This is also why research into very large nuclear bombs was not pursued - you can do a lot more damage with 10 "little" bombs than one big one with 10 times the explosive power.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targetable_reentry_vehicle
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Quite interesting comment Evan, and one that I'm sure was considered when this new doctrine was introduced, of 'low yield' limited nuclear wars. The one we're gearing up to today.
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It is believed that the entire nuclear arsenal on the earth could destroy almost all human life many times over but that is the calculation taking into account direct hits on populated sites around the earth. But if all the nuclear weapons were detonated let's say in the middle of the south pole only penguins and other creatures would be bothered. The sound my travel quite some distance many thousands of kilometres and radiation would be a very big problem may be killing people some years down the track but the planet would barely feel it.
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The kt didn't affect the earth catastrophically unless you where a boiligical life form.
The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated diameter of 11–81 kilometers (6.8–50.3 mi), and delivered an estimated energy of 21–921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs (between 1.3×1024 and 5.8×1025 joules, or 1.3–58 yottajoules).
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Even if the Tunguska event was 200x, let alone 2,000x more powerful than the bombs my country dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how did it not wipe out life on Earth, and how come only a few people noticed the event actually happen? I know it was in the desolate Siberian wilderness, populated by some farmers and Tsarists political prisoners, but still...
The Tunguska explosion is estimated to be 33 times the blast at Hiroshima or 500 kilotons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#:~:text=The%20exploding%20meteoroid%20was%20determined,release%20of%20approximately%20500%20kilotons.
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boiligical life form.
Life forms which are not biological are seldom troubled by anything...
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Even if the Tunguska event was 200x, let alone 2,000x more powerful than the bombs my country dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how did it not wipe out life on Earth, and how come only a few people noticed the event actually happen? I know it was in the desolate Siberian wilderness, populated by some farmers and Tsarists political prisoners, but still...
The Tunguska explosion is estimated to be 33 times the blast at Hiroshima or 500 kilotons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#:~:text=The%20exploding%20meteoroid%20was%20determined,release%20of%20approximately%20500%20kilotons.
It's also estimated as up to 30 MTons
"The 30 Mt (130 PJ) estimated upper limit blast power of the Tunguska event could power the same average home for more than 3,100,000 years."
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent
But the detail doesn't matter.
Most of Hiroshima survived the blast.
Almost all the damage was confined to sticky out bits that people had put there.
The flat bits were generally fine.
That wiki page lists plenty of earthquakes etc that were much bigger than a thousand times the upper bound to the estimated energy from Tunguska.
A notable example is an hour's worth of sunshine: 104000 megatons.