If fire neededs oxygen then would nuke or other explosive, explode like on earth?

Question

I mean would there be an explosion like what happens on earth?

Answer 1

There is a big misconception here. Don't believe that every explosion requires oxygen. A reaction that requires oxygen, like a campfire, is called a combustion reaction and does require oxygen. Fill a balloon with methane and light it and it will explode because it is also a combustion reaction. The general equation for a combustion reaction is
CH4 + O2 > CO2 + H2O.
However a nuclear bomb is a nuclear rxn and doesn't use O2. The chemistry is very different.

Answer 2

No. And yes...

First a nuclear explosion does not require oxygen. Only chemical fires require oxygen. But not even they require it all the time. Chemical explosives carry their oxygen with them in the nitro group. So explosives incinerate themselves. In space, in a vaccum, an explosive might work. It depends on the components. Some, like dynamite, are made up out microglasspheres. It is the compression of these, by an initialcharge, or detonator, that causes it to explode. As these microspheres are little baloons in a vacuum theu would inflate because the pressure inside them is greater then the outside. Anyones guess what that would do to the explosives. Cause it to explode prematurely or not at all. If a chemical charge would go off in space it would look very different than on earth. The vaccum would cause the gasses generated to blow away immediately. There wouldn´t be a puff of smoke left where the explosion took place. And there might not be much of a flash.

A nuclear blast would look very different in space. It would look nothing like on earth. Nuclear explosions generate all their energy as electromagnetic radiation. Most of it as gamma rays. On earth a small portion of this radiation is absorbed by the surrounding air and the ground causing the blastwave and the mushroom cloud. In space there is no air and surrounding so all you would get is a huge, bright flash.

There have been nuclear tests high in the atmosphere where the air is really thin and since nukes are triggered by a chemical explosive this pretty much prooves that both chemical and nuclear explosions can occur in space.

Answer 3

"If fire neededs oxygen then would nuke or other explosive, explode like on earth?"

Yes, fire is a reaction that requires oxygen. After that point, I lost what you were trying to ask because it looks like a bunch of jumbled words. Where are you hypothetically setting this explosive off? In space? The explosives would still explode because they might have oxygen in the explosive as part of the compound. A nuclear bomb is completely different from an explosive and it would also still operate, although there is not a medium in space to carry the shockwave from either explosion.

Next time you ask a question, make sure you use a complete sentence.

Answer 4

A lot of explosives would still go off like on Earth as they have oxygen in their chemical structure. The explosion, however, would not go as far as no air to carry the compression wave.

Nukes would not work as well, as trhey operate primarily by superheating air to make a massive shock wave, which you can't do in space. If you hit a ship with one, however, that would explode.

Answer 5

Fire is rapid exothermic oxidation---a chemical reaction in which fuel combines with an oxidizer. Oxygen just happens to be the most abundant oxidizer in our atmosphere. Many fuels can burn just as well in chlorine or sulfur, with no oxygen at all.

Nuclear bombs use explosives which don't burn; instead their molecules are like tightly wound up springs, just waiting to be released. And those explosives are used to trigger a nuclear reaction which is not even a chemical reaction, at all.

However, you are partly right. Many metals burn on contact with air, even at room temperature. The nuclear fuel in A-bombs is a kind of metal, uranium or plutonium, that will burn in oxygen if it gets hot enough, but not at room temperature. Even aluminum will burn in air if it gets pretty hot.

Answer 6

Yes.