What would happen if we shot a nuke at the moon?

1 Answer

Answer :

answer:It would make a rather insignificant crater. The energy released would be quite small compared to the energy of a fast meteor. I seem to remember that it is often stated as being the equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT, but I’ve no idea what that is in joules (actual SI units of energy). To the explosive energy, you have to add the kinetic energy of the bomb but I think this would be quite small, as a lot of the kinetic energy would have been used up in climbing out of the gravity well of the Earth. I just had a check and 10 kilotons of TNT releases about 10,000,000,000,000 joules (usually written as 10^13 i.e. a 1 followed by 13 zeros). Lets say a 200 tonne meteor smacks into the moon at a speed of 10 km/s, that has an energy, using the formula E = (mv^2)/2, of (2 * 10^5 * 10^8)/2 = 10^13, which is the same as the bomb. This is a small meteor moving at the slower end of the speed range, so basically the bomb is no big deal on the scale of Moon explosions.

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