3 ms·
> The Tsar Bomba (5.3YW) managed about 2% of the power output of the Sun (384YW) TIL You know what's even more amazing/frightening? There is no power limit fo
by api 3y ago
> The Tsar Bomba (5.3YW) managed about 2% of the power output of the Sun (384YW)
TIL
You know what's even more amazing/frightening? There is no power limit for hydrogen bombs. You could take a bomb like the Tsar Bomba or Castle Bravo and use that as a blasting cap to trigger an even larger fusion stage. ... and on, and on, in a vast nested turducken of kaboom.
One of the ideas to deflect a planet killer asteroid would, if we had time, be to land there and build a base and assemble such a mega-bomb deep underground.
- arethuza 3y ago"There is no power limit for hydrogen bombs" Edward Teller (who else) got there first! https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bigger-boom/ https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/12/in-search-of-a-bi... A 1Gt primary (Gnomon) igniting Sundial to give 10Gt.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoCan you only bump it an order of magnitude per stage though? Seems inefficient. Sounds like one of the defense contractor MBAs got ahold of the plan.
- arethuza 3y agoI suspect that limit might be because a Sundial would be physically huge - 1500t or so.
- lttlrck 3y ago"turducken" never heard of it and what a perfect word in this context LOL! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turducken
- dboreham 3y agoThe 3D version of turtles.
- ben_w 3y agoHawking wrote in A Brief History of Time: > John Wheeler once calculated that if one took all the heavy water in all the oceans of the world, one could build a hydrogen bomb that would compress matter at the center so much that a black hole would be created
- arethuza 3y agoOK I think that wins the "largest H-bomb anyone has thought of" prize!
- ben_w 3y agoPossibly the largest artificial one, but pair instability supernova turn several solar masses of hydrogen all the way up into nickel-56 in a few seconds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova Edit: Just remembered that Isaac Arthur has spoken about artificially inducing a Type Ia supernova to synthesise heavy elements, and why sufficiently developed civilisations may want to do this at this scale.
- CamperBob2 3y agoOne of the ideas to deflect a planet killer asteroid would, if we had time, be to land there and build a base and assemble such a mega-bomb deep underground. Problem: Giant-sized asteroid on collision course with Earth Solution: Build giant bomb and nuke it Problem: 843 medium-sized radioactive asteroids on collision course with Earth
- api 3y agoFrom what I read the goal would be to pulverize it into pieces small enough that the majority would burn up or at least be significantly attenuated by the atmosphere, as well as impart enough delta-V to send some fraction of the mass on a new trajectory that would miss Earth.