Our ideas of duration are but relative. We have seen that the combustion in a cannon, though very rapid to our senses, is actually very slow indeed as compared with the much more rapid combustion of a high explosive; and great as is the speed of the detonative wave, yet the speed of the earth in its orbit is four times as great.
If a celestial giant with a huge dynamite bomb the size of the earth itself were to approach the earth in its flight through space, and detonate the bomb immediately behind the earth, it would take half an hour for the bomb to explode, that is to say, it would take half an hour, or thirty minutes, for the explosive wave to pass through the eight thousand miles of its diameter. As the speed of the earth in its orbit is four times as great as that of the explosive wave, the earth would rush away, leaving the bomb about thirty thousand miles behind by the time it had completely exploded. If the interstellar ether were a high explosive mixture and were to be set off by the bomb, the earth would pass on clear around the sun, and while coming back, about six months later, would meet the explosive wave still going. It would require nearly a year for such a detonative wave to reach our sun from the earth.
We have seen that if the earth were a ball of dynamite, it would require half an hour to explode. If the sun were a mass of dynamite it would require about two and a half days to explode.
We frequently hear the theory advanced that planets and suns sometimes explode from pent-up forces within them, and that our earth might possibly blow up. Now, the force exerted by a high explosive is dependent entirely upon the pressure capable of being exerted by the gases liberated by the explosion. The pressure exerted by the most powerful high explosives has been estimated to be about 500,000 pounds to the square inch. Consequently, were the whole molten interior of the earth to be replaced with dynamite and detonated, the explosion that would follow would not lift the earth’s crust. The superincumbent weight of the earth’s crust is greater than would be the pressure exerted by the dynamite.
If it were possible to throw a projectile from the earth to the nearest fixed star, Alpha Centauri, it would take about four years for the light of the flash to reach that star. The sound, if it could travel through ether, would reach there about four million years later. The projectile, traveling more than twice as fast as sound, would reach there in about two million years.
When one of our big twelve-inch cannon is fired, the projectile, weighing a thousand pounds, has a muzzle energy, stated in mechanical terms, of about 50,000 foot tons, that is to say, its energy is equal to 50,000 tons falling from a height of one foot—energy enough to lift two 25,000-ton battleships to the height of a foot.
As the projectile weighs half a ton, the energy is equal to that which would be developed by dropping the projectile from a height of more than twenty miles, making no account of the resistance of the atmosphere.
Dropping upon a piece of armorplate too hard and thick for the projectile to penetrate, the heat developed would be sufficient to melt 750 pounds of cast iron.
When one of these projectiles is fired from the gun directly against twelve-inch armorplate, which the projectile is capable of penetrating, the hard-tempered steel plate in front of the projectile is fuzed or rendered plastic from the heat generated by the energy of the impact, and is forced like wax from the path of the projectile.
There are many popular errors regarding the action of explosive materials. One of the most notable is the opinion that the action of dynamite is downward, and that if a body of high explosive be detonated on the surface of the earth the main effect is downward.