Will Earth's Axis Break Upon Initation of Nuclear War?

I have brought the topic the the orbitation rotation of the earth in sequence with the other planets and mooms of this Solar System in conjunction with the resultant concussions of multiple thermonuclear detonation. Would Earth slowly spin out of orbit with the Sun or be drawn towards the Sun over a period of time? Or would the Earth's axis simply crack?Curiously, LEGALCATALYST.




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[edit on 7-1-2006 by UM_Gazz]

Any type of explosion on the Earth's surface should do nothing to its orbit, and even the most powerful nuclear weapons man has made are actually quite feeble on scales that large. The only thing I could imagine perturbing Earth's orbit would be an impact with a very, very large asteroid or comet.

Remember, Nuclear weapons dont even really impact the surface like asteriods do, they explode in the atmosphere, and the force makes a crater. It's mainly a heat weapon, not an explosive type weapon. So you'd need something big enough to not only push the earth back, but needs to deeply penetrate the crust, otherwise its just like a fly hitting a windshield, some dirt, but no damage.

Plus, most asteriods that have hit earth have a much greater effect of damage and yield then even our most powerful nuclear weapons have ever had.

I would like to take my question one step further. I though of the Afgan war and the subterrian tunnels and burrowing weapons. Could a thermonuclear warhead be created in order to go deep into the Earth to obtain this result. Is it feasible and plausible? Cordially, LEGALCATALYST.

Infeasable.

The magma in the earths mantle is roughly between 650 and 1200 °C in temperature range, the closer to the core, the hoter it becomes. So your talking around alittle over 3,000 °F of temperature in a hostile liquid. Most metals wouldn't last long as it travelled through it, and when one bearing breaks, all the internal components are fried.

Sorry about the generalities, but more specifically I was not meaning mantel core but more in the range of depth such a bunker buster precurser bomb employed ahead of the thermonuclear device. Any further thoughts?Cordially, LEGALCATALYST.

When you consider the earth has a mass of 6 x 10^24 kilograms (and for you folks who don't get scientific notation, thats 6000000000000000000000000 kilograms.

Even an asterroid which produces an explosion of 1000 megatons (about 100 modern warheads) would barely shift the earth a noticable amount.

Objects like planets are so unthinkibly large that we often forget how pathetically small nuclear weapons are. And the sun is something like, a million times more massive than our planet.....

Is it your position that it is the SHIFT of the earth that is the affirmative event necessary to cause the axis to twist or break?LEGALCATALYST.

Raideurs got the scientific stuff down. Pretty much, the only way to push us back enough to break the axis is pretty much to be hit by an asteriod like the levy shoemaker one that hit jupiter. That asteriod was actually about the same size, if not a bit bigger then the earth itself.

Originally posted by Legalcatalyst
Could a thermonuclear warhead be created in order to go deep into the Earth to obtain this result.

Consider that the Christmas Tsunami Generator Earthquake affected the earth's orbit, and it was many thousands of times more powerful that nuclear explosions, released/invovled far more energy, and even that only had a small effect on the orbit.

Also, most of that effect is due to a change in the planet's diameter, not the 'violence' of the explosion (keeping in mind of course that that violence is what made the change in diameter).

Any force powerful enough to effect the orbit or tilt of the earth or anything like that would probably be so powerful as to vaporize everything on the surface of the earth anyway, so it wouldn't really make a difference to anyone afterwards.

Unless you were off planet and needed the earth to have its orbital characteristics changed, then you wouldn't care.

I still do not really understand what he means by the "axis" breaking. The axis is the hypothetical pole on which the earth spins on. Earth spins for the same reason virtually everything else in the universe spins. If they mean stop the earth from spinning, once again, your going to have to slow down 6 x 10^24 kilogram that are moving as part of the earth at very high speeds. The earths rotational momentum is simply to large.

He means will it disrupt the axis or stop the axis.