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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries
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To: Spheres who wrote (57674)12/27/2004 5:35:01 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (1) of 74559
 
<Can a well placed nuclear device, in you opinion, generate the wave of a lifetime? Please consider all topography above and below the surface.>

Earthquakes at 9.0 are seriously large energy releases, making nukes look small. But 20 megatons under the ocean should cause quite a wave. Not much of an earthquake's energy goes into making tsunamis. Most of it goes in grinding rock and lifting land.

Let's see. BOE analysis says 20 megatons of energy should vapourise 60 megatons of water, but water pressure at sufficient depth to avoid surface breakthrough of gases would increase the boiling point a lot, meaning more energy to do the vapourising. So I guess maybe it would be a matter of megaton of bang for megaton of vapour and 1 megaton of vapour would displace 20 megatons of water.

So a 20 megaton nuke would cause a 400 megaton water displacement and hence wave. That's 500 metres thick by 1,000 metres radius [give or take a bit] at the epicentre [though the mountain of water would be a dome, not a plateau].

At 1000 km distance, the wave would have shrunk to 50 metres. Hmmm, that's still quite a wave. Well, something like that. It seems too big. It's too hard for me just now. And that's without considering lens effects of continental shelves [peninsulars cause focused energy and bays cause spread energy].

Got to go have a nice cup of tea instead.

Mqurice
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