[Yo-Yo]

Hey...It could happen!

[Semper Paratus]

Those several aeteroids that hit Jupiter 15 years ago were more damaging by a hugh factor.

[WackyKat]

I have listened to Hoagland numerous times on Art Bell's show, and still can't decide if he's a lunatic or a hoaxer.

[Sonar5]

Ouch.... My Head hurts.... :)

Regards,
Joe

[RightWhale]

Hoagland is an excellent science reporter.

Is it possible that the professional “insiders,” those at the major observatories (which get most of their funding from NASA anway) -- including NASA’s own Space Telescope Institute -- know perfectly well how this atmospheric spot arrived on Jupiter … and have been quietly told not to “immortalize” another monumental miscalculation by NASA … particularly, at this politically sensitive time?

Hoagland is doing everything he can to spark some interest by private citizens in science and astronomy and to make people aware of the possibility of NASA's shortcomings. The black spot on Jupiter has come and gone and likely it was due to the spacecraft's impact. Probably not a thermonuclear event, it should have been interesting anyway since spacecraft hitting planets and moons are normally invisible from earth. The Ranger impacts on the moon were violent, but didn't create much evidence of their happening.

We should doubt that NASA could put the gag order on astronomers around the world.

[Cicero]

Not proven, but maybe a possibility. If he's right, then we're pretty lucky that there was only a chain of fission explosions but no subsequent fusion explosion. Otherwise we'd have had a second sun in our solar system.

Or do we have to wait another month or two for that? :-)

[Poohbah]

William Milton "Aliens Ate My Buick!" Cooper was ranting about this in 1990--he said it was a Masonic conspiracy to ignite Jupiter as a second sun.

[Prime Choice]

This strikes me as tinfoil hat nonsense...especially when considering that the impacts of the Shoemaker-Levy comet fragments easily delivered over 20 times the wallop of the Galileo collision and even that didn't start a thermonuclear chain reaction.

[Portnoy]

Bump

[mjohnq]

For the true tin-foil hat conspiracy lovers, check out this page someone sent me shortly after they announced NASA's plans:

http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1260.cfm

[js1138]

“Something is going to happen.” – Dave Bowman
“What … what’s going to happen?” – Dr. Heywood Floyd
“Something wonderful.”
-- 2010: Odyssey Two

[Centurion2000]

Van der Worp further argued that this fission reaction might well initiate a much larger thermonuclear fusion reaction in the deuterium (heavy hydrogen) making up a significant percentage of Jupiter’s atmosphere – ultimately, igniting Jupiter as the solar system’s second sun!

And just where did this retard get his degree ..... the nuclear batteries are U-238, NOT 235 and not plutonium.

[Hunble]

The term: Popcorn-fart comes to mind.

Get serious!

[Faith65]

.

[Centurion2000]

Actually I take my previous post back .... this is fascinating ..... and I hope we do light off Jupiter as a second mini sun .... we get 4 more terrestrial planets to play with.

[WillRain]

bump for later reading

[Chi-townChief]

No wonder they hate us!!!

[Kirkwood]

Very entertaining "what-if" scenario until that ridiculous astronomer-conspiracy nonsense. Yeesh!

[Hoosier-Daddy]

When looking for a giant bag of heated gas, one has to look no further than Richard C. Hoagland, Jupiter-sized blow-hard.

[Cobra Scott]

The Clinton Legacy....

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

[lepton]

This is funny. Just TRY keeping the pieces together.