In the first Austin Powers movie, Dr. Evil steals a 50 kiloton nuclear weapon, straps it to a drill and is going to fire it into the mantle to trigger volcanic eruptions world wide.

My instinct is that, compared to a lot of nuclear weapons in the megaton range, 50 kilotons is not really a lot, and using it to try to move rock (even molten rock) is not going to accomplish his goal. Would it even cause a measurable change in the pressure that far down?

  • Anti_IridiumEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    And I feel like it’s important context to also explain that the Richter Scale is logarithmically scaled, so a magnitude 6 earthquake is 10 times more than a magnitude 5.

    Edit: 10 not 100