Nuking the Sun, is it possible?

Okay sorry but I don't feel like reading through 4 more pages to find this out but....

The OP is not talking about blowing up the sun, what I think he is saying is sending our nukes to the sun maybe an effective way of getting rid of them because the bombs would have little effect on the sun itself.

But please dirtbags go on with calling him a dumbf***

We could do it like they did in Superman IV. Just launch them into space, let Superman collect them in a big-ass net and hammer-throw them into the sun.

Sun wrote:

First off, the sun is a ball of burning gas, so you couldn't "blow it up". Second, even if it were a burning planet, and you could nuke it, you could only nuke it once, not every year, and we would all die of freezing. You are an idiot.

Ditto.

Sun wrote:

Second, even if it were a burning planet, and you could nuke it, you could only nuke it once, not every year, and we would all die of freezing. You are an idiot.

You mean you can only nuke things once? So it would be impossible for us to nuke Hiroshima again? Wow, this is news to me! Thanks for the insight!

Has anyone mentioned that the sun is a mass of incandescent gas...a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is turned into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees.

The sun is hot. The sun is not a place where you could. But here on Earth, there'd be no life, without the light it gives.

It doesn't matter how hot the sun is. It would burn the nuke up irregardless.

I LOVE IT! This wouldn't be letsrun if the few people who know what they're talking about don't get shot down by the hordes of idiots.

As far as "hitting the sun" with a rocket, it's actually pretty difficult. The Earth is orbiting the sun at 30km/s, so any object that we throw at the sun will also be moving at 30km/s sideways with respect to the sun. To actually hit the sun, you have to get rid of most of that 30km/s sideways velocity.

If you miss the Sun, there's no difference between the nuke and anything else flying around the Sun. Moreover, orbits are closed (for example, in 1 year, the Earth always comes back to the same position relative to the Sun), so we'd have this nuke flying around intersecting the Earth's orbit. The chances of the nuke hitting the Earth when it swings back around would be uncomfortably non-zero.

Learnd astronomer wrote:

You are right that it would take a ridiculous amount of energy to change the Moon's orbital speed by 0.01 m/s; but it is even harder than your calculations indicated. My back of the envelope calculations indicate that it would take 7x10^23 J, and the Moon would move about 300km (its current orbit is 400,000 km).

Whoops! One small error in these calculations. The moon would move about 4km, not 300km. The energy calculation is fine.

This has been an entertaining thread... it must be finals week!

Do us idiots a huge favor and shut the F up!

dont miss wrote:

I LOVE IT! This wouldn't be letsrun if the few people who know what they're talking about don't get shot down by the hordes of idiots.

If you miss the Sun, there's no difference between the nuke and anything else flying around the Sun. Moreover, orbits are closed (for example, in 1 year, the Earth always comes back to the same position relative to the Sun), so we'd have this nuke flying around intersecting the Earth's orbit. The chances of the nuke hitting the Earth when it swings back around would be uncomfortably non-zero.

No. Talk about irony.

Seriously? wrote:

The sun is hot. The sun is not a place where you could. But here on Earth, there'd be no life, without the light it gives.

Yea good point duuuude

dont miss wrote:

Moreover, orbits are closed (for example, in 1 year, the Earth always comes back to the same position relative to the Sun), so we'd have this nuke flying around intersecting the Earth's orbit. The chances of the nuke hitting the Earth when it swings back around would be uncomfortably non-zero.

I disconcur, the chances would be so close to zero they would practically be zero. If the nuke misses the sun it will be sent into its own orbit around the sun, which will have a round trip time of who knows, 1000's of earth years?

I would have to plug it into my Fuzzy Logic Matlab program I wrote in college... I'll be back.

educated observer, please educate yourself. Remember Kepler's Laws? (Period)^2 proportional to (Radius)^3? If put an object on a collision course with the Sun, it's average radius will be something like 1/2 (Earth orbit), so the period will be roughly 1/3(Earth period).

Too bad your Fuzzy Logic Matlab program couldn't tell you that, jack***

Just a little bit of basic physics, boys. An object tends to remain in motion or at rest until it is acted upon by an outside force. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Once we used the latter to push the nukes into space, there would be no force, not even air resistace, to act on it because space is void and movement will continue to happen unless it is acted on by something else. Not much fuel necessary.

Oh, and the idea of nuking the sun? Totally idiotic. I thought we grew out of that idea once we were about 10... at least.

dont miss wrote:

If put an object on a collision course with the Sun, it's average radius will be something like 1/2 (Earth orbit), so the period will be roughly 1/3(Earth period).

If it was on a collision course with the Sun then it would collide with the Sun, right?

Not if the Moon made of cheese!

No Way wrote:

Educated_Observer wrote:

Just who do you think you are, one of the Mythbusters? You can't possibly know this for sure.

If man wanted to destroy the moon, he could, admit it.

Haha, I do love Mythbusters, but I'm actually a real scientist. I'm a biologist, not a physicist, but physics can indeed allow me to know for sure that a 200 megaton bomb will not destroy the moon or even knock it out of orbit.

haah wrote:

Just a little bit of basic physics, boys. An object tends to remain in motion or at rest until it is acted upon by an outside force. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Once we used the latter to push the nukes into space, there would be no force, not even air resistace, to act on it because space is void and movement will continue to happen unless it is acted on by something else. Not much fuel necessary.

...says the guy who didn't read the thread.

I can't get Matlab working on my new computer, my student copy may be expired. Once I get it up I can provide some advanced calculations and plots of what would actually happen if we shot a nuke at the sun and it missed by a million miles or so.

i don't see why you need matlab to tell you about basic orbital mechanics. nothing advanced about it! orbits are simply ellipses with the Sun at a focal point.

if you want a period of 1000 years, the object would have an orbit of 100*(Earth orbit)=100AU. For comparison, Pluto is about 40AU away from the Sun. So you'd have to fling the nuke away with a huge amount of energy.