Re: WILL IRAN BOMB ANTARTICA ?


KANGAROOISTAN wrote:
The Toad wrote:
"KANGAROOISTAN" <theoldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1146434395.587258.202860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

WILL IRAN BOMB ANTARTICA IF IT IS ATTACKED
...

On Mon, 1 May 2006 12:58:51 +0930, "mariner" <rjharrdy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Exactly how old are you ????
...


About 14 years old, I'd guess -- and not the brightest bulb
among his classmates.

However, the idea of nuking Antarctica is at least interesting
and practically begs for some back-of-the-envelope type
calculations.


TRYING TO MELT ANTARCTICA

Ignoring the nonsense about Antarctic ice sheets sliding off
the Antarctic landmass like so many ice cubes off a table, let's
concentrate on melting the ice to raise sea levels.

YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED A VERY INTERESTING TOPIC THAT I NOTICED WITH MY
14yr OLD MENTALITY

I DO NOT PRETEND TO BE AN EXPERT MATE

I THANK YOU FOR YOUR INPUTS ON THIS AS I HAD WONDERED WHAT WILL HAPPEN
AS LARGE AMOUNTS OF ICE ENTERING THE SEA WILL COOL THE OCEAN

THUS RELEASING STORED COLD INTO THE ATMOSPHERE

I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WOULD CREATE A REACTION AS SEA LEVELS WILL RISE
VERY QUICKLY

BUT THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY TRANSFERING FROM THE ICE TO THE SEA /
ATMOSPHERE IS MORE COMPLEX THAN I COULD EXPLAIN

BUT YOU DO FAIL COMPLETELY IN ONE AREA

an ice sheet twice the size of australia and ave three kms high does
not have to melt

it only needs to slide off the table into the sea to raise sealevels by
67 meters

while huge amounts of explosive would be needed to melt it as you show

i claim a single nuke could provide the melt water to lubricats the
rock ice face zone enough to create an avelanche type collapse

same as a shoul can trigger an avelanche in snowfields

the stored mass of antartic ice could be mobilized by a small event and
lubrication is a well known factor that would be available from the
nuke explosion

a few drops of water on your table top would cause a giant very tall
ice cube to skid off your table like you would not believe, try it

ice behaves like all things , it will move down, its own wieght, and
in this case three km thick ice, creates a down hill slide, waiting for
a trigger, and add melt water and its possible even one bomb or several
may lead to the complete collapse if the antartic ice caps and 67
meters sea level rise would be a likely result

granted as you point out it may never melt when it hits the sea

indeed the globe may get very very cold as it slowly lowers the sea ice
slurry that would result


How much energy will we need?

From high school physics we know that we need 80 calories to
melt 1 gram of ice at 0 degrees Celsius and turn it into
water at 0 degrees.

From Wikipedia, we learn that in nuclear weapons calculations,
the energy released by 1 metric ton of TNT is considered
equivalent to 4,184,000,000 Joules or 1,000,000,000 calories.

So if we have 1,000,000,000 calories and need 80 calories to
melt 1 gram of ice, we can make 12,500,000 grams of water.
That seems like a lot until we realize it is only 12,500 kilograms
or 12.5 metric tons of water.

Since water has a density of about 1,000 kilograms per cubic meter,
each ton TNT will give us about 12.5 cubic meters of melt water.

Let's summarize: 1 ton TNT = 12.5 cubic meters of melt water.


THE HIROSHIMA DUCK POND

Clearly we're going to need nuclear weapons if we want to produce
a enough of water to affect the sea level. Let's try a "Hiroshima"
size nuke first with a yield of 20,000 tons TNT.

From a Hiroshima sized nuke we might be able to get
20,000 x 12.5 = 250,000 cubic meters of water.

That's enough to cover an area 500 meters by 500 meters to
a depth of 1 meter. It would make a nice big duck pond for
the penguins to swim in until it freezes over again but
it's a little short of the global catastrophe we had in
mind. ;-)


ALL OUT NUCLEAR WAR ON ANTARCTICA

So, let's commander the whole world's nuclear arsenals and wage
all out war on the Antarctic icecap. That would give us
an estimated 24,000 megatons to play with.

With 24,000,000,000 tons of TNT, we can get 300,000,000,000 cubic
meters of water -- 300 cubic kilometers.

That's a lot of water! But we have a big task ahead of us
if we want to significantly raise the Earth's 361,000,000 square
kilometers of oceans (see Wikipedia).

Spreading out 300 cubic kilometers of water over a 361,000,000
square kilometer area will raise sea levels by
300/361,000,000 = 0.00000083 kilometers. That's 0.00083 meters
or 0.83 millimeters of sea level rise.

Run for the hills! Leave the women and children behind! It's
almost as high as an ant! ;-)

Gee, we've used up the entire world's nuclear arsenals
and the result wasn't even enough to make New Orleans
residents worry -- or notice.


TIME FOR THE HEAVY ARTILLERY -- THE K-T ASTEROID

Enough of this fooling around with mankind's tinker-toy weapons,
it is time to switch to Mother Nature's heavy artillery.

Let's assume we have handy something like the Manhattan-sized
asteroid, the "dinosaur killer," that slammed into the Yucatan
Peninsula 65 million years ago releasing an estimated 100 million
megatons of energy.

With 100,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT, we can get 1,250,000,000,000,000
cubic meters of melt water -- about 1,250,000 cubic kilometers.
Now that's impressive! (Assuming 100% of energy released is used to
melt the ice.)

Spreading 1,250,000 cubic kilometers of water over the 361,000,000
square kilometers of the Earth's oceans gives us a sea level rise
of 1,250,000/361,000,000 = 0.0035 kilometers. That's 3.5 meters
or about 11.5 feet.

Finally we've really made people in Venice and New Orleans sit
up and take notice -- but weren't there much easier ways to take
out a few coastal cities?


Toad-Beneath-the-Harrow
--------------------------------------------------------------
The dinosaurs could not change the asteroid's path, and change
their history. They could not even know the asteroid was
coming. The dinosaurs are extinct today because they did not
have a space program. -- Arthur C. Clarke
--------------------------------------------------------------






"KANGAROOISTAN" <theoldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1146434395.587258.202860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

WILL IRAN BOMB ANTARTICA IF IT IS ATTACKED
...

.

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