What If We Detonated a Nuclear Bomb on the Moon?

The U.S. Air Force considered trying to detonate a nuclear device on the moon during the late 1950s. A physicist who worked on the project said a single explosion would have been "microscopic," with little impact. But what if the plans had been bigger—do we have enough nuclear weapons to push the moon out of orbit? Not even close. Depending on where the detonation happened, sending the moon careening away from Earth would take somewhere between 10 billion and 10 trillion megatons of TNT. The most powerful nuclear device ever detonated, the Soviet Union's "Tsar Bomba," yielded the energy equivalent of 50 megatons of TNT. The current nuclear arsenal of the world could produce less than 7,000 megatons. The moon is constantly edging away from us, though, without any human intervention. The moon's pull drags a portion of the Earth's water out of its natural position, creating bulges at each end of the planet. As Earth rotates, these bulges exert force on the moon, adding to its kinetic energy and making its orbit grow larger. On average, the moon floats 3 or 4 centimeters further away every year. Life without the moon would be strange in the near term and disastrous in the long term. If the stabilizing influence of the moon disappeared, the Earth would begin to teeter dramatically on its axis, and seasons would no longer be constant. Over the long term, it's possible the Earth could topple over, as apparently happened to Uranus, which orbits the sun on its side.

Comments

1. ok nuke it. dont even hesitate. the moon is just a giant rock that doesn't give a fuck
2. "the moon is floating away"... you nasatards are hilariously deluded.
3. Piccolo did it easily ✋
4. I can't help but notice that you neglected to say that the effects to the Earth wouldn't happen for 50 billion years.
   
   Also, Uranus is likely on its side due to a impact with another planet sized object, not because a moon left its orbit.
   
   The fail is strong with you.
5. You know he is serious when he pronounced uranus. ura-nus... Lol
6. We dont want to be like Ur Anus dont we?
7. could we at least blow the moon closer to earth ? if not could we blow the earth closer to the moon ?
8. Wouldn't the moon eventually stop floating away at a certain point? Wouldn't the tidal bulges that occur stop having an effect like that on the moon's gravitational orbit since the distance between the earth's mass and earth's sea level would become negligible?
9. sooo your saying uk and los angelas will switch weathers?
   HAHAHAHAH FINALLY!
10. fun fact- they did nuke the moon to see if there was water
    
    there is no water
11. you cannot destroy god's creation.
12. we can prevent human from being a gigantic king Kong
13. 0:35 where i can get this ka-boom sound? Sounds nice.
14. We have to drill 800 feet Ben Affleck is the man for the job.
15. Why you gonna do that is stupid.
16. John McCain would be touching himself, obviously.
17. Nukes don't exist
18. The main issue here is Escape Velocity. Assuming we did have enough plutonium (we would need a quantity about the size of Iran, ten feet deep to make the slightest impact) and the drill technology to get it to the moon's core, the gravitational force will counteract the initial separation and simply pull the moon back in one piece again. Clump. You would need so much plutonium to counteract this gravitational pull, that we would be a million years refining it.
19. The actual effects of the Water on the Moon are called " TIDAL FRICTION". It is more like the friction of a ball thrown in the air, the variable is the relative distance relative distance to Sea-Level. " Purported-Science" such as this Video, do a lot of harm. It is an ABUSE of the gift Nicola Tesla gave us to further the cause of Humanism. Yes, I am the Dead-Tesla Police.
20. So in 1 million years the Moon would have moved away from the Earth by 24 miles... Meh, it'll take a few more millions if it were to be on it's own.