Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?

enterprisemission.com ^ | 2003 | Richard C. Hoagland

[grundle]

On September 21, 2003 NASA deliberately directed its amazing, still-functioning Galileo spacecraft to make one final, 108,000 mph suicidal plunge into Jupiter’s vast atmosphere.

The intent of this unfortunate decision was to protect Europa, one of those Jovian moons.

Van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter’s deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply – a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets... would ultimately “implode”; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter’s overwhelming atmosphere—

As the capsules continue to fall deeper through the primarily hydrogen atmosphere, the surrounding pressure/density continues to rise, to thousands of times Earth’s surface density and pressure. The capsules are now falling at a constant rate, approximately one mile per hour

At this ultra-slow “terminal velocity,” it takes the Galileo plutonium-238 capsules on the order of 700 hours – a month! to fall to a depth inside Jupiter (~700 miles below the visible clouds) where the outside pressure of the surrounding liquid hydrogen literally crushes the plutonium capsules into a supercritical state—

At this point, one of the capsules randomly implodes … and initiates, via the resulting shockwave and intense neutron shower, a runaway nuclear chain reaction in all the other surviving capsules, now spread in a spherical falling “cloud” a few tens of miles across ~700 miles below Jupiter’s visible “surface.” The resulting cascade nuclear detonation of all the surviving capsules totals several tens of kilotons ….

The deliberate destruction of Galileo to “save” Europa, and the sudden appearance of “a mysterious dark splotch” on Jupiter just one month later -- precisely time enough to get the entering plutonium down to a depth where it could catastrophically implode – is truly a remarkable “coincidence.”

[jiggyboy]

LOL I was hoping somebody could come up with that reference

[RightWhale]

This is a really old article.

[theFIRMbss]

Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?
Posted on 11/07/2003 11:18:58 AM CST by Yo-Yo

[Tatze]

Damn that Bush!! Randomly nuking peaceful planets! He’s going to start an intergalactic war!!

[Teacher317]

Any input?

[Zathras]

Too stupid to know its “Pu239” not 238.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Do you know how huge the planet Jupiter is? It would take a hundred thousand nuclear bombs detonated at once to have any kind of significant effect.

Wasn't Shoemaker-Levy on the order of 100 Megatons? It had a dramatic and visible effect.

It is hard to see anything puny humankind can do would any noticable effect on Jupiter.

[Yo-Yo]

Yeah, I saw this thread already.

One of Hoagland's more interesting theories is that Mars was once a moon of Planet "V" that later exploded. He makes a very good case.

However, he lost me way back when he claimed there was remnants of a glass dome on the Moon, and you could see them in NASA Moon photos. Therefore I don't care if he is right or not about Mars, he's a (with apologies to waterfowl everywhere) at total LOON.

[Yo-Yo]

In fact, the photo of Jupiter in post #27 shows the after effects of the Schoemaker-Levy impact. (The white round spots in the “Southern” hemisphere.)

[timer]

Of all the competing theories, the strongest seems to be a worn out comet nucleus for Tunguska. It was even seen prior to it’s impact by a young farm boy in 1908. As you know, a comet is a dirty snowball and when all the “snow” has been boiled away what’s left is a loose, black, dirtball. That’s a perfect candidate for a butterfly explosion 5 miles above the surface.

[Vroomfondel]

You forgot one of my favorites, NASA is controlled by a secret cabal that believes in some ancient Egyptian religion.

[grundle]

Those are some good points that you raise.

[grundle]

I thought it was an interesting article. I didn’t say
I agreed with it.

[reagan_fanatic]

LOL - I’d like to know what kind of drugs this kook is hooked on.

[longtermmemmory]

This is either Wormhole Xtreme or Stargate kookiness.

People are living in slavery (literally in somalia), we have uncontained borders to our south allowing people who want to kill us, and we have to pay attention to a lunatic who does not know one iota of nuclear physics tell us that Jupiter has a fever caused by GWBush.

[Goldwater and Gingrich]

I don’t want to discuss Hoagland’s work. It’s not worth anyone’s time to do so.

I think total BS should not be posted o FR. The harm these people do to some normal thinking people is great.

In order to believe the BS they spout every day you first have to believe that our government is 100% evil and all our leaders in on it. Most of the “leaders” in the conspiracy movement are closet communist trying to fragment people to start a “third way”

I don’t trust any of them. If it’s a lie way talk about and why post it?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Thanks for the 411.

[RadioAstronomer]

From the article: What van der Worp had suggested, in terms of Galileo, was merely a variant on the now well-known design of the “Fat Boy” plutonium nuclear weapon used against Nagasaki at the end of World War II -- an “implosion” plutonium reaction (below).

The reason this is complete and utter hogwash is that Pu₂₃₈ (Not Pu₂₃₉) is used in RTGs and is not a fissile material.

There are a number of conditions that must be met for a material to be fissile (sustain a nuclear chain reaction):

1) Higher on the periodic table of the elements than Radium.
2) High probability of neutron capture.
3) Release at least two neutrons upon neutron capture.
4) Long enough half life.

A rule of thumb is that the odd mass numbers are fissile while the even ones are not. (This is due to the binding energy in the nucleus) Thusly:

U₂₃₃, U₂₃₅, and Pu₂₃₉ are fissile where U₂₃₄, U₂₃₈, and Pu₂₃₈ are not.

(Note: there is a U₂₃₇, however, the halflife is only about 6 days. Not long enough to be a viable material.)

[A CA Guy]

Bell is a late night comic book on radio. That has been the appeal, the fact you really don’t need to think while trying to go to sleep.

[chimera]

As I recall, you get a “bonus” of 1 MeV when you go from odd to even numbers of nucleons in the neutron capture event. The binding energy gets you about 5 MeV, the “bonus” of 1 MeV going from odd to even gets you one more, for a total of 6 MeV, just the amount you need to add to the nucleus to induce the fission reaction. U238 neutron capture goes from even to odd, so you don’t get the bonus. The 5 MeV you get from the binding energy isn’t enough to do it for thermal neutron-induced fission. You need an incoming “fast” neutron (1 MeV or more) to fission the U238 nucleus. So it is a threshold reaction rather than a thermal neutron capture. Do I have the numbers right (it’s been awhile)?