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how detectable would the EMP from nuclear explosions be? Obviously that is strong, but not very directed..

by clort 6y ago

bena 6y ago
You do realize that there is gigantic nuclear reactor sitting about 93 million miles from where you are right now, right? An energy source so massive, it would only take a small fraction of it to heat and power several full planets. It would be like billions of nuclear explosions every second. The Sun dwarfs anything we can do on Earth. Any arbitrary explosion of that sort wouldn't even register as noise next to the Sun. Our radio transmissions are directed and deliberate in a way that is noticeable even among the noise. Like watching scrambled HBO on an old cable box.
- clort 6y ago
  Yes. However I don't know if that is different. That is a roaring fire, whereas the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba was a 58 megaton event which would have created a pulse. Electronic devices can sit in the sunshine all day, exposed to the roaring fire of the sun but a singular EMP can take them out? When you look for things, you look for what is different to its surroundings. Even when our own people are looking for planets around other stars, they are looking for an incredibly small change. They found something nearly 30,000 light years away like that.
  - bena 6y ago
    Yes, we're close enough to Earth that it has a lot more affect on us than the Sun. And the Earth has a magnetic shield. Etc. The Tsar Bomba did not destroy all life on the planet, did it? A simple solar flare is 5 to 10 magnitudes larger. Yes, small changes, but small changes that don't belong. We are close enough to the Sun that even if that were detectable at the scale of the cosmos, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is a rounding error at the scales we are talking about. Appreciate this. We are effectively in the Sun's atmosphere. The entire solar system is. Scale matters.

how detectable would the EMP from nuclear explosions be? Obviously that is strong, but not very directed..

by clort 6y ago

how detectable would the EMP from nuclear explosions be? Obviously that is strong, but not very directed..

bena 6y ago

You do realize that there is gigantic nuclear reactor sitting about 93 million miles from where you are right now, right? An energy source so massive, it would only take a small fraction of it to heat and power several full planets. It would be like billions of nuclear explosions every second. The Sun dwarfs anything we can do on Earth. Any arbitrary explosion of that sort wouldn't even register as noise next to the Sun. Our radio transmissions are directed and deliberate in a way that is noticeable even among the noise. Like watching scrambled HBO on an old cable box.

clort 6y ago
Yes. However I don't know if that is different. That is a roaring fire, whereas the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba was a 58 megaton event which would have created a pulse. Electronic devices can sit in the sunshine all day, exposed to the roaring fire of the sun but a singular EMP can take them out? When you look for things, you look for what is different to its surroundings. Even when our own people are looking for planets around other stars, they are looking for an incredibly small change. They found something nearly 30,000 light years away like that.
- bena 6y ago
  Yes, we're close enough to Earth that it has a lot more affect on us than the Sun. And the Earth has a magnetic shield. Etc. The Tsar Bomba did not destroy all life on the planet, did it? A simple solar flare is 5 to 10 magnitudes larger. Yes, small changes, but small changes that don't belong. We are close enough to the Sun that even if that were detectable at the scale of the cosmos, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is a rounding error at the scales we are talking about. Appreciate this. We are effectively in the Sun's atmosphere. The entire solar system is. Scale matters.