Jupiter may be the biggest planet
in the Solar System,
but its days are numbered.
Because today, we’re using Earth’s biggest,
baddest bombs
to blow the gas giant
into oblivion.
Nuclear weapons are so powerful
that even the low-yield versions,
like those dropped on Japan
by the U.S. in World War II,
have the explosive equivalent
of 15-20 kilotons of dynamite each.
What makes them so volatile
is that they harness
the intense energy-releasing power
of nuclear fission or fusion.
These are the same processes
that happen in our very own Sun.
So be careful when moving
these things out to Jupiter.
One false move
and you could be incinerated
by a fireball as hot
as the center of the Sun.
In order to blow Jupiter to bits,
one single bomb
wouldn’t necessarily be up for the task.
Good thing for this scenario that
there are a lot of nuclear weapons
on Earth.
Maybe the safest plan would be
getting them all off our planet anyway.
Given the top-secret nature
of military activities,
it’s hard to know the exact number.
But estimates put the global arsenal
at about 12,700,
with the U.S. and Russia
battling for top spot
with 5,500 to 6,000 weapons each.
OK, there’s no use in delaying.
Let’s get these rockets off Earth
as fast as possible.
The distance between Earth
and Jupiter fluctuates
from about 590 million km (365 million mi)
to 970 million km (600,000 mi).
In the past,
missions like the Galileo space probe
took nearly five years to make the journey
to the gas giant.
But our rockets wouldn’t take this long.
Galileo had to be slow enough
to enter Jupiter’s orbit.
We’d just need to hit the planet head-on.
So you’d only be looking
at about 550
to 650 days to get the job done.
You shouldn’t be too reckless
and speedy, though.
You don’t want to nuke something else
by accident.
Bypassing the Moon
and Mars would be easy enough,
but getting safely through the asteroid belt
would be like navigating a minefield.
There are millions of asteroids
riddled between Mars and Jupiter.
And while the average distance between them
is a not-so-worrisome
966,000 km (600,000 mi),
sometimes it can still get
a little cramped in there.
And Jupiter is partly to blame for this.
The planet’s massive
gravitational influence
causes many of these
to group into clusters
known as families.
Carelessly navigate through one,
like the Flora family,
and you’d better hope none of our rockets
would collide with any of its 400 asteroids.
For the best chance of success,
you should aim to transport your rockets
through the Kirkwood gaps.
These are nearly asteroid-free
regions in the belt.
Because you’d hate to see
all of our planet’s nukes
detonate themselves
in a blinding chain reaction
before reaching our target.
As the first of our bombs
exploded on Jupiter,
you’d see bright flashes
back here on Earth.
Just like when the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet
slammed into Jupiter in 1994.
But that only released 5% as much energy
as the Tsar Bomba,
the largest bomb ever created.
So with thousands of our nuclear bombs,
Jupiter’s days would have to be numbered,
right?
Well, not exactly.
Even though our nukes
could produce an explosion
hotter than the Sun,
this wouldn’t cause
all the hydrogen on Jupiter to ignite.
It just isn’t dense enough
to sustain nuclear fusion.
And even if every bomb was detonated,
Jupiter wouldn’t blow up
completely either.
In order to do that,
we’d need to unleash
as much energy as the Sun releases
over 160 years,
all at once.
And for that highly energetic result,
about one billion billion nukes
would be required.
Somewhat more
than the 12,700 in our arsenal.
To build that many bombs,
you’d need a combined mass of material
that would almost be twice that
of the largest moon in the Solar System,
Jupiter’s Ganymede.
No small feat,
since it’s bigger than Pluto and Mercury.
All right, well,
that was pretty anticlimactic.
Maybe you’d be better off seeing
what could happen
by taking things to the extreme
here on Earth.
Like dropping a nuke
into the deepest part of the ocean.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.