What If You Detonated a Nuclear Bomb In The Marianas Trench? (Science not Fantasy) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01What would happen if we detonated humanity's most powerful nuclear weapon at the deepest point of the ocean?
2. 0:09For sure, tsunamis hundreds of meters high would destroy coastal cities,
3. 0:13earthquakes would level countries,
4. 0:15new volcanoes would bring us nuclear winter.
5. 0:18Maybe even Earth could be ripped apart?
6. 0:20Or thrown out of orbit?
7. 0:22Well, almost.
8. 0:24Currently, Earth's deepest known point is inside the Mariana Trench.
9. 0:29The Mariana Trench is a very deep valley
10. 0:31right at the edge of two tectonic plates
11. 0:34that looks like an upside-down mountain.
12. 0:36It reaches a depth of about 11 kilometers,
13. 0:39almost three times deeper than the dark grave of the Titanic.
14. 0:43It's one of the last places on Earth for humans to explore.
15. 0:47Pitch black and under a thousand atmospheres of pressure,
16. 0:50it's a relatively pristine environment thanks to the absence of humans.
17. 0:55A great place for our nuclear test.
18. 0:58We'll use the most powerful nuclear bomb humans have ever exploded,
19. 1:02the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb or Tsar Bomba.
20. 1:08Its explosion was so massive that its shockwave traveled around the Earth three times,
21. 1:13and its mushroom cloud stretched 56 kilometers into the sky.
22. 1:18Its shockwave was strong enough to destroy everything in a thousand square kilometers,
23. 1:23its fireball hot enough to burn the rubble.
24. 1:26Bombs like this release such an enormous amount of energy at once, that they could boil away an entire lake.
25. 1:34And if we set off a nuclear bomb in the Mariana Trench, that's exactly what happens.
26. 1:40Let's pull the trigger.
27. 1:44In the first few microseconds, the nuclear fuel undergoes its chain reaction
28. 1:48and explodes with the power of 50 megatons of TNT.
29. 1:53A blinding flash of light illuminates the darkness of the trench for the first time in history.
30. 1:58The heat of the explosion produces a cavity, a flaming bubble of water vapor,
31. 2:03radioactive nuclei, and the remains of very unlucky fish.
32. 2:08The bubble grows quickly as it vaporizes the water around it.
33. 2:13The pressure of the bubble is immense, plowing outwards as if there's nothing in the way.
34. 2:18Sending off a shockwave that will be felt by seismic stations and whales around the world.
35. 2:23And then, almost as fast as it emerges, it stops.
36. 2:28On the surface of the Earth, this fireball bubble would grow to ten kilometers the second after it's detonated,
37. 2:34as the atmosphere barely puts up a fight to hold it back.
38. 2:38But the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is enormous.
39. 2:42With 11 kilometres of water overhead,
40. 2:44being in the Mariana Trench is like being crushed by a hydraulic press from every direction.
41. 2:50Here, a second after the detonation, our bubble is about a kilometer across, when oddly enough, it starts to shrink.
42. 2:58The bubble overextends itself, losing pressure as it expands, until the water turns it back, recompressing it.
43. 3:05The tug of war between the fiery death bubble and water goes back and forth a few times,
44. 3:09the bubble shrinking and growing, until eventually the bubble loses for good.
45. 3:14The pressure around it is too great, and turbulent water begins to chop it up.
46. 3:19It becomes something like the underwater equivalent of a mushroom cloud
47. 3:23as it disintegrates into many smaller, hot and radioactive bubbles drifting upwards.
48. 3:28And as our mighty destructive blast rises to the surface, it does basically nothing.
49. 3:34Just a small wave, and a bubbling plume of radioactive warm water in the Pacific.
50. 3:39No tsunami will wash away Japan or California,
51. 3:43although boats and whales in the area might have a bad time.
52. 3:48The radioactive fallout will be diluted into the Pacific after a few days,
53. 3:52although a fair amount of radioactive water and salt makes it to the atmosphere
54. 3:56where it collects and then rains down again.
55. 3:58Even if the wind blows the fallout directly towards the Philippines,
56. 4:02the worst of it probably happens over the oceans.
57. 4:05But clearly, the real danger comes from our explosion-triggering earthquakes and volcanoes, right?
58. 4:11Even if we detonated the bomb right in the trench at the exact point where tectonic plates touch, probably not.
59. 4:19The explosion would vaporize a part of the seafloor, and turn a lot of sand into glass,
60. 4:24but most of the energy goes into the water, not seismic waves.
61. 4:28Earthquakes are already quite common at tectonic plate boundaries.
62. 4:32And earthquakes with as much seismic energy as our bomb
63. 4:35happen a few times a year without triggering any sort of apocalypse.
64. 4:39But maybe it will affect the Earth's orbit.
65. 4:42Since no mass is taken away or added to the Earth, our orbit is completely unaffected.
66. 4:48Also, there have been well over a thousand nuclear tests in the last 70 years
67. 4:53and that didn't change our orbit, so why would this time be different?
68. 4:57The strongest forces humanity can unleash are laughable compared to the forces of nature.
69. 5:03The planet is too big. It doesn't care.
70. 5:06So, what happens to us if we detonate a nuclear weapon really deep in the ocean?
71. 5:11Pretty much nothing.
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80. 5:52[Quacking]
81. 5:53[Outro music]