Could you stop a nuke with bubbles?

[Arugela]

Lets take a funny hypothetical. Something very strong vs something very weak.

Could you, with strong enough or rapidly enough applied sources, stop a nuclear blast with bubbles. And how many bubbles how quickly would need to be applied to do so? Would any other techniques work. The nature of the material and nuke are up in the air!! ;d (As in up or debate. They could also be up in the air.) Explosion could be at any distance modify heat and energy.

Basically, at any point could this be made to work? Materials could also be changed to change the nature of the bubbles or whatever is needed along with nuke and city structure/materials. Anything. Even being as absurd as possible and changing the substance of the earth or atmosphere even. ANYTHING! Although the goal is on earth.

If you want to be silly about it maybe the bubbles are a person named bubbles. But that would be pretty much mute as you can use any materials already. Good thing I didn't make the title, "by blowing bubbles!" ><

Edit: I know! What if the materials are partially liquid concretes or something that hardens or naturally has a very high heat containing aspects to make thin layers of resistant materials that just get blown apart as it gets heated up? Or on top of this it is blown with massive amount of hydrogen or helium? One of the highest thermal in take materials I saw somewhere was hydrogen but it was flammable. What if you took a missile or other device in abundance and blew some sort of special bubble with hydrogen in the middle and a substance with high heat absorption and blew it in the air so it could absorb heat and blow up as a high thermal absorbing explosion/bubble to counter it? Then on the ground you could have different types from a city water system blowing to help lower it and maybe absorb or deal with other things like radiation for containment if possible.

Also the potential for heat capacity and thermal conductivity of magma and natural hot materials in a high heat state. They are already hot in some stages but how much capacity do they have. You could use them in this state to start with. Or assume it will go into such a state. Do any gain attributes at higher levels or already have it naturally. Does the conductivity increase as it heats up. Say something like volcanic rocks or other common earth materials. It would be going against 100,000,000 degree heat already! BTW, how much of the nuke is that hot and how hot is it at smaller points. how does it loose heat etc. Maybe specialized methods could be developed or attributes of it exploitable for instance. Is only a thin layer that hot and afterwords a dramatic reduction or anything? Just the plasma layer or also the inside?

Or would this only lead to making a nuke to counter a nuke?! And if so could a specialized one be done with special attributes or other materials used to counter the other nuke without being counter productive? A nuke bubble to counter nukes? Could you get away with less? Hell, if a smaller safer cheaper nuke can be used to counter a bigger more expensive one it would make nukes a little less desirable potentially. Especially if you can make them safer from a radiation standpoint.

 

Edited April 12, 2019 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Bubbles of melted tungsten could effectively stop the nuke.
Put a thick tungsten plate against the nuke, it melts the tungsten, blows up the tungsten bubbles, then stops.

 

[p1t1o]

After thinking about this for a few minutes I have decided that probably you'd need such a  large quantity of bubbles - which are mostly air - to absorb enough energy to dissipate the explosion, that you'd probably end up being at safe-distance anyway. Ie: bubbles are about as good as empty space at suppressing nukes.

 

 

Using any material to absorb/suppress a nuke is problematic (eg: generation of hypervelocity shrapnel/debris can extend safe distance) and in almost any case you'd be better off just going with distance.

Consider that a nuke is much more deadly in an atmosphere than in a vacuum, specifically because there is a large mass of air between you and it, which serves to "couple" the explosion better to its surroundings, ie: it serves to better transmit bomb energy into the target.

Vacuum (ie: "nothing") may well serve as better protection than bubbles.

 

 

"Suppressed" nuclear detonations have occurred, but they have been shot under miles of water or hundreds of meters of rock. In such cases it is possible that no sign of the detonation (other than some rumbling and surface dust) can be seen at the surface (at least until the cavern collapses, in the case of underground shots). Bubbles being thousands of times less dense than rock and hundreds of times less dense than water, would need to be thousands/hundreds of times larger volumes - hence my hypothesis that you'd end up at a safe distance anyway.

 

tl;dr - no, I dont think so

Edited April 12, 2019 by p1t1o

[GearsNSuch]

Given that bubbles are, in many ways, a gas-containment system and, as far as I know, incapable of retaining most gases for an extended period of time under extreme conditions, I don't think that a hydrogen blast-bubble would work. Their impact and thermal resistance properties are also dubious.

A big 'ol spherical tank filled with high-pressure hydrogen, technically a steel bubble, would be much more effective if you're going for boom-against-boom. Or lasers that somehow utilized the shimmery thin-film properties of bubbles...

 

This may win the award for best thread title in S&S, though.

Edited April 12, 2019 by GearsNSuch

[KSK]

I’m reminded of the pusher plate protection system from Project Orion, which would have squirted a thin layer of oil over said plate after each pulse unit detonation. Apparently that would have been enough radiation protection. 

Of course that oil film was attached to a solid slab of steel and a honking great array of shock absorbers but even so, I’m wondering if the right bubbles might be more effective at absorbing bomb effects than you’d think at first sight.

[p1t1o]

7 hours ago, Arugela said:

BTW, how much of the nuke is that hot and how hot is it at smaller points. how does it loose heat etc. Maybe specialized methods could be developed or attributes of it exploitable for instance. Is only a thin layer that hot and afterwords a dramatic reduction or anything? Just the plasma layer or also the inside?

Or would this only lead to making a nuke to counter a nuke?! And if so could a specialized one be done with special attributes or other materials used to counter the other nuke without being counter productive? A nuke bubble to counter nukes? Could you get away with less? Hell, if a smaller safer cheaper nuke can be used to counter a bigger more expensive one it would make nukes a little less desirable potentially. Especially if you can make them safer from a radiation standpoint.

 

Sorry, I missed some of your other questions

 

Long story short, a nuke is a complex machine, but the effects are relatively simple - the bomb is a source of energy which is released very quickly, so on detonation, it simply converts itself into a ball of 10,000,000K gas, which rapidly starts to expand and cool. A simplified description of all of the different mechanisms in play, but in essence, it just gets very hot very quickly. All other effects derive from that.

Considering that, it becomes very difficult to imagine using another nuke, or some exotic "foam" to contain it in any way.

 

 

5 minutes ago, KSK said:

I’m reminded of the pusher plate protection system from Project Orion, which would have squirted a thin layer of oil over said plate after each pulse unit detonation. Apparently that would have been enough radiation protection. 

Of course that oil film was attached to a solid slab of steel and a honking great array of shock absorbers but even so, I’m wondering if the right bubbles might be more effective at absorbing bomb effects than you’d think at first sight.

Yes and no.

For starters, nukes in space have very poor "target coupling", so your pusher plate is already "protected" from the nuke by several tens of meters of vacuum - there is no "atmospheric coupling" which means no devastating shockwave and a totally different radiation spectra.

Secondly, the propulsion units are especially constructed with a slab of tungsten as reaction mass within the warhead. This tungsten slab absorbs a significant amount of the radiation heading towards the vehicle, converting it into a specially-shaped wad of high velocity plasma which gets fired towards the pusher plate.

It is this striking the pusher plate that transfers much of the propulsive force (thus increasing the "coupling" which is much lower in vacuum).

The oil spray is an ablative coating which serves to prevent/minimise the impact of the tungsten plasma from vaporising a layer of the pusher plate, it doesnt provide much radiation protection.

 

So,

1) an orion uses specially-tailored nukes which have special effects and a different set of hazards.

2) orion operates in vacuum which is a totally different set of effects when detonating nukes in general.

3) the thin film only protects the pusher plate from being worn away, the ship still receives a large amount of kinetic and thermal energy from the bomb.

4) what actually protects the Orion is the pusher plate itself, which is massive and robust, and connected to the vehicle with an impressive array of shock-absorbing dampers.

 

 

 

[Arugela]

One of the thoughts was basic initial measurements. If you had infinite resources and abilities how many bubbles would it take in what time scale and average release to be able to stop it. Say starting with basic bubbles from a store. Even the laziest of measurements. I'm curious what scale it would involve.

Also, they are technically both bubbles. So, even if very small, how much could you estimate a bubble could stop? Minimally how many at what rate would have to be released to stop it given a nukes normal expansion time etc. This would be going past potential realistic limits. I found it interesting that video made it sound like small bubbles were more effective. Plus the gas moving slowly. That might help the problem in some aspects. Not sure what the bubbles should be filled with. You could compare hypothetical air to hydrogen I guess. I didn't think about the gas inside originally. I was thinking just the bubble substance.

 

Quick google search:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&amp;q=thermal+conductivity+of+a+bubble

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Thermal-conductivity-decrease-when-bubbles-of-increasing-size-are-taken-into-account_fig5_265295677 <-Not sure what type of bubbles this is referring too.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0375960107013011

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS1028335814120088 <- Here's a direct looking one. I don't know enough to understand it though. 8p

Edited April 18, 2019 by Arugela

[p1t1o]

One thing - thermal conductivity is not really relevant, the timescales involved in a nuke burst do not really allow for much conductivity to happen. 

The opacity, heat capacity and mass, are more important factors - none of which are particularly strong characteristics of foams.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

The video experimentt modification. Not so spectacular, but cheaper and safer:

Spoiler

Farting in the bathtub full of soap with a cigarette in hand.

 

 

[Arugela]

23 hours ago, p1t1o said:

One thing - thermal conductivity is not really relevant, the timescales involved in a nuke burst do not really allow for much conductivity to happen. 

The opacity, heat capacity and mass, are more important factors - none of which are particularly strong characteristics of foams.

Yes, but with that, how many bubbles would it take at what rate without regarding the pracital means to produce it. If you even stopped one small point how much would it hypothetically take?

Edited April 26, 2019 by Arugela

[p1t1o]

16 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Yes, but with that, how many bubbles would it take at what rate without regarding the pracital means to produce it. If you even stopped one small point how much would it take?

Honestly, I dont know. A lot.

All I can do is estimate where on the scale of bad-to-good it is in terms of a barrier material. I rate it roughly equal to air, and significantly worse than water, as a barrier material. 

Because a (Im assuming water-air) foam is mostly air with a few percent water. I dont think the form-factor of it being arranged in bubbles would have much of an impact (apart from making it harder to get a sufficient mass between you and the bomb).

Its difficult because you cant just work out the mass of water necessary to absorb the heat or radiation produced. Because the heat/radiation doesnt disappear, its now a megaton of radioactive mist expanding very, very quickly towards you - which is almost as dangerous as a nuke in and of itself.

And my assumption, is that if you used a mega-excess so that the steam explosion was itself blocked by an even greater mass of foam, that you would be further out from the burst at this point, than the minimum safe distance with just air in between you and the bomb.

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by p1t1o

[kerbiloid]

You can only redistribute the energy between the shockwave and the heat.