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What happens if you explode a nuclear bomb in space? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, what's the biggest thing that you've ever seen
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: blow up?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Technically soup that I microwaved too high, But I've always
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: wanted to see one of those building demolitions.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, that does sound fun. I'd love to see you
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: blow up soup or watch a building get exploded. I
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: wonder if they sell tickets to those events.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I hope they go on tour, and I hope they
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: come to my city. What about you, what is the
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: biggest explosion that you have seen?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Well, there was the time that I made a strawberry
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: smoothie without putting a lid on the blender and I'm
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: still cleaning up strawberry in the kitchen years later. But
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I did once see a shoe store explode when an
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: air and firework hitted on New Year's Eve. It was crazy.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: You could feel the heat from blocks away.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: That's crazy, that's amazing. I'm sure you were going to
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: say something more dramatic, though.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: More dramatic than a flaming shoes door, but.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I thought so you grew up in Los Alamos, Like,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: isn't that the home of the atomic bomb?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: It is, but we don't just like set them off
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: on holidays.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: That seems like a shame.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I guess you could say we've kind of blown it.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: You didn't blew it, and that's the problem.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I hope to never be near
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a nuclear explosion.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I am Katie Golden. I host the podcast Creature Feature,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: and I hope there's never a nuclear explosion anywhere ever, space, Earth,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: what have you? It seems like a bad sign of
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: things to come.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Are you saying that nukes can never be used for good?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: You're not aware of the Peacetime nuclear weapons program or
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the design of the Orion spaceship, which literally uses nuclear
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: weapons blowing up behind it in order to propel it forward.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're basically gonna do big space farts
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: with nukes to make your spaceship go, I'll make an exception.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: All right. We have already broken down your barriers here
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and so welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio in which we dive
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: deep into everything that happens in the universe, how it
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: all works, how it all began, how it all might end,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and how humans might bring about their own demise.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of life on Earth. I love
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: all the animals on Earth, love all the plants, and
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the humans, most of them, ninety nine percent of humans.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And you know, I have a lot of nuclear anxiety
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: when it comes to the planet Earth, because I don't
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: want one going off and you know, destroying a bunch
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: of stuff, radiating things, maybe causing a new ice age
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: with the clouds of debris. But I guess if it's
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: blown up in space, I'm a little less worried.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Well, this to me is a really interesting area because
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: it brings together the sort of fascinating progress we make
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: in physics as we start to understand the way the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: universe works, what the forces are that underlie everything, how
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: they weave themselves together to make our reality. Understanding that
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: also gives us new power, the power to use that
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: knowledge to develop new technologies, which of course can be
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: good in peace time, like transistors and iPhones, but also
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: can be used to make weapons of mass destruction that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: are pointed at civilian populations for political gain. And so,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: while we like on this podcast to think about the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: physics side of it, the scientific edge of knowledge, how
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: we can always push that forward, and we generally think
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: about that knowledge as purely good as sausfying our curiosity
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: is scratching our itch that wonders about how the universe works.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's not possible to really live in a bubble and
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: pretend that that knowledge can't be used in all sorts
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of ways that the original scientists who worked on it
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: aren't in control of. Personally, I did grow up in
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Los Alamo's home in the Manhattan Project in Los Almos
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: National Laboratory, where weapons projects are ongoing to this day,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and both of my parents worked at the lab and
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: worked on weapons related projects. What exactly they did, I
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't know. I will never know, because
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I don't have particular rants to know such secrets. But
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: such power over the universe comes with real responsibility.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I remember that a lot of these
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project became very anti
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: nuclear proliferation. You know. It's it's something that I think
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: people who really understand the devastating power of nukes also
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: are very much opposed to uncontrolled proliferation of dukes. I
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: don't think it's something where scientists are There's a bunch
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: of mad scientists who really just want to blow up
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the planet. I think most of the scientists who really
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: understand this stuff are also probably pretty anxious and would
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: like a world with fewer nukes.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I do know that my mother worked on
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: nuclear non proliferation programs, ways that you can detect nuclear
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: fuel and nuclear explosions, et cetera. But my father definitely
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: worked on the weapons side of it. And I asked
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: him once, not, of course, like tell me some nuclear secrets,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: but how do you feel about working on the design
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of huge weapons that are in the end pointed at
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: civilian populations. And you know, back in the eighties when
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: he started that job, it was a different era. We
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: were still in the Cold War and developing our nuclear capabilities.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Sort of felt patriotic. Back then, it felt like, Hey,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you're contributing to your country, you're protecting us, you're defending us.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's morally crisp and clean. I
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: certainly chose to do particle physics because it has no
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: weapons applications, and nobody's ever use my research to kill anybody.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Not yet, they haven't yet. Give me a pen and
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: a piece of paper, I'll come up with something that's.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Right, The Higgs Boson bomb by Katie goldd Well. Nuclear
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: weapons are very powerful and very dangerous, and they have
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: also captured the public imagination and I get a lot
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: of interest in our podcast email box about nuclear weapons.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: People wonder what would happen if you dropped the nuclear
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: weapon into the Sun, or could we really use nuclear
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: weapons to blow up the polar ice caps on Mars
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: and to make more atmosphere? Or what exactly happens when
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you drop a nuclear weapon in X? Basically I get
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: these questions where X is anything? And so we're starting
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a new series of podcasts titled what Happens if You
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Explode a Nuke in Blank? And we're going to explore
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: everywhere you can imagine putting a nuclear weapon.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: So today, where are we exploding that nuke?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Well, we're not putting that nuke in any sort of
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: biological locations. We're mostly going to focus on the physics locations.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And today on the podcast, we'll be answering the question
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: what happens if you explode a nuke in space?
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So we are definitely cordoning off any of the space whales,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: any of the space jellyfish, any kind of free floating
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: space creatures that might be in the way of this nuke,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and presumably we're exploding it just in space space right
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: like where there's not too much around, just pure.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Space, just pure space exactly. And I think this question
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: is super fascinating from a scientific point of view, because
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: mostly what we know and what we imagine about nuclear
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: weapons comes from the interaction of the nuclear blast with
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere or with the Earth, those shockwaves, and that
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen in space. So we'll go in detail through
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: exactly what does happen in a nuclear explosion and how
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: that propagates through space when it's not surrounded by a
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: cocoon of air. This also the really fascinating political and
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: sort of militaristic side of it, as humanity tries to
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: build a space based civilization. Space war is a big question,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and so like understanding what happens when you blow up
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a nuke in space from a sort of political or
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: military strategic point of view is also really interesting and important.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Could we go somewhere in the universe and not put
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: wars in there?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I think only if we don't bring the humans right,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the wars come with the humans.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I think only puppies should go to space so that
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: don't start any wars.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: But that's also a really fascinating question. You see in
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of science fiction novels human civilization spread out
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: through the galaxy, or humans and aliens spread out through
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the galaxy able to access all these vast resources, and
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: yet still fighting right, still having wars, and I wonder
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: if that's really true. I often pose that question to
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: our science fiction author guests, like, what are these people
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: fighting about? There's essentially limitless resources. Like you want water,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: go to Neptune, it's basically a planet of water. You
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: want gold, there's like enormous blobs gold out there. Platinum
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: like this asteroid's made of platinum. If you need something,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: don't come kill us for it, just go get it.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: If you want energy, like the Sun is out there
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: dumping out energy, it seems to me that once you
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: make it to space, I don't know why people would
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: still be having wars unless they're just fundamentally grumpy.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: That could be. I think that if you have resources
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: spread out relatively fairly, right, like you don't have a
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: space king that's hoarding all the Neptune water for himself,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: that yeah, it would make sense that there would be
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: fewer wars because I think when people have a lot
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: of resources, they have a good quality of life, why
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: would they want to go to war? You know, what
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: would be the purpose for the everyday person to risk
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: it all for war? Again, if we have like space monarchies,
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: then yeah, there might be some wars.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there are some really interesting science fiction explorations
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of this, like the Culture series and other like post
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: scarcity novels where basically everybody has everything they ever want.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: You just ask for something and you get it, and
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: they explore like what would life be like in that situation. Anyway,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: back to the topic of today's podcast, we are not
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: yet there. We are not yet in outer space living
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: among the riches where everybody gets their own platinum throne. Instead,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: we're still down here on Earth and wondering what would
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: happen if you blew up a nuclear weapon in space?
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And so, as usual, I pulled our listeners to hear
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: what they thought might happen in this scenario. If you
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: would like to participate in this segment of the podcast
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: giving your informed or uninformed answers for us to hear,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: please don't be shy write to me two questions at
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Danielandjorge dot com. So think about it for a minute.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Do you know what would happen if we blew up
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb in space? Here's what our listeners had
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: to say, probably.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Something very similar to what happens if you explode a
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: nuclear bomb not in space. A lot of energy is released.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Basically it's what the Sun is doing, so it's just
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: a bunch of energy pouring out into space.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: I think that exploding a nucleipon in space would have
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: very little effect. It would be a pretty clean explosion.
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: If there're at some radio active particles, but there's loads
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: of them flying around in space anyway, so essentially I
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: have no concerns.
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: Go for it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 6: So if I understand right how a nuke works, it
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: requires a chain reaction between the atoms of our atmosphere,
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: So in deep space without atmosphere, it will have no effects.
• 11:21
  Speaker 7: You'd see a big, huge round flash, blinding flash of light,
• 11:26
  Speaker 7: and then you wouldn't hear anything, I guess because it's
• 11:29
  Speaker 7: the vacuum of space. And then as soon as all
• 11:32
  Speaker 7: the the fuel, the hydrogen was or uranium or plutonium
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: was gone, it should be done. And I don't think
• 11:41
  Speaker 7: it's any debris, because there's no like that start all
• 11:44
  Speaker 7: lighted up.
• 11:45
  Speaker 8: Is this an atomic bomb or a hydrogen bomb? I
• 11:48
  Speaker 8: think either way. I think you just make a tiny
• 11:51
  Speaker 8: little sun for a second, and then that much would happen,
• 11:53
  Speaker 8: except for some more radiation in space.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: I assume it would just sort of do the same
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: thing it does here without a shock wave.
• 12:02
  Speaker 9: I believe that unless it's something close or it is
• 12:05
  Speaker 9: something to you know, to a planet, or maybe close
• 12:08
  Speaker 9: to I don't know, like a nebula, maybe it will
• 12:12
  Speaker 9: you know, push away that. But other than that, maybe
• 12:15
  Speaker 9: the only thing in space that will happen, if you know,
• 12:18
  Speaker 9: if it's in the vacuum space, it will create maybe
• 12:20
  Speaker 9: a little bit of a gravitational waves maybe, I don't know.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: Well, you won't get a mushroom cloud, that's for sure,
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: because that only happens in the atmosphere. So when a
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: nuclear explosion happens, I believe that it releases basically lots
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: and lots of radiation in the form of photons and
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: the radioactive particles. So I imagine like a big bright
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: ball of light that will flash for a second and disappear.
• 12:50
  Speaker 10: I would suppose that the nuclear bomb would still explode,
• 12:56
  Speaker 10: and having nothing for the explosion too press back against.
• 13:02
  Speaker 10: I would expect that the explosion would be equal in
• 13:05
  Speaker 10: all directions, and that the residual matter would fly out
• 13:10
  Speaker 10: in all directions equally.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of different answers, really interesting ideas. I
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: think the main thing people are thinking of, like it
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: in space, Right, you don't have atmosphere, you don't have air,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: so you're not going to have the things that air
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: and atmosphere provides, like say a shock wave or sound.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's basically like a little sun in space. Is
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: a great little argument. There was somebody who said something
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: about how it requires a chain reaction in the atmosphere,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: so in space it'll have no effect, which I think
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: might have some misunderstanding of how a nuclear weapon works.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: But on the whole, yeah, these are great answers.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Well, how I think nuclear explosions work is you take
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: it at them and you get a little axe, very
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: sharp ax, and Y split it in half and that
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: releases a bunch of energy in floats.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Tell me I'm wrong, You're wrong, although you could be wronger,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I mean there is some elevation that is correct. Essentially,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: there's two ways to make a nuclear explosion. One is
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: fission and one is fusion. Fission is when you're cracking
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a big, heavy atom open. So you have like uranium
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: or something which already is on the verge of breaking apart,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and you take a little ax, which in this case
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: is a neutron, and you shoot it at the uranium
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and it breaks open and it makes more neutrons, and
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: those neutrons fly out and hit other uranium atoms, which
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: then crack open and release energy and more neutrons, and
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: then you get this chain reaction. And so if your
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: axe is basically a tiny little neutron axe, then maybe
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: that works. And actually isn't. Thor's hammer supposed to be
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: made out of neutron star so there's already a precedent
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: there for like tools made of neutrons.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I knew Marvel was scientifically accurate in every way. That's
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the fission part, where you have a bunch of un
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: stable large atoms being hacked apart by neutrons, and then
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: that interurn releases more neutrons than that hacks apart other
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: unstable atoms you've mentioned, though, there's a fusion one as well.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, so that's fission. And the design of a
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: fission bomb is actually quite interesting, like the way you
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: get that to blow up, because if you just have
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: a bunch of uraniums sitting around, it's not going to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: have a chain reaction unless it has enough density, like
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: you pack those things dense enough, then it's going to
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: blow up. But what you want in a bomb is
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: something that blows up when you want it to, not
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: just like when you build it right. You want something
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: like a fuse, and so you need a controlled explosion.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: And so what they do is they have two pieces
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: of uranium, both of which do not have enough mass
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to blow they are subcritical masses. And then what happens
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: in the bomb is you basically smash those two together,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: combine them together to make a super critical mass when
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: they can actually trigger this runaway effect and cause the explosion.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And sometimes they even have like a little trigger like
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: a pellet of polonium or rialium or something to get
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the first neutrons going. But you're right, that's all fission.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And so the first bomb that was ever developed and
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: was blown up in Alamagordo, New Mexico, not too far
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: from where I grew up, was a fission bomb. But
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: there's another much more powerful nuclear process that we now
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: have a handle on, and that is fusion. Fusion is
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the opposite. Instead of breaking up a big heavy atom
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to release energy, you're sticking two light atoms together to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: make a heavier one. So two protons, for example, come
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: together to make helium. It's actually a little bit more complicated.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: You end up with like multiple protons making multiple helium nuclei.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: But squeezing light atoms together to make heavier ones releases energy,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: just like chopping up heavier atoms to make lighter ones
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: releases energy.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: You mentioned that the fusion bombs are more powerful. Why
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: is that?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. And people also wonder like
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: why is it that when you stick light materials together
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to make heavier ones you release energy, and if you
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: break up heavier ones to make lighter ones, you release energy.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And the answer to both questions just comes from the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: sort of energy structure of the nucleus. So when you
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: squeeze two protons together to make helium, the way those
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: two protons are bound together by the strong force contains
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: like a deep potential well, sort of like the Earth
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: falling into a gravitational well being captured by the sun.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Those two protons capture each other, so you need a
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: lot of energy to break that up. Like if you
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: want it to take helium and break it up into hydrogen,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: you'd have to zap it with a really powerful laser.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: You have to add energy to that. So the energy
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that's released from fusion has to do with the difference
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: between the sort of energy structure of two protons that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: are far apart from each other and two protons that
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: are bound together in two helium. And why that number
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: is big. It just has to do with the strong
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: force and like how powerful it is. On the other
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: side of the spectrum. When you're breaking up uranium into
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: lighter stuff. That's a really big, heavy nucleus and it's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: a little unstable already because of electromagnetism, which is pushing
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: all those protons apart, and the strong force isn't as
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: powerful because those protons are further or apart from each other,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: just because the nucleus is like physically getting so big
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: that the strong force isn't as powerful over those distances,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So it's a little bit easier to break that up,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and the strong force bonds aren't as powerful because the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: distance is a little bit greater there. So it all
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: has to do with like the structure of the energy
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: levels of the nuclear formation, which you're super complicated.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: So when something heavy unstable atom, I thought that things
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: like uranium would sort of naturally decay because they are unstable.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Why don't they just spontaneously explode when they are decaying?
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: You mean, why don't you get runaway nuclear reactions in nature?
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly?
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Actually you can. The crucial thing is just having enough uranium.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Uranium is typically dilute out in the world. It's in
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: oxides and it's not very pure. But if you do
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: happen to have a fairly pure uranium deposit, like sitting underground,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: it will undergo a natural fission reaction. And there's a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: spot in Africa where they're very certain that a couple
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: of billion years ago there was enough urinea and it
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: started a natural fission reaction and like cooked the rock
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and like heated up the whole thing. We did a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: whole podcast episode about it a year or so ago. Uranium,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of course, is unstable, and so it decays, and the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: kind of uranium you need is getting more and more rare,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: so it's not a likely thing to happen again, like
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the conditions for natural fission reactions on Earth without human
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: intervention are no longer likely to exist.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's really interesting. So back to the nuclear bombs,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: Like what either for a fission bomb or a fusion bomb,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Like once you have set off that reaction, what happens
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: like on planet Earth exactly? Like what is the effect
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: the impact of a nuclear bomb?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So all bombs essentially are just a rapid release of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: energy some process which is exothermic, maybe chemical for like
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: dynamite or nuclear for fusion fission bombs, but just a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: very rapid release of energy. And the crucial things to
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: understand is how that energy is carried. In the case
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of nuclear weapons, it's not just different carriers of energy
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: relative to chemical weapons, but it's also just much more dramatic. Right,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: there's like so much more energy released per gram of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: fuel because it's much more efficient at extracting energy from
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: those bonds. Chemical bonds and dynamite don't have nearly as
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: much energy as the nuclear bonds that we're releasing in
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, So you get different energy carriers flying out
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: and you just get a lot more So the energy
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: comes out in terms of photons, So like infrared photons,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: visible light photons, UV photons, all of those things. You
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: also get a bunch of particles. You get neutrons, you
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: get electrons, you get protons, you get gamma rays, you
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: get all sorts of crazy things shooting out from the explosion.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: When I've seen footage of test explosions of a nuclear
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: bomb on like an uninhabited house, it looks like this
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: huge wave of air almost just obliterating the house as
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: it passes through. What's causing that big shockwave a of air?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Is that just all these particles being released, this super
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: energy particles, or is there some kind of heat that's
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: also being released from the bomb.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So when you detonate a nuclear weapon, you produce all
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of this energy in various forms, and then you have
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: to ask, like, Okay, the shell of stuff around the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapon, the air or the water or whatever, is
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that transparent to these energy carriers? Will it absorb that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: energy or will it just pass through? And in some
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: cases it's transparent, in some cases it's not. So when
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: it's not transparent, when it's opaque, when it's going to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: absorb that energy, then all that energy is getting dumped
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: into the air. So, for example, a lot of those
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: photons are absorbed by the air. The infrared, for example,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: very efficiently absorbed by the air around the nuclear bomb,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and that heats up the air. So the energy has
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: been transformed from lower energy photons into temperature of the air.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So now that air is super duper hot. You've superheated
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: that air and it expands and then that heats the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: air around it. And so that's where the shockwave comes from,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: from the dumping of that energy from the particle that
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: come out of the nuclear weapons into the air itself,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and then the air becomes part of the explosion.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I see. And so you're saying, unless it's transparent, I
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: would assume that both air and water would absorb energy
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: from a nuke. So it doesn't seem like there'd be
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: anywhere on Earth where you wouldn't have an impact of
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: a nuclear explosion, right.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: That's right. And so the breakdown is something like around
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: fifty percent of the energy in the air or in
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the water goes into forming this shock wave. Basically it
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: gets turned into sound. Right, Sound is just matter pressing
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: on other matters compression waves. So like half the energy
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of the nuclear bomb is absorbed by the matter that
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: surrounds it and then expands that something like forty percent
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: of it are photons to which the atmosphere or the
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: water are mostly transparent, so visible light UV light. Right,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere is transparent to visible light. That's why we
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: can see each other and we can see the sun
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: because the atmosphere doesn't tend to absorb photons in this
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: range that we can see. And that's of course no accident.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: That's why we can see these photons. We're evolved in
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: a situation to see these very useful photons. So fifty
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: percent into shock waves, forty percent into basically photons to
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: which the atmosphere of the water is transparent, and then
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: like ten percent of the energy in things like neutrons
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and electrons, like other particles flying out like tiny bullets
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: with high energy, which can also pass right through the atmosphere.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: So is it as hot as like having a little
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: sun in that area where the bomb went off? Like
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: how hot does that get?
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets to millions of degrees Calvin, It's really
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: incredibly hot. It's a huge amount of energy And that
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: sounds really hot, and it is really hot, and it's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: actually hotter than the surface of the Sun, which is
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: just a few thousand degrees Calvin, and that's why it
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: can release energy like much much higher wavelengths. To remember
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: that the temperature of an object controls the energy spectrum
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that's released. The hotter it is, the higher the frequency,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: the higher energy the radiation, and so that's why nuclear
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: weapons release a lot of energy in the UV where
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: we can't even see it because they are so dang hot.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: It is extremely bright as well, right, Like I think
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: that's something that everyone's kind of aware of, how incredibly
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: bright a nuclear explosion is, like you said, because the
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: light passes through the air and then we can see it.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Is it a white light or a yellow light? It'd
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: be probably a white light, right.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: It's basically broad spectrum, And so if you're watching a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: nuclear explosion, you actually see sort of two flashes. You
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: see an initial flash of light because it's very very
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: bright and it's very broad spectrum and it looks very white.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: But then light that's released later is actually captured by
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the shockwave. So you have the first flash which comes
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: out very quickly. Then the shockwave comes out and photons
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: which sort of bump up against the inner side of
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that shockwave. Don't see it as transparent because the shockwave
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: has made that air denser and so it's no longer transparent.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And so until that shockwave dissipates, it's basically blocking the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: light from the nuclear wave. And when it does, then
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: you see a second flash. You know, it's producing light
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the whole time, but it's like momentarily blocked. So you
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: see this characteristic double peak of gamma radiation when you
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: blow up a nuclear bomb here on Earth, at least
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: underwater or in the air.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: The other thing I think people think of when we
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: picture a nuclear explosion is that characteristic mushroom cloud. Why
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: does it have such a you know, specific shape, that
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: mushroom cloud shape. Is that just sort of basic physics
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: when it comes to an explosion that's large enough, or
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: is there something else going on.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: That's basic physics from a really large explosion. It's typical
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: for nuclear explosions because they are so powerful. You know,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: you have this sudden formation of a really large volume
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of lower density gases, and then you get a buoyant
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: massive gas which rises rapidly, giving you all this turbulence
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: and curling down around the edges. But it can come
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: from chemical explosions also if they are big enough.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: I see. Interesting. So when you have a nuclear explosion,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: you have this huge amount of energy released. It superheats
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the air, causes this shock wave, causes a massive amount
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: of energy to be released in heat in radiation, which
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: you know is a real sucker punch after the effects
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: of the bomb, right, Like, you have this radiation in
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the area, and people can get radiation poisoning. But it dissipates,
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: it explodes, the energy dissipates, it reaks, whatever havoc it's
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: gonna reek and then it kind of it settles, the
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: dust cloud settles, the radiation settles, and then it's it's
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: a big explosion. And how long does it last? Typically
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: like the explosion part of a nuclear bomb.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So the actual reaction is very quick, but you know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: the shockwave travels at the speed of sound, which is
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: being like a thousand feet per second, and so depending
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: on the strength of the bomb, it can be like
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thirty seconds to a minute or so before that shock
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: wave dissipates. And you're right that the initial danger is
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: very very strong. You have the shockwave, you have the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: radiation exposure. Sure, but then this is the lasting effects
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: of the fallout. Right, you have released a bunch of
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: radioactive material, not all of it has fused or fizzed.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: And also that radiation creates more radioactive material. All these
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: high energy neutrons can slam into other stuff, turning them
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: into radioactive elements, and so the whole area is radioactor
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: for a while, and in the cloud they are radioactive
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: elements produced. When you have a fission reaction, we know
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that it produces very dangerous toxic waste.
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: That's why nuclear reactors have such a tricky problem to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: deal with. And a nuclear bomb that's not contained at all,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: it's just blown up into the atmosphere, and so the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: fallout can be very dangerous and it can drift, right,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: you have wind for example, so it can drift over
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: hundreds of miles.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's one of the considerations that countries
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: have when they're thinking of using nukes. It's like, well,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: if I use it on my neighbor, that might just
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: blow right back into my country, which I think is
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: in a way good, right, because you should think a
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: few times before you decide to ease a nuke. But
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: we should probably take a quick break practice our duck
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: and cover, and when we get back, talk about what
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: happens when you explode a nuke in space, not on Earth.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: So I've practiced my duck and cover a few times,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: which I'm sure would protect me really well if I
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: was in the heart of a nuclear explosion. My desk
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: is very sturdy. But we talked about what happens with
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: a nuclear explosion on Earth. Hopefully we'll never see one ourselves,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: but what happens when you explode a nuke in space?
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Because space is very different from our planet Earth. It's
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: missing a few things that we have that are nice
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: to have here on Earth that protects us in other life,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: and so it seems like a nuclear bomb would react
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: differently in space.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really different, and in a fascinating way. The
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: actual core reaction, of course, is the same. When the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: bomb goes off, it doesn't need the atmosphere or water
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: or anything around it in order to actually detonate. It's
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: not like a fire where you're using the oxygen from
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere to burn. It can go all by itself,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: so it's happy to blow up in space or underwater
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: or underground or in the air. So the core reaction
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: is no different, and the things that it produces are
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the same. So a nuclear bomb in space blowing up
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: produces the same spectrum of photon energies and neutron energies
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and electrons, et cetera as the nuclear bomb blowing up
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: anywhere else. But of course the immediate surroundings of the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: bomb are very different. And so now instead of having
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: some of that radiation immediately absorbed basically by a pillow
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: that was surrounded the bomb, a pillow of air or
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: water or dirt, now there's nothing there, so everything is transparent.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: So all that radiation instead of getting dumped into some
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: blanket or some pillow, just flies out, so it all
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: stays as radiation. It just flies out like a mini sun,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: as our listeners describe, filling nearby space with very dangerous radiation.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: So when I see things like in Star Trek or
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Star Wars and they like fire some kind of missile
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: and then you see this like big explosion with like
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: a explodey cloud thing, if you're doing it just that
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: space right, like maybe I guess if you hit a spaceship,
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: you could get some debris that causes a bit of
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: a cloud. But if you're just firing out in space.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: What exactly does an explosion look like when you're just
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: it's just happening in empty space?
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. Those science fiction explosions use cues from
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: our intuition. On Earth, you know, where things are loud
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: and they are hot, But in space things would be different. Right.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: There's no sound. I mean, there are some particles out
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: in space. It's not totally empty, so technically speaking, there
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: there is the ability to propagate sound waves, but there's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: no sound, and there's also no flames, right, so what
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you would see instead is a very bright flash of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: light because all those particles are just flying out. There's
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: nothing burning there. And you say, maybe the ship itself
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: would explode if there's like fuel on board or whatever,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: but there's no flame, there's no oxidization effects, no chemical
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: burning there. So essentially it's just a very bright pinprick
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: of light, extremely bright, like something you should definitely not
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: look at.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: So you don't get that double flash right like you
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: do with a nuke on Earth, because there's no shockwave
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: to absorb the light from and kind of prevent it
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: from reaching your eyes until the shockwave has moved on.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Exactly, that shockwave is purely a product of a race
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: between the photons and the sound wave that's propagetting out.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: But because there is no soundwave, there's no shockwave, there's
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: nothing there to absorb that radiation. All the radiation just
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: flies out, and so it looks quite different. And what
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: that means is that nuclear weapons are dangerous over much
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: greater distances in space because the radiation is not absorbed,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and so if a nuclear bomb blows up in space,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you can get significant radiation damage from it, even if
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you're much further away.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Say we exploded a nuke somewhere in our solar system,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: would that radiation potentially hit.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Earth, you still are protected by physics is one over
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: distance squared law. The same with the Sun is like
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: one hundred times dimmer if you're ten times further away,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: or electric fields go down by a factor of four
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: if you're twice as far from the charge as all
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: these one over distance squared law in physics, which actually
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: not hard to understand. Like from a geometrical point of view,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: you imagine, like particles flying out from a nuclear bomb
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: or photons flying out from the Sun, the same certain
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: number are released, and then as the radius grows, those
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: particles are now spread out over a larger and larger sphere,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: and the area of that sphere goes like four pi
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: are squared. So as that sphere gets larger, the same
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: number of photons or dangerous particles are spread out over
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: a larger area. So for any given area of the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: radiation drops like one over the distance squared. And so
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: if you're far away from this thing, you'll be safe. Now,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: on Earth, you can be just a couple of miles, two, three,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: four miles from an explosion and be mostly safe from
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the radiation because so much of it is absorbed into
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere. But in space you've got to be like
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: forty fifty sixty miles to be as safe as you
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: would be on Earth, because essentially there's no protection. Right
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: on Earth, you're kind of protected from this nuclear bomb
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: by the atmosphere or by the ground, or by the water,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: but in space there's nothing there to shield you.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Right, So is this radiation constantly spreading out or does
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: it kind of stop dissipating after a while. Does it
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: keep dissipating forever until it just sort of has equalized somehow?
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. Well, the initial explosion again is very brief.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: The actual nuclear detonation doesn't last very long, and so
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: what you're thinking about is sort of like a pulse,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: like all this radiation in a sphere that's traveling out
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: very very fast, in many cases actually at the speed
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: of light, and then getting dimmer and dimmer as it goes.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: And so it's really just like a pulse that travels
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: through space, washing over things and damaging them.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: How long does that pulse last? Does it last like
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: seconds or hours or years?
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Well, the pulse itself would last for less than a second.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: The actual explosion itself doesn't take very long, so it's
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: not like sitting there stewing, continuing to produce pulses of energy.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: It's one very high intensity pulse over a short time.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: But it's various kinds of radiation. Also. There's photons, very
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: high energies, and then there's neutrons, of course, and there's
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: also electrons. And the electrons can be particularly damaging and
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: also kind of fascinating because the electrons are traveling at
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: very very high speeds and they tend to radiate. So electrons,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: when they move to a magnetic field or anything they
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: change direction, they radiate photons, and so that creates this
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: electromagnetic pulse. So all these electrons create this electromagnetic pulse
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: which can disrupt the flow of electricity or damage any
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: sort of electronics. And you see this in science fiction
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: all the time, right, that like electronics are blacked out
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: when there's a nuclear bomb, And that's really true. It
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: will create like pulses of energy in electronics.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting. So if you're a spaceship, right and
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you're riding up and someone decides to blow up a
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: nuke in front of you, you're really screwed in many
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: ways because you've just got a huge dose of radiation
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: and then all of your electronics on your spaceship are
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: going to get messed up by that EMP pulse. Is
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: there anything else to look out for if you're on
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: that spaceship cruising and someone blows up a nuke, Miria, Well.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: If you're on that spaceship, I really hope you have
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: a special leadlined room to protect yourself, like we do
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: actually on the space station. Because the Sun, of course,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: is a huge source of radiation, and solar storms can
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: generate EMPs and also other kinds of radiation which can
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: damage satellites and people, and so they have a special
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: room on the space station where the astronauts can go
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: like a panic room when there's going to be like
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: a high radiation solar weather event. And so I hope
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: your spaceship is outfitted with one of those, because if
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: somebody blows up a nuclear bomb, it's going to damage
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: your ship and also damage you if you're within tens
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of miles.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: We know that for like when you explode a nuke
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: on Earth, long after the explosion, it's irradiated everything around,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: and depending on how large the explosion is, the nature
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: of it, like with Chernobyl, the area in that exclusion
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: zone is still radioactive. Like it's still not necessarily a
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: safe place to be. It's not like you will immediately
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: get radiation poisoning and die if you step foot in
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: the exclusion zone, but you can get sick depending on
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: how long you're in there and how close you get
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: to the center where the explosion happened. But what happens,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: like with this explosion in space, is there an area
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: like a sort of point in the middle that continues
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: to be sort of radioactive or does that without anything
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: to really absorb it, It just keeps moving until it
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: hits something that it can be absorbed by Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Great question. And remember, of course Schernobyl was a nuclear
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: meltdown of a reactor, not an actual nuclear explosion, so
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: nothing blew up, so you still have a lot of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the fuel and all that stuff there in that same location.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: The larger exclusion zone is because of the weather and
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the air that pulled the smoke and the radioactive particles
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: further away, so there was never actually a nuclear explosion there.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: And in space, you blow this bomb up, there's not
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: going to be really anything left in the location of
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: your detonation to poison people. Everything is going to fly
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: out because there's nothing stopping it, right, There's nothing holding
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: it in place at all, So you haven't like poured
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: radiation into a bunch of nearby dirt or water. Everything
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: is just going to flow away. So you could probably
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: come back in, you know, a month or so after
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the nuclear bomb, and the space would be no different
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: from when you started. All of the dangerous elements would
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: be flying out from the source in lots of directions,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: poisoning people or causing damage as they hit them, But
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the actual location of the nuclear explosion in space isn't
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: going to be like affected in any way, have we.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Ever thought to blow up a nuke? And I mean
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we've thought of it, but have we ever
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: actually done it before?
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, we have actually blown up nuclear weapons in
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: lots of places. We've blown them up in more Unfortunately,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: we've blown them up above ground, we've blown them up underground,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and we have actually done a nuclear explosion in space.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: So we don't even have to wonder about what this
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: looks like. We know we have pictures.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that sounds terrifying. Let's take another quick break. I'm
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: gonna watch the little duck and cover turtle learn some
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: good lessons, and when we get back, I want you
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: to tell me about blowing up nukes and space, which
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: apparently we have already done. So we are back to
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: that little duck and cover turtle. He's got a turtle shell,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: but he's also got a helmet redundant. Anyways, now we're
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: going to talk about how we actually have already blown
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: up a nuke in space. It terrifies me that we
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: may have pissed off some aliens and many generations from
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: now they'll finally reach us and give us a real scolding.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: But Daniel, what happened? Why did we blow up space.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: So nuclear testing started in nineteen forty five with the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. The US, of course the first country to
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: develop these things and to test them and then to
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: use them in war, where thousands of people were killed horribly.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: And since then there's been about two thousand nuclear explosions
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: conducted by humans. And in the early days it was
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: free for all, there were no laws. People were blowing
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: stuff underground, above ground, et cetera. But we pretty rapidly
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: realized that blowing up stuff in our atmosphere was a
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: bad idea, creating radioactive particles and fallout. They could drift anywhere.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: We blew up a bunch of islands, which is terrible,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: destroying people's homes. And so that was in the fifties,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and things were of course very tense between the US
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: and the USSR. The US had stopped atmospheric testing, but
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: in the early sixties the USSR started atmospheric testing again,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: which was sort of part of a larger political struggle
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: within the USSR to like stand up to the US.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: We really should have like a Russian political expert on
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: to tell us about why they started that up again.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: But in nineteen sixty two, the US wanted to know, like, well,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: what happens if you blow up a nuke in space?
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: They were basically curious, and they didn't want to do
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: any more atmospheric testing, and so they tested a nuke
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: over the Pacific in July of nineteen sixty two.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking, like, if we blow it up just
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: a little bit above our atmosphere, that's not going to
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: cut it. Like how far away did we go? Because
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: you know, it seems like if you're too close you
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: can still have an impact on the Earth that you're
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: not going to want.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, if it's too far away, you won't be
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: able to see it because we don't have great instruments
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: in space. If it's too close, then it's basically in
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: your atmosphere, and said they chose an altitude of two
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: hundred and forty miles above the Earth's surface, and they
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: launched a one point four mega ton nuke from Johnston Island,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: which is like fifteen hundred kilometers southwest of Hawaii. And
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: the idea was like, well, if something bad happens, does
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: have it happen over less populated areas, I guess, And
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: people imagine like, oh, that's far enough away from Hawaii
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to not be a big deal, right, And they check
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: with a scientist and the sounds just like yeah, right,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: no problem. Turns out those scientists were wrong. Oh boy, yep. Scientists,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: especially physicists, can be wrong.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a big deal when you're talking about
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: a nuke and talking about people just trying to live
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: their lives. And then you're like, but we're curious to
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: see what this will do. Yikes.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: You can google this thing. It's called starfish prime and
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: just as we expect, it makes a spherical explosion. So
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: you don't get like a mushroom cloud that's a product
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: of blowing up in an atmosphere. You just get this
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: spherical explosion. It's not completely perfectly spherical, because the nuclear
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: bomb is not perfectly symmetric. There's like some small differences
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: in how the explosion happens based on exactly how the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: fuel is ranged. But it's almost completely spherical.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: It kind of looks like a flower or like a
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: drawing of a sun where you kind of make the
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: outsides a little spiky, but yeah, it is pretty round,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: and you've got like this bright white point in the middle,
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: and then you've got sort of a blue corona around it,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: and then a larger white corona around the blue. What
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: is that sort of color difference. Why do you have
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: that like bright white light and then this blue and
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: then bright white light again on the outer edges.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's similar to the effects we were
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: talking about in the atmosphere, that there is some debris
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that comes out of the explosion, and then the radiation
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that's emitted after that is partially absorbed by some of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: that debris, some of those heavier ions that are created
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: by the explosion, So you get this multiple effect with
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the products of the explosion then absorb things that are
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: later produced in the latter stages of the explosion. And
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty dramatic event on Earth.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean where people told this was going to happen.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: People were told it was going to happen, and even
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: the newspapers were aware, and they kind of advertised it.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: There's a headline in the Honolulu Advertiser, which is a newspaper,
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: which says, in blast night maybe dazzling, good view likely,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And a bunch of hotels in Hawaii had like rooftop
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: parties for people to watch this nuclear explosion happen.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: I would be in a basement, but what would it
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: look like to someone on one of these rooftop parties.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: So you can't see the actual explosion the same way
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: because of the atmosphere, but there aren't these great pictures
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: that people took from Hawaii. And you see all this
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: air glow. You see all this red light because the
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: radiation has hit the atmosphere and it's excited a bunch
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of oxygen atoms which then glow. So it's basically like
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: heated up the atmosphere which then glows in this red light.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I mean that seems spectacular but also maybe kind of
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: apocalyptic looking. That would scare me.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And then after the actual explosion there's a massive
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: aurora scene for like thousands of kilometers. You know, the
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Northern Lights. These are high energy particles hitting the atmosphere.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: They're mostly funneled up to the Northern and Southern poles
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: because of the magnetic field. But when a huge number
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: of high energy photons hit the atmosphere, they make the
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: atmosphere glow and you don't just get red, you get
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: greens and blues depending on exactly what it is that
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: has been like zapped and energized and then re emitted.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And so whereas you don't normally see auroras in Honolulu,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: they had this massive aurora which stretched for thousands of
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: kilometers over the Pacific.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe worth it to take a chance to accidentally
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: blow up a bunch of people, But you did mention
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: that the scientists had not quite calculated this right, So
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: were people actually in danger here? Like was there some
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: negative consequences to this?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Well, it like blew out street lights in Hawaii?
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, So this.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Electromagnetic pulse that was created went much further than the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: scientists thought. I think they didn't realize how much of
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: that is absorbed by the atmosphere when you blow this
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: thing up on Earth, or when you blow it up underwater.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: And so the radiation effects of this bomb in space
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: were much broader than they had anticipated. And so, yeah,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: there were effects on Hawaii. They destroyed a bunch of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: satellites that were up in space. Back then, there weren't
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: that many satellites. This is the beginning of the space era,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: so only like six satellites were destroyed. These days, you
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: blew up a nuclear weapon and that kind of location,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: you destroyed dozens of satellites, billions of dollars of damage,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and people were able to see this thing for like
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: thousands of miles away. People on Fiji described the light
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: show as breathtaking.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, so you mentioned that the radiation spread
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: out much further than they had suspected. Did that negatively
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: impact Hawaiians? Did that hurt people on the island or
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: did it not actually have too much of a human impact.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: It doesn't have very much of a human impact because
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: fortunately we are under the atmosphere, which is a really
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: thick blanket to protect ourselves from a lot of this radiation.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: And so really the only impact in Hawaii was the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: dramatic light show and the pulse from the EMP, which
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: damaged some electrical devices and blew out street lights and
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: dumped a bunch of energy basically in any conductor that
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: can absorb electromagnetic energy for hundreds of kilometers, and so
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: satellights and street lights are basically the only real damage.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: There may also be some very small amounts of radioactive material,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: but distributed over such a large area that doubt has
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: really any impact on it, like human life.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it could have gone worse, it could have been.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Wronger, and actually some scientists were wondering if this was
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: going to have a long lasting effect on other features
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: of nearby space. Remember that near the Earth there are
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: these huge bands of radiation. They're called the Van Allen Belts,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and they're basically just particles like whizzing around the Earth
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: that were discovered in the fifties whence we sent up
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: our first space missions. That as you leave the Earth
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: you pass through these bands of massive radiation. There's an
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: inner belt and there's an outer belt. They're not very
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: well understood, and at the time they were seen as
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: like an impediment to space travel, that if you go
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: up into space, you have to survive passage through these
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: basically radiation guns. And some scientists were wondering, if we
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: blow up a nuclear weapon in these radiation belts, maybe
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: it would like disturb them or dissipate them, though some
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: people were sort of hopeful that it would blow up
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the radiation belts, which to me is kind of crazy.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: It's like, before you even really understand these things and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: their purpose and their benefits and their detriments, you want
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: to just like blow them up and see what happens
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: to life on Earth.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of looking forward and not
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: looking at the current situation right because you're thinking, like,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: let's make space travel easier. But we have this functional
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: planet that we're pretty cozy on, so you might not
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: want to mess that up for some kind of future
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: space highway. I think that it is a lot of
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: decisions that we make we don't often think about, like,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: but how will this impact the planet before we build
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: this space highway or regular highway? Did it impact these
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: radiation belts or did it not really have a permanent impact.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I had basically no impact on the radiation belts, which
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: contain an enormous amount of energy which could not be
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: affected by one nuclear bomb. But this nuclear explosion did
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: have sort of shockwaves through the political climate on Earth.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Things cooled down a little bit, and in nineteen sixty
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: three they passed a partial Test Ban treaty which prohibited
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: all nuclear testing except for underground testing, which was seen
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: as safer because it really is very well contained. And
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: so for about thirty years, the US and Soviet Union
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: did a bunch of underground tests until they were prohibited
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. I still remember my dad traveling
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: to the Nevada test site to participate in some of
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: those tests. So the US was still testing nuclear weapons
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: into the nineties. We have not blown one up since then.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: The last nuclear test from the US was in the nineties.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: It really feels like such a scary time though, during
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: the Cold War, when you're having all these tests going on,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: you wonder about how many close calls we had in
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: terms of a test going wrong where it actually hurts people,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: or a test that happens is misread by like say
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: that Russians are you know, by the US, and we think, well,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: we're being attacked and that starts a whole cascade of nukes.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: It feels like this wild West time where we were
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: just i mean, maybe not playing around with nukes, but
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: the fact we were doing so many of these tests,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: and it feels like we just kind of escaped some
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: kind of horrible fate by the skin of our teeth.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: We certainly did. If you dig too deep into his history,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: it's terrifying. There were times when like a flock of
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: seagulls were mistaken for the launch of a nuclear weapon.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Another time when like a training tape was accidentally loaded
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: into a computer which became convinced that the Russians were
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: attacking us. It's really terrifying how close we came to
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: all out nuclear war several times. And you know, the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: US and the USSR haven't tested nuclear weapons since the nineties,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: but you know, India and Pakistan detonated nuclear weapons in
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: the very late nineties, and then of course North Korea
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: has done tests fairly recently of nuclear weapons. So it's
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: not like we're out of the woods in terms of
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Nope, yeah, exactly. Israel actually is the only
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: country we think has nuclear weapons but has never done
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: a nuclear test that we know of, that we know of.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because at the start of
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: the Russian Ukraine War, I started following a bunch of
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: nuclear proliferation experts and sort of people who understood the politics,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: who understood the science of nukes, because I was terrified,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: and I'm not gonna say I got less terrified after
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: hearing what the experts had to say. I think the
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: knowledge of exactly the kind of circumstances that we were
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: in and stuff was helpful. Like, even though the Cold
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: War is over, the fact that there are so many
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: nukes out there, it's terrifying, so we should probably send
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: them all the space blaw them all up put them
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: in space.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: I guess if I had to choose where to blow
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: up nuclear bombs, I probably choose to blow them up
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: in space, over the atmosphere or anywhere else on Earth.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: But it is really interesting to understand what happens to
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb when you blow it up in space.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: It turns out to be quite different from what happens
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: in our atmosphere. It doesn't dump that energy and create
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: a shock wave. It's basically like a little miniature sun,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: and so there is no shockwave to hurt you, but
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: that radiation will travel much much further and damage things
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: that are much further away, especially electronics. So let's hope
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: that we don't end up in a nuclear space war
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: anytime soon.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: And if you're flying your spaceship and you want to
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: fire some nukes, wear sunglasses.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: And be careful microwaving your soup, and put a lid
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: on your blender when you make that strawberry smoothie.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: All of this is practical advice.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Thanks Katie very much for joining us on this exclusive episode,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, and thanks to all of our listeners.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Tune in next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.