Wonderful nuke "What if scenario"

Soooo... I have been having a dicussion with a friend, about "what if"

What if if you took a nuke lets say 50 MT as Tsar nuke..

And you placed it in the middel of a metal sphere the size of jupiter...
the room that the nuke was placed in was just big enough to fit the nuke in there..
( it was teleported there, or the metal sphere (the size of jupiter) was created around it )

What would happen when it exploded ? would the nuke explode ? the sphere crack ?. when it dont have any room to explode in ?

Now some will say that metal would melt and such..
but lets say the sphere the size of jupiter was made of diamond or tungsten..

the pressure of the metal Jupiter would crush the bomb, possibly causing it to explode, or just reducing it to a bottle cap. if it exploded, then i think the planet would have to crack, maybe even explode itself. that is just too much pressure to contain. it doesn't matter what youre made of or how big you are. or it would be like farting into a pillow.

reply to post by asperetty


Thats just the problem.. I was also thinking that the "giant sphere" would crack somehow, because the preasure would have to escape one way or another...

but that really mean if you have a sphere the size of the milkyway made up of the hardest metals in the universe would crack also ??

reply to post by Vandalour


i think so? maybe if the circle is the size of a galaxy then you would just get structural vibes but i feel that the energy would have to collapse upon itself or something because that is just too much pressure being condensed even further by the mass of such an object. maybe thats why we've got a supermassive blackhole at the center of the milky way. with too much pressure, you either explode or go into recluse haha.

Jupiter weighs 4.16 x 10^26 pounds (416 octillion pounds). 50 megatons wouldn't take a divot out of the fairway so to speak.

reply to post by masterofnone


But... as writen, I mean a sphere the size of jupiter made out of the hardest material in the world..

Then place a nuke in the middel, would the huge sphere crack open ? or would the nuke even go off ?

Is the sphere paper thin?? and is there some sort of atmosphere in it for momentum to be transfered in? if the answerer is yes than the sphere doesn't have enough gravitational energy to collapse it's self and likely will explode open when (if?) the bomb detonates. If we are instead taking some solid body of similar mass to Jupiter than masterofnone is entirely correct. you may heat it's core a tad, but beyond that the gravitational force would trump that of the explosion (and seeing as gravity is inwards towards the center, and your bomb is outwards from the center) your core may also be depressurized just a bit for under a second, but nobody would notice. So despite a (at that scale) minor kinetic increase of the temperature of your core nothing happens

I'm suddenly reminded of the question "what would happen f we nuked the sun?"

reply to post by sensen

Is the sphere paper thin??

no no no... Its a gigantic HUGE solid thing the size of the universe... SOLID to the core, except 2 times 2 meters of space in the center where the nuke is placed.... my friend and I was just wondering how badly that preasure would like to get out ?? and do size matter or materiel... heat and preasure will disperse itself easy in ordendary soil.. but im just saying "what if" the gigantic thing was made out of somehing that could not break.. what would happen when the bomb went off...

reply to post by Vandalour


Well I think that I will be forced to stick with my second answer than and say that no matter what it's made out of, as long as it's gravitational force was that large the bomb would have no affect besides a little warming. not to mention that that little space in the center would be quickly filled in. No as to the specific affect, that would likely depend on the temperature of the core of your planet prior to detonation. but I'll avoid going too far into astronomy. The point being that a nuke (no matter how big it looks compared to your house) is actually a fairly small explosion even relative to earth which is one of the smaller planets, Jupiter is one of the largest in out soler system. therefore no affect

If a nuke of 100megaton value went off in a solid metal sphere the size of a planet……..

When it detonates, it would compress the metal around it outward.
If it was a brittle metal, fractures would form because it could not stretch any farther. The fractures would propagate outward for a few miles from the point of detonation.
If it was a soft metal, fracturing would probably not occur.

The area within a thousand feet or so of the point of the detonation would be heated past the melting point and turn liquid.

As time passes, the heat would dissipate out to the rest of the planet and the center would solidify.

If it was a hard metal, the sphere would ring like a bell from the shockwave that is generated by the blast.

If the shockwave is large enough when it gets to the outer surface then it may cause the outer layer of metal to flake off from the shear distortion caused by the shock wave bouncing back from the outer layer of the sphere. That is otherwise known as spalling.

reply to post by Mr Tranny


Hmm, sounds a tad exaggerated. We're talking about a metal ball the size of Jupiter, not Australia. The fracturing would be severely minimized by the gravitational force, and would instantly seal up in the heat, and by the time that the shock-wave reaches the surface it will be spread so thin that it would be barely noticeable.

What if there where no fracturing or change in the sphere... what would happen in that small space where the bomb is... would it simply be a small compact explosion the size of the space the bomb is placed in..

I guess what im getting at is simple this....


Can a nuclear explosion be controlled in a small sealed container.. without the container get damaged

reply to post by Vandalour


try a STRONG EM field, or put it with some liquid helium in a container that can handle the shock... but that kinda defeats the purpose of blowing off a nuke...

reply to post by Vandalour


The Trinity nuclear test(first nuclear explosion, 21 kt TNT) has been planned to happen in a 7.6 m x 3 m, 214 t thermos shaped steel and concrete container, to be able to recover the plutonium if the bomb misfires. It was believed that the container would be vaporized.

Originally posted by Vandalour
What if there where no fracturing or change in the sphere... what would happen in that small space where the bomb is... would it simply be a small compact explosion the size of the space the bomb is placed in..

If a fusion or fission bomb was detonated in a theoretical unruptureable container……
The temperature and pressure would skyrocket to the point that all the atoms that made up the bomb would start fueling the fusion/fission process. Anything lighter than iron would fuse. Anything heavier than iron would feed fission processes. The temperature would skyrocket to the point that atoms could no longer fuse which will limit the peak temp. As the thermal energy slowly dissipates then more atoms will fuse pushing the temp back up to the peak level. It will hold that level until all the viable fusion material is consumed. When the contained volume cools down, all that will be left is iron. That is why iron is the most common element and why it makes up the core of the earth. It is the final stable byproduct of all activities that can not be subjected to fission or fusion to yield positive energy flow under any temp or pressure condition.

There would be detectable earthquakes as the dissipation of seismic (sound) waves would be small, however this planet would regularly have earthquakes all the time.

The heat generated by a 50 MT explosion would be infinitesimal compared to the heat capacity of a jupiter sized planet.

A mass of a high Z material the size of Jupiter could not be considered as a single "solid" material in the common terrestrial experience.

In practice radioactive decay from various isotopes/etc would result in a substantial fraction of the interior being liquid.

reply to post by Mr Tranny


??... No.

elaborating: that wouldn't nearly generate enough heat and pressure to fuse every particle in the confined space to the mass of iron. It requires the heat from many fusion reactions combined with the pressure caused by the fusion as well as that of a massive gravitational sphere. I'm afraid you are mistaking a nuke or a H bomb with the sun. Think of it this way. If you were right than our contained fusion reactions that we have completed thus far would have accelerated beyond control turning our planet into a hunk of iron. now since we can safely conclude that there are gases liquids and solids consisting of particles below atomic number 26 we can safely conclude that not all particles in the aria would undergo fusion.

as for mbkennel I agree, but said seismic activity wouldn't be all too large despite being measurable.

reply to post by sensen


If you had a theoretically perfect container that would not expand one thousands of an inch when filled with almost infinite pressure, and the container was just big enough to hold the bomb in question, then pressure and temp would go way past the pressure and temp at the center of our sun, or even the biggest stars in our universe.

That is how the sun regulates it’s self. The energy produced pushes the material out and relives the pressure on the core. That reduced pressure slows the fusion reaction. The gravity wants to clump everything together than speeds up the reaction. The two balance themselves out.

But, in a perfect theoretical space, no mater what the pressure, and the energy generated the material can’t expand. Thus, the energy level shoots way past what would be in the center of a star. It shoots up to the energy and temp level that is more like the condition that would exist right after the big bang.

The Tsar bomb produced 210,000Tj of energy. That is 210,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy.

That is199,041,595,200,000 BTU.

That would heat one pound of water to ..
49,760,398,800,000 degrees
basically 50 trillion degrees.

Considering the metal with the highest specific heat comes in at less that 0.25 btu per pound per degree F.
And the largest bombs were on the order of 40,000 pounds in weight.
That yields a final exploded temp of way over…..
4,976,039,880 degrees F.
Or basically way over 5 billion degrees. Probably over 10 billion degrees F in actuality.

The temp in the center of the sun is estimated somewhere in the range of 27 to 50 million degrees F.

So the final temp of the nuke after just the primary material burnt off will be over 100 times the temp of the sun’s core. But of course, you will have all the other materials that made up the components of the bomb starting to contribute to the fusion/fission reaction which will push the temp up from there.

Pressure will be way past what you would ever see at the center of any sun. Well except a sun that is entering the first stages of a super nova.

technically if this "sphere" was solid to the core, and build to house said bomb in a way that there was no space between the bomb and the sphere itself (still not sure how this could happen but for argument sake) then i guess it would depend on the bomb itself. are we talking about atomic or nuclear? i only ask because that part was a little vague, and it makes a big difference. if it were an atomic bomb, then nothing would happen seeing as a-bombs require a large amount of TNT to achieve nuclear fission. since this bomb is encased in metal there is no oxygen to facilitate an O2 based ignition. if it were fusion on the other hand... that's a good question. although we have mastered the art of making an arsenal of weapons that could blow this earth into dust fragments 30 times over, there is still a whole lot that science hasn't explained about how the fusing of two atoms can cause one of the most destructive reactions man has ever seen. of course we know that with when the nucleus of an atom (normally tritium) fuses with another nucleus (of normally deuterium) then that creates the resulting helium nucleus; and thus the leftover neutron from this reaction is expelled exerting a LOT of energy... multiply that by a few trillion and bravo, you've blown up a square 1/4 mile, and of course the fallout will easily kill anything in a 50 mile radius, maybe much more depending on the breeze... but that has nothing to do with the question (sorry this is so long i'm just in the ranting mood)... IN MY OPINION...there are VERY few if any materials this sphere could be made of that would keep it from collapsing in upon itself. in the same way that a super-nova begins with a collapse and then a grand explosion, the core of the sphere would go under such a rapid increase in temperature, then almost immediately return to the its original frigidness (it is alone in space correct?) that the molecules making up whatever compound the sphere is in fact made of, even if cracked (it wouldn't explode do to the fact that the heat displaced from the explosion would make any material pliable) as it RAPIDLY cooled the space the bomb left in the core would cause the sphere to crush itself... i think :-)