Rachel Feltman: This is probably going to blow your mind, but guess what: it’s a bad idea to set off a nuclear bomb in space. Shouldn’t be an issue, right? Seems like an easy thing to avoid doing.
Unfortunately it seems like some folks may disagree. The United States Department of Defense has sounded the alarm on a potential threat from Russia in the form of a hypothetical program aimed at putting a nuclear weapon into orbit. While there’s no evidence that such a device is on its way into space, let alone already up there, I think it’s safe to say we’d all rather be sure that Russia, like, definitely wasn’t going to do that.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—what actually happens when a nuke goes off in space? Thanks to the hubris of humankind, that’s a question we can answer from experience.
For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Associate news editor Allison Parshall is joining me today to tell us more.
So, Allison, what are we talking about when we talk about nukes in space?
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