Science Memes

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Desks (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're able to perceive the nuclear explosion and not even go blind, then you aren't close enough for your house to disintegrate like that.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The blindness thing is really only for a split second while the fission/fusion is actually happening. By the time the mushroom cloud has formed, the actual explosion was like 30 seconds ago.

If you see a full mushroom cloud, that means the glass in front of you is probably going to rapidly accelerate into your skull when the shockwave hits you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Wow how is it so fast

I guess that's why it has to be enriched so much

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nukes are crazy.

The mushroom cloud is actually caused by all the dust and debris that gets sucked up into the actual explosion.

Nuclear reactions happen at near light speed, and the heat from them does propagate at light speed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I still struggle to see how that sudden reaction can create so much pressure, a regular explosive is creating heavy byproducts and is expanding the gases already present in the explosive, but the sudden heating of a small uranium core and the air around it can create a bigger explosion than a bomb thousands of times heavier? Boggles my mind

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Yea, the concentration of energy trapped in matter is immense. People say matter is energy and e=mc^2 but you really have to do the calculations to see how much work that c squared is doing. A small grain of sand is probably more energy than the largest bomb, but the hard part is converting that matter into energy.

A hydrogen bomb (even bigger than a nuke,) converts less than a percent of the matter in the bomb to energy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

energy=mass x the speed of light squared.
its like a spacetime sneeze.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Well that’s the thing, conventional explosions convert chemical bonds into energy. Chemical bonds are fairly weak in the grand scheme of things.

Nuclear weapons convert nuclear bonds into energy. Atoms really like staying the atoms they currently are, so forcing them to convert all at once releases a ton of energy.