00:00What would happen if we detonated humanity's most powerful nuclear weapon at the deepest point of the ocean?
00:09For sure, tsunamis hundreds of meters high would destroy coastal cities, earthquakes would level countries, new volcanoes would bring us nuclear winter.
00:18Maybe even Earth could be ripped apart or thrown out of orbit.
00:22Well, almost.
00:24Currently, Earth's deepest known point is inside the Mariana Trench.
00:29The Mariana Trench is a very deep valley right at the edge of two tectonic plates that looks like an upside-down mountain.
00:36It reaches a depth of about 11 kilometers, almost three times deeper than the dark grave of the Titanic.
00:43It's one of the last places on Earth for humans to explore.
00:47Pitch black and under a thousand atmospheres of pressure, it's a relatively pristine environment thanks to the absence of humans.
00:56A great place for our nuclear test.
00:59We'll use the most powerful nuclear bomb humans have ever exploded, the RDS-220 hydrogen bomb or Tsar Bomba.
01:08Its explosion was so massive that its shockwave traveled around the Earth three times and its mushroom cloud stretched 56 kilometers into the sky.
01:19Its shockwave was strong enough to destroy everything in a thousand square kilometers, its fireball hot enough to burn the rubble.
01:27Bombs like this release such an enormous amount of energy at once that they could boil away an entire lake.
01:34And if we set off a nuclear bomb in the Mariana Trench, that's exactly what happens.
01:40Let's pull the trigger.
01:43In the first few microseconds, the nuclear fuel undergoes its chain reaction and explodes with the power of 50 megatons of TNT.
01:52A blinding flash of light illuminates the darkness of the trench for the first time in history.
01:58The heat of the explosion produces a cavity, a flaming bubble of water vapor, radioactive nuclei and the remains of very unlucky fish.
02:08The bubble grows quickly as it vaporizes the water around it.
02:13The pressure of the bubble is immense, plowing outwards as if there's nothing in the way,
02:18sending off a shockwave that will be felt by seismic stations and whales around the world.
02:23And then, almost as fast as it emerges, it stops.
02:29On the surface of the Earth, this fireball bubble would grow to 10 kilometers the second after it's detonated,
02:35as the atmosphere barely puts up a fight to hold it back.
02:38But the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is enormous.
02:42With 11 kilometers of water overhead, being in the Mariana Trench is like being crushed by a hydraulic press from every direction.
02:50Here, a second after the detonation, our bubble is about a kilometer across, when, oddly enough, it starts to shrink.
02:58The bubble overextends itself, losing pressure as it expands, until the water turns it back, recompressing it.
03:05The tug-of-war between the fiery death bubble and water goes back and forth a few times,
03:10the bubble shrinking and growing, until eventually the bubble loses for good.
03:14The pressure around it is too great, and turbulent water begins to chop it up.
03:19It becomes something like the underwater equivalent of a mushroom cloud,
03:23as it disintegrates into many smaller hot and radioactive bubbles drifting upwards.
03:28And as our mighty destructive blast rises to the surface, it does basically nothing.
03:34Just a small wave and a bubbling plume of radioactive warm water in the Pacific.
03:40No tsunami will wash away Japan or California, although boats and whales in the area might have a bad time.
03:49The radioactive fallout will be diluted into the Pacific after a few days,
03:53although a fair amount of radioactive water and salt makes it to the atmosphere, where it collects and then rains down again.
03:59Even if the wind blows the fallout directly towards the Philippines, the worst of it probably happens over the oceans.
04:05But clearly, the real danger comes from our explosion triggering earthquakes and volcanoes, right?
04:12Even if we detonated the bomb right in the trench at the exact point where tectonic plates touch, probably not.
04:19The explosion would vaporize a part of the seafloor and turn a lot of sand into glass,
04:24but most of the energy goes into the water, not seismic waves.
04:28Earthquakes are already quite common at tectonic plate boundaries,
04:32and earthquakes with as much seismic energy as our bomb happen a few times a year without triggering any sort of apocalypse.
04:39But maybe it will affect the Earth's orbit?
04:42Since no mass is taken away or added to the Earth, our orbit is completely unaffected.
04:48Also, there have been well over a thousand nuclear tests in the last 70 years,
04:53and that didn't change our orbit, so why would this time be different?
04:57The strongest forces humanity can unleash are laughable compared to the forces of nature.
05:03The planet is too big, it doesn't care.
05:06So, what happens to us if we detonate a nuclear weapon really deep in the ocean?
05:11Pretty much nothing.
05:15Did you know that every bird in our videos has an owner?
05:19More than 1,000 people have got their own bird.
05:23It helps us explain things, clowns around in the background, or dies a horrible and avoidable death.
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