During the Cold War period after World War II , mankind began to develop nuclear weapons . The United States and the Soviet Union gained the power to destroy the earth. So what would happen if a nuclear bomb was detonated in the Marianas Trench? .
The deepest place on Earth is the Mariana Trench in the western part of the Philippines.
The Mariana Trench is where the Pacific Plate is under the Philippine Sea Plate. The deepest part is about 10,000 meters deep. This is three times deeper than where the Titanic sank.
Speaking of the most powerful nuclear weapons, the largest hydrogen bomb in history developed by the Soviet Union is called the " Tsar Bomb ". It is said that the power of its TNT is 100 million tons, which is about 3,300 times that of the atomic bomb "Little Boy" dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The Tsar Bomba was tested only once, in 1961. In the experiment, the power was suppressed to about half of the design, but when it exploded over the Arctic Ocean, a huge mushroom cloud was observed, with a height of about 60 kilometers and a width of 30 to 40 kilometers. In addition, it is said that the shock wave caused by the explosion circled the earth three times.
What would happen if you dropped such a very powerful Tsar Bomba into the deepest 10,900 meters of the Mariana Trench?
When the Tsar Bomba detonated at a depth of 10,000 meters, the chain reaction progressed in the first few microseconds to nuclear fuel and exploded with the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT. The Mariana Trench will be illuminated with dazzling light never seen before.
Then, bubbles containing radioactive material produced by water vapor and explosion heat appeared in the water. The foam expands while evaporating the surrounding seawater.
Although the generation of shock waves is sensed by seismic stations around the world, the shock waves propagate in an instant. Because the explosion was over in an instant.
If it explodes on the ground, the fireball will be pushed back into the atmosphere after reaching an altitude of 10 kilometers within 1 second of the explosion.
However, at a depth of 10,900 meters, water pressure equivalent to 1,072 atmospheres is added. Therefore, the fireballs expand to a diameter of 1 km within 1 second of the explosion, but they soon lose water pressure and shrink.
And extremely hot bubbles containing large amounts of radioactive material float to the surface of the water.
The energy of the explosion is canceled out as it rises to the surface. Floating on the surface are small waves and bubbles containing warm water vapor exposed to radiation.
Japan or California will not have a tsunami. However, ships and whales traveling around are affected by radiation.
A large amount of radioactive material produced by the explosion spread from the deep sea to the Pacific Ocean and was diluted within a few days.
Radioactively contaminated water will evaporate and turn into clouds, and it is expected to fall to the ground as rain.
Contaminated rain clouds are carried to the Philippines by the wind, but the impact of radioactive rain will be greater than on land, all the way to the Philippines.
Regarding the impact on earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, even if nuclear weapons explode on the plates, there will be no problem.
Part of the deep sea will be evaporated by the explosion, and the sand will turn into glass, but since most of the energy of the explosion is absorbed by the water, even if nuclear weapons are exploded around the plate, earthquakes that destroy the world will not occur.
Tsar bomb-level earthquakes also occur several times a year somewhere in the world's tectonic plates.
Especially since the mass does not increase or decrease significantly from the Earth, the Earth's orbit does not change.
In the past 70 years, more than 1,000 nuclear tests have been carried out on the earth, but there has been no case of affecting the orbit. Even the greatest power possessed by human beings is nothing compared to the power of nature.
In other words, even if we exploded the world's most powerful nuclear weapons in the deepest reaches of the world, there would be almost no impact other than radioactivity.
