What would happen if an atomic bomb went off in space?

Question

Would it explode, implode, would it do nothing, or something else? I mean there is no air....idk its a weird question.

Answer 1

just because there is no air, doesnt mean there will be no explosion. it won emit a mushroom cloud though, just send energy radiating in all directions. not to mention the fragments of the shell

Answer 2

Peter Kuran's film "Trinity and Beyond" has film footage of space nuclear detonations.

Answer 3

During the Cold War years USA military wanted to know how high

and how many atomic bomb explosions over Russia would be

required to destroy all electric field devices using the explosion

produced electro-magnetic pulses of warfare.  American egg-heads

of the period also concluded it only required two Russian standard

yeild warheads twenty miles high over Nevada and Pennslyvania

to blanket the entire USA mainland.  Anything that generated an

electric field outside hardened military locations would be destroyed.

This includes every cellular, computer, etc.-etc.

Reader(s) ARE just as vulnerable today as then.  Go figure.

Answer 4

it would explode but no fire would be observed... it would only emit a flash of radiation and a tremendous amount of heat would be evolved

Answer 5

What you describe is essentially already happening every second of every day. We call it the Sun.

Answer 6

the 'fallout' from it would just scatter through space and it really wouldn't do anything because there is already a lot of radiation out in space

Answer 7

in many ways its worse when a nuclear explosion is in space.

please, take a moment to read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Pr...

people in Hawaii don't forget  

Answer 8

Both the USA and Russia have done this, but it was years ago.  I'm glad they stopped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_altitu...