Thread by @hankgreen

Ok, might delete but…we’re used to thinking about explosions, not implosions. The thing is, they are the same thing, rapid changes in pressure.

An explosion is when a solid or liquid becomes a gas very fast. The gas takes up way more space, and so slams into anything nearby. 🧵

https://twitter.com/hankgreen/status/1672237175516327942

That doesn’t seem that dangerous, but it is. Molecules are molecules, and getting hit by a bunch of fast-moving gas molecules can to just as much damage as being hit by a bunch of fast-moving truck molecules.

(All depends on the speed!!)

The pressure hurts you in two ways. The brute force can implode your lungs, break your arteries, separate you from other parts of you. The pressure wave can also carry things (shrapnel) that concentrate the energy,

Understanding the inside of a submarine during an implosion is easier if you imagine trying to re-create it on land.

To create such a massive difference in pressure between the inside and the outside, you would need to surround the sub with explosives…all of them pointing…in.

If the sub imploded, anything on the inside would experience the pressure shock, and that would hit within milliseconds of even a tiny failure.

The pressure of the air would hit first. The same amount of air molecules in a much smaller space would push hard on anything soft. Not like being hit by an explosion from one side, but like being trapped in a small, sealed room with a bomb. You would be hit from every side.

The air would heat up as the molecules collide more and more with each other. The pressure is what would hit hardest though. Like a getting crushed by a car on every square inch of the body at once…over 5000 pounds per sq. in.

Death would be immediate. The heat might also vaporize some water (though you’d need to be a lot of heat at that pressure), increasing the pressure further during the instant of collapse.

I just did a very basic calculation and the air might be squeezed enough to form plasma.

(Please check my work)

This pressure and heat wouldn’t just instantly stop a person from existing, I think it would instantly stop any cells from existing. There would be no time to know it happened, and there would be nothing recognizeable left. The area would be sterile.

As someone said in my mentions this morning “it would be like trying to find a grape in your wine.” But, honestly, more like trying to find a candle in the air after it finished burning.

At this point, what happens with the shrapnel (submarine parts) is pretty moot. What is going to happen has happened and it happened faster than a thought can go from one side of the brain to the other.

It’s difficult to imagine the energies in question here, but the ocean is…very very heavy and, ultimately, implosion and explosion are the same thing, big fast changes in air pressure.

(end)