Question: Why dont we just detonate all of our nuclear weapons in space? I know there is risks with that but shurley its better than waiting for the Taliban or Al Queda to Nuke us?

Jon Copley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

True, our world would be a safer place if there were no nuclear weapons at all. But I think a problem with getting rid of all of them in space would be that people could make new ones. What should we do about the scientists who know enough to make them again in the future?

It’s not that those scientists have been taught how to make nuclear weapons – it’s that anyone who knows enough physics could figure it out. So we’d have to stop teaching physics – and then we wouldn’t get other new inventions that benefit our lives, like new medical scanners.

So, unfortunately, in terms of knowing enough about physics to make nuclear weapons, the “genie is out of the bottle” and we can’t put it back. But knowing in theory how to make a nuclear weapon, and having all the equipment you need to actually make one are fortunately not the same thing.

That’s why governments and police forces around the world instead work hard to try to make sure that the tools people need to make nuclear weapons (such as specialist pieces of equipment called “gas centrifuges” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_centrifuge ) don’t fall into the wrong hands, and thereby keep us safe. And I think that is a *very* worthwhile job for someone to do.