Nuking the Sun, is it possible?

pjb wrote:

...Blowing up the sun doesn't mean converting all its mass into energy. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki converted only about 1 gram of its own mass into heat and light energy.

Nuking implies annihilation. It hardly matters whether you convert 100%, 10%, 1%. Your dead, even at 93M miles.

Didn't you see Armageddon you idiot? Launching a nuke at a meteor the size of Texas has no effect, how the hell would launching a nuke at the sun do anything??

mr. dumass wrote:

Didn't you see Armageddon you idiot? Launching a nuke at a meteor the size of Texas has no effect, how the hell would launching a nuke at the sun do anything??

While we're on the subject, I was thinking about that movie recently. If the asteroid was the size of Texas, how was one nuke capable of splitting it in half?

My god man. Once broken free from the Earth's gravity, the missile would continue on its path unabated for infinity until some other force acted on it. Newton's laws - look them up. Space is essentially a vacuum, so the only amount of fuel you need is to escape the earth's gravitational pull and set it on the right trajectory. No more fuel needed ever.

Best Thread Ever

Also check out some videos for size perspective. It's pretty amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS88G5WBcfQ

Educated_Observer wrote:

[drivel]

Oh sweet irony

some runner wrote:

My god man. Once broken free from the Earth's gravity, the missile would continue on its path unabated for infinity until some other force acted on it. Newton's laws - look them up. Space is essentially a vacuum, so the only amount of fuel you need is to escape the earth's gravitational pull and set it on the right trajectory. No more fuel needed ever.

And that other force would be the SUN's gravity...

Gordon Freeman wrote:

And that other force would be the SUN's gravity...

Oh goddammit! The force of the sun's gravity is immaterial here. the missile, once free of the earth's gravity and on the right trajectory, would travel to where the sun is, even if the sun was not there or if the sun had no gravity. don't you get it? The missile would only require the amount of fuel necessary to get away from the earth in order to get the 93 millions miles away. it would not NEED the sun's gravity to help it there. The sun's gravity would only make it accelerate along its path.

.....THE MOON? Nuking the sun would suck, you couldn't even look at it to observe the relatively minuscule explosion. It would be like looking at a starter's pistol from across lake Ontario with a fireworks display going off all around you. The moon on the other hand would be the tits. I've been thinking about this idea for a while now, all you need to do is send a nuke to the moon during a new moon so there would be no light interference. You could even have multiple warheads that would be dropped several miles from one another.

This parallels my idea to put a satellite in space that could project something, say, the Nike Swoosh, on the moon. Now that would be advertising.

What about..... wrote:

.....THE MOON? Nuking the sun would suck, you couldn't even look at it to observe the relatively minuscule explosion.

Nuking the moon would be a bad, bad idea. We depend on the moon to provide gravity for our oceans. The tides depend on this. Without the moon there would be no tides > No trade winds > no climate.

Lets stick with the sun, it is so big that I doubt a nuke would knock it out, it will just look cool in the process.

mr. dumass wrote:

Didn't you see Armageddon you idiot? Launching a nuke at a meteor the size of Texas has no effect, how the hell would launching a nuke at the sun do anything??

You are not smart in any way. The point was if you did try to nuke the sun you would wind up killing yourself, if on the earth.

03runner03 wrote:

this is the dumbest thread ever.

actually there are about 12 others on the front page right now that are dumberer - start with the "ball sweat" thread if are interested in reading them.

e=mc^2 wrote:

Nuking implies annihilation. It hardly matters whether you convert 100%, 10%, 1%. Your dead, even at 93M miles.

That was my point. All the stuff about raisins and e=mc^2 was irrelevant.

Not really, we nuked Japan. Japan is still there, and so is the rest of the world. My mind won't be made up until there is a mythbusters episode about this myth. I will submit it to Discovery Channel.

some runner wrote:

Oh goddammit! The force of the sun's gravity is immaterial here. the missile, once free of the earth's gravity and on the right trajectory, would travel to where the sun is, even if the sun was not there or if the sun had no gravity. don't you get it? The missile would only require the amount of fuel necessary to get away from the earth in order to get the 93 millions miles away. it would not NEED the sun's gravity to help it there. The sun's gravity would only make it accelerate along its path.

Wrong. You need more fuel than to just get away from the earth, because once you do that, the missile is still in an orbit about the sun. You need to get it into an orbit that intersects with the sun. This would either take quite a bit of fuel or, if travel time is not an issue, a carefully-plotted trajectory that will use a gravity-assist from a planet, which would still require extra fuel, albeit less. Sending it on a trajectory into the sun from the earth would require not just escaping earth's gravity, but also accelerating to counter most of the earth's 30km/s orbital velocity to allow the missile to fall more-or-less directly into the sun.

I could be wrong on this but i'm pretty sure the sun is pulling in the planets at a very slow rate. Our fate is the same as the fate of all the other planets in our solar system, the sun will eventually pull them all in.

not only is it possible, but it is necessary!

destroying the sun is the ONLY way to stop global warming. we need our top scientists on this matter right away.

prince albert gore wrote:

not only is it possible, but it is necessary!

destroying the sun is the ONLY way to stop global warming. we need our top scientists on this matter right away.

Ah! Then it's my turn. Global cooling will win out on the end. Happiness!!!