Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?

The Enterprise Mission ^ | 11/6/2003 | Richard C. Hoagland

[ElkGroveDan]

No it was real. I read about it when it happened:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/jupiter_dark_spot_031023.html

[beezdotcom]

Hmmm. It seems that mysterious dark spots pop up on Jupiter all the time. Here are two others.
2002
1998

Hoagland is REALLY strectching to make the connection - but why would that surprise me.

[Salgak]

Richard Hoagland: the guy who claims there's a "Face on Mars" ????

[ElkGroveDan]

[beezdotcom]

Hoagland is REALLY strectching to (....)

Sorry, I misspelled "dissembling". HTH.

[Prime Choice]

Well, a comet isn't made of potentially fissionable material...but I digress. Hoagland is a kook-and-a-half, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It at least bears a little additional fact-checking.

But the whole concept behind a thermonuclear reaction is generating enough heat to produce the nuclear fusion. Fission is not required to do this, but it is a convenient shortcut.

All that is required to initiate a thermonuclear reaction is something that can produce enough heat to excite the tritium or deuterium atoms to collide with enough force to fuse (hence the term "thermo" in "thermonuclear"). We've been experimenting with lasers to accomplish this.

Moreover, the fissionable material on Galileo is wildly insufficient to beget the alleged fission reaction. Galileo didn't even remotely possess enough material to qualify as critical mass. And that would be required for an appreciable fission reaction capable of generating enough heat to start a thermonuclear reaction. Somehow I doubt that Galileo was fitted with beryllium/polonium injectors to compensate for that plutonium deficit.

[beezdotcom]

But the whole concept behind a thermonuclear reaction is generating enough heat to produce the nuclear fusion. Fission is not required to do this, but it is a convenient shortcut

I'm really not disagreeing with you. Really. I simply took the additional shortcut of completely discounting the likelihood of a thermonuclear reaction, and only allowed for the highly improbable end result of a nice big disturbance caused by a fission reaction. I say "improbable" vs. "impossible" only because I'm too lazy to research the actual calculations for what would be required to create an implosion-induced reaction using Plutonium-238.

Besides, I've already posted that 'dark spots appear on Jupiter all the time; why worry about THIS one'...

[Junior]

You guys might enjoy this one. Note, it's posted twice, so don't let the length of the article make you nervous...

[PatrickHenry]

Might as well nuke Jupiter. Otherwise, the heathen Jovians will be coming here lusting after our women. Gotta put those aliens in their place.

Attention, alien vermin: Don't mess with Earth!

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

The first US president to allow WMDs to be used against Extra Terrestrials....

There was a Star Trek Voyager episode where they came across some people whose planet had a really bad reaction to a nuclear powered probe from Earth. Needless to say, they were quite upset at the Earthlings and Janeway had to beg them for forgiveness.

[RightWingAtheist]

[Yo-Yo]

Note, it's posted twice, so don't let the length of the article make you nervous...

Oops!

[irishtenor]

Could be HUGH!

[DeepDish]

Are you telling me that NASA disposed of two satellites that they never even told us about. /tongue in cheek off

[NicknamedBob]

"...Just TRY keeping the pieces together..."

This is so Freepin' hilarious. Suppose that all of Galileo were PU of any type. Maybe a ton of stuff?

The Sun is eight light-minutes away and processes four million tons of Hydrogen into energy every second.

Jupiter is light-hours away!

Worst case scenario, a daylight visible star, and maybe fewer muggings.

Be the best thing in creation if we knew how to light up a star! After all, the one we have is only good for another Five billion years.

[NicknamedBob]

What? What did you say?

"...only good for another Five billion years."

Oh. I thought you said Five Million years.

(Sits back down...)

[beezdotcom]

Are you telling me that NASA disposed of two satellites that they never even told us about. /tongue in cheek off

Say...maybe THAT'S where Mars Observer went!

[Swordmaker]

Hey...It could happen!

No, it couldn't.

Those Plutonium pellets are of a size FAR BELOW critical mass... even if they were crushed by the "massive" pressures of Jupiter's atmosphere, which incidentally, is far less than the several thousand Bar needed to do any such thing, there still would not be sufficient Plutonium to create a fission explosion.

The Plutonium pellets are merely a heat source to provide the few watts of electricity the probe needs for its electronics which is provided by a thermocouple system, not a nuclear reactor.

I would more likely to suspect that the pasage of the spaceprobe through the atmosphere of Jupiter at those velocities pulled a trail of plasma (ionized gas) along behind it, allowing a exchange of charges between a lower and higher electrical potential in Jupiter's atmosphere... a super lightning bolt... following the plasma trail that resulted in a shockwave (Super Thunder!!!) that eventually reached the visible tops of the clouds as a disturbance that reflects solar light differently than the surrounding clouds.

[Clinging Bitterly]

"Critics, of course, will raise all kinds of objections to this bizarre scenario."

I guess everybody gets something right once in a while.