Could just one bomb destroy our planet in future? A scientist explains. <\/p>
There is a scene in Christopher Nolan\u2019s new film Oppenheimer<\/em> (a biopic of J Robert Oppenheimer, the man who invented the nuclear bomb) in which Leslie Groves, an army engineer played by Matt Damon, worries about destroying the world.<\/p>\n This is just before the Trinity test, the first-ever detonation of an atomic bomb, and Oppenheimer says he\u2019s confident that the chances of annihilating all life on Earth are near zero. \u201cNear zero?\u201d splutters Groves. \u201cZero would be nice!\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, Groves\u2019s concerns were those of Manhattan Project physicist Edward Teller. According to Dr Steven Biegalski<\/a>, Chair of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Teller was worried that the heat of the explosion \u201cwould cause the hydrogen in the atmosphere to undergo fusion, setting off a catastrophic chain reaction that would continue around the globe and destroy Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words: there was a fear that it would set the world on fire. \u201cThis obviously did not happen,\u201d adds Biegalski. \u201cThe density of fusible atoms and the energy balance prevent it from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, it raises the question: how big and destructive can nuclear weapons get? Could a single bomb feasibly end the world?<\/p>\n \u201cThe bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War Two was 15 kilotons, equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT,\u201d explains Dr Tara Drozdenko<\/a>, a director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Nagasaki bomb was 20 kilotons. Most current US nuclear weapons are 15 to 20 times more powerful than those bombs.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n For context, the Hiroshima bomb devastated 13km2<\/sup> of the city, destroyed 63 per cent of its buildings and killed at least 70,000 people. But the most powerful nuclear bomb ever made was tested by the Soviet Union in 1961. Named Tsar Bomba, it had a yield of over 50,000 kilotons, which is equivalent to 50 million tonnes of TNT.<\/p>\n The blast was monstrous, destroying houses in the village of Severny, 55 kilometres (34 miles) from the testing site at Mityushikha Bay. If such a bomb were dropped on Manchester, people in Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield would suffer third-degree burns.<\/p>\n Incredibly, Tsar Bomba was designed to be twice as powerful (100 megatons), but was scaled back to mitigate radiation effects.<\/p>\n As Drozdenko explains, however, there is such a thing as too powerful. \u201cThat bomb is just not practical for an arsenal,\u201d she says. \u201cThere is no practical delivery system for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Such a bomb would be too big to be deployed as a missile and carry enormous risks for any crew hoping to drop it by plane.<\/p>\n \u201cEven at 50 megatons, there was some question of whether the Tsar Bomba plane would be able to escape the area before it exploded,\u201d says Drozdenko. \u201cWhy would you manufacture something that big if you could get 50 other ones that are smaller?\u201d<\/p>\n According to Biegalski, there is a \u201cgeneral consensus that fission-fusion weapons can go to much higher yields than Tsar Bomba\u201d. There is even speculation that in the future they could be used to knock an asteroid off course<\/a>. Yet there are limits to how powerful a single bomb can be.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is always a maximum for two reasons,\u201d says Biegalski. \u201cOne is that you can run out of material to put in the bomb. Two, at a certain stage the bomb blows itself apart and the reaction stops.\u201d<\/p>\n As for whether a \u201ctheoretical-maximum-size nuclear weapon\u201d could destroy the world, Biegalski is uncertain. \u201cAll I know is that I hope we never go there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Tara Drozdenko<\/strong> is a director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In this role, she advises on federal-level policy changes to reduce the nuclear threat in the US. She previously served in the US State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 2006 to 2008.<\/p>\n Dr Steven Biegalski<\/strong> is chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics group at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has three degrees in nuclear engineering from University of Maryland, University of Florida, and University of Illinois, respectively<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> <\/body><\/html>\n Could just one bomb destroy our planet in future? A scientist explains. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":31027,"template":"","categories":[58],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth.jpg",1499,645,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth-300x129.jpg",300,129,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth-768x330.jpg",768,330,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth-1024x441.jpg",800,345,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth.jpg",1499,645,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/07\/oppenheimer-the-worryingly-real-fears-scientists-have-about-a-single-nuke-ripping-open-earth.jpg",1499,645,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Could just one bomb destroy our planet in future? A scientist explains.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/31026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}About our experts<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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