Did NASA Accidentally 'Nuke' Jupiter?

Michael Davis wrote in message
news.com:

JimO wrote:
Did NASA Accidentally 'Nuke' Jupiter?
http://www.enterprisemission.com/NukingJupiter.html

This allegation is from the well-known 'Face on Mars' guy
with a bizarre record of claims... so what's the fatal flaw in THIS
idea?

It has lots of fatal flaws. First off, he's wrong about the type
of Plutonium on Galileo. It is not bomb-grade material and would
not explode. Secondly, the spacecraft no doubt completely
vaporized as it plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere at over 100000
MPH, so the plutonium pellets are not around to be compressed to
critical density by Jupiter's atmospheric pressure. Thirdly, his
description of a nuclear explosion triggering a massive runaway
fusion reaction in Jupiter's atmosphere shows a remarkable

The site claims that a nuclear explosion already happened, but according
to it the only effect on Jupiter was a black spot on the surface. SO
WHAT. I thought they would at least try to scare folks by saying that
the entire Jupiter will explode...

ignorance of the conditions required to sustain a fusion reaction.
It also completely ignores the fact that the cometary impacts
witnessed back in 94 were many orders of magnitude more powerful
than a mere nuclear explosion, but they did not trigger any
runaway fusion reaction.

The site carefully 'explains' why the nuclear power supply 'can' cause a
nuclear explosion. Those comet fragment impacts were sure stronger than
atomic bomb explosions, but maybe they never cause temperatures which
could - under ideal circumstances, NOT in the Jupiter atmosphere! -
ignite a fusion reaction.

Fourthly, the marking seen on Jupiter is
far too large to have been caused by Galileo.

None of his other wild-eyed ideas on his home page stand up to the
harsh realities of genuine space flight, but you know what they say
about a broken watch [grin!]. Enjoy! He's NOT joking (I don't think
so). Nor -- based on his track record -- do I think he's right for
the first time.

Hoaxland is a fraud and liar who preys on the credulous. Nothing
he says should ever be taken seriously.

I think NOTHING on a so obvious Star Trek nut page should be taken
seriously...

--
The Evil Michael Davis(tm)
http://www.mdpub.com/scopeworks/
http://skepticult.org Member #264-70198-536
Member #33 1/3 of The "I Have Been Killfiled By Tommy" Club

"There's a sucker born every minute" - David Hannum (often
erroneously attributed to P. T. Barnum)

"Glenn W. Cooper" wrote in message
...

"Michael Davis"
wrote in message
news.com...
Hoaxland is a fraud and liar who preys on the credulous. Nothing
he says should ever be taken seriously.

I think you might be talking about yourself, judging by your record of
posts
...

GC.

Please post evidence of fraud and/or lies perpetrated by the
afore mentioned Mr. Davis.

-Ugly Bob

Let's see, implosion bombs require raising the pressure to millions of
atmospheres in microseconds. This guy is talking about raising the
pressure to thousands of atmospheres in a month. That is only a
factor of about a quadrillion off.

He refers to the phase transition in plutonium from delta to alpha
phase, which is denser. If plutonium metal has been stabilized in the
delta phase by appropriate alloying, this transition can indeed be
triggered by pressures of only thousands of atmospheres. If this
were to happen almost simultaneously across the entire sample
(which won't happen with such a gradual increase in pressure),
it could result in a rapid increase in density. Of course, the plutonium
pellets in the craft were not metallic plutonium in delta phase, so this
is irrelevant to the actual situation.

And even if you detonated a nuclear weapon in Jupiter's atmosphere,
it wouldn't start a runaway fusion reaction. All the reasons that
Teller's Classic Super approach to an H-bomb didn't work would
apply here too (and Jupiter isn't even made of deuterium, so it is
even tougher).

But hey, let's not let facts and a dozen orders of magnitudes of
mathematical error get in the way of a conspiracy theory.

--
Steven Sharp

Carey Sublette wrote:

The simultaneous detonation of over 40 lbs of plutonium-238, over 700 miles
below Jupiter's cloud tops, instantly creates a superheated "bubble" of
"million-degree plasma" deep inside Jupiter, tens miles across."

This is just physical gibberish with fake numbers pulled out of a hat.

Even IF it did - so what? Perhaps the knowledge that 80-90% of all the
incoming asteriods and debris from outside of the solar system get deflected
or absorbed by Jupiter was missed in Astronomy class. Comets have been
hitting Jupiter for well over a billion years and will continue to do so
with no real effect other than a pretty show.

Derek Lyon posted:

Sadly, he gets the right conclusion, but this page would be a prime
candidate for badnuclearweaponstheory if such a thing existed.
(Which is sad, because Phil normally does so much better.)

Huh? I think Phil destroys this stupid fringe claim quite well.

That being said, Hoagland's 'theory' fails on one simple point. A
slow collapse (on the order of tens of microseconds) like the fuel
containers would experience would result in heating and expansion of
the material, it would never reach critical mass before melting.

Uh, did you read Phil's article? It *can't* reach critical mass because it is
the *wrong* kind of Plutonium (Plutonium 238).
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

**********************************************
* Attend the 11th Annual NEBRASKA STAR PARTY *
* July 18-23, 2004, Merritt Reservoir *
* http://www.NebraskaStarParty.org *
**********************************************

David Knisely wrote:

Derek Lyon posted:

Sadly, he gets the right conclusion, but this page would be a prime
candidate for badnuclearweaponstheory if such a thing existed.
(Which is sad, because Phil normally does so much better.)

Huh? I think Phil destroys this stupid fringe claim quite well.

He destroys the claim quite well, but he gets almost all of the
underlying nuclear theory 'not quite right'.

For instance he writes;

"Nope, and nope. Fusion is not a runaway process. Once you start it
up, it generates a lot of heat, which tends to expand the material
violently (this is what we technically call a bomb). This means the
fuel gets scattered, and it won't fuse. Making really big hydrogen
bombs run into this problem, making it hard to make really big bombs,
which in my book is perhaps a good thing. "

Which is not quite correct... It's hard to make an individual *stage*
of a fusion weapon really big, but it's quite possible to take the
energy of a single stage and use it to ignite another stage in the
same way the fission primary ignites the first fusion stage. In
theory this can be repeated indefinitely, multiplying the output of
each stage in the nest stage, in practice it gets really difficult
above 4-5 stages (about 500 megatons IIRC).

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/ has the all information you can eat
on that point.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

Nuclear reaction always happens even in your body. And chances are huge
planet such as jupiter are frequently banbarded with asteroid etc which are
probably megaton bomb and cause some huge increase in nuclear reactions.


"JimO" wrote in message
.. .
Did NASA Accidentally 'Nuke' Jupiter?
http://www.enterprisemission.com/NukingJupiter.html

This allegation is from the well-known 'Face on Mars' guy
with a bizarre record of claims... so what's the fatal flaw in THIS idea?
None of his other wild-eyed ideas on his home page stand up to the
harsh realities of genuine space flight, but you know what they say
about a broken watch [grin!]. Enjoy! He's NOT joking (I don't think so).
Nor -- based on his track record -- do I think he's right for the first
time.

"Michael Davis" wrote in message
news.com...
JimO wrote:
Did NASA Accidentally 'Nuke' Jupiter?
http://www.enterprisemission.com/NukingJupiter.html

This allegation is from the well-known 'Face on Mars' guy
with a bizarre record of claims... so what's the fatal flaw in THIS
idea?

It has lots of fatal flaws. First off, he's wrong about the type
of Plutonium on Galileo. It is not bomb-grade material and would
not explode. Secondly, the spacecraft no doubt completely
vaporized as it plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere at over 100000
MPH, so the plutonium pellets are not around to be compressed to
critical density by Jupiter's atmospheric pressure. Thirdly, his
description of a nuclear explosion triggering a massive runaway
fusion reaction in Jupiter's atmosphere shows a remarkable
ignorance of the conditions required to sustain a fusion reaction.
It also completely ignores the fact that the cometary impacts
witnessed back in 94 were many orders of magnitude more powerful
than a mere nuclear explosion, but they did not trigger any
runaway fusion reaction. Fourthly, the marking seen on Jupiter is
far too large to have been caused by Galileo.

4th argument is silly. Things have butterfly effects and anything can
trigger large event. For example, forest fire can start by tabacco. Also,
with huge amount of plasma, fusion can occur even without plutonium


None of his other wild-eyed ideas on his home page stand up to the
harsh realities of genuine space flight, but you know what they say
about a broken watch [grin!]. Enjoy! He's NOT joking (I don't think so).
Nor -- based on his track record -- do I think he's right for the first
time.

Hoaxland is a fraud and liar who preys on the credulous. Nothing
he says should ever be taken seriously.

--
The Evil Michael Davis(tm)
http://www.mdpub.com/scopeworks/
http://skepticult.org Member #264-70198-536
Member #33 1/3 of The "I Have Been Killfiled By Tommy" Club

"There's a sucker born every minute" - David Hannum (often
erroneously attributed to P. T. Barnum)

Note: I have cc'ed this Usenet posting to Phil at badastronomy.com

David Knisely wrote:
Derek Lyon posted regarding the Bad Astronomy rebuttal to Hoagland
at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc..._galileo.html:

Sadly, he gets the right conclusion, but this page would be a prime
candidate for badnuclearweaponstheory if such a thing existed.
(Which is sad, because Phil normally does so much better.)

Huh? I think Phil destroys this stupid fringe claim quite well.

That being said, Hoagland's 'theory' fails on one simple point. A
slow collapse (on the order of tens of microseconds) like the fuel
containers would experience would result in heating and expansion of
the material, it would never reach critical mass before melting.

Uh, did you read Phil's article? It *can't* reach critical mass because it is
the *wrong* kind of Plutonium (Plutonium 238).

In this case, Phil is wrong and Derek is right.
And Phil's sources (the IEER folks) don't have that
particular tidbit right, either.

Pu-238 is fissionable and capable of sustaining a
chain reaction. It is a particularly difficult material
to make a bomb out of, for several reasons, all of which
make the implosion-in-Jupiter theory even less likely,
but the specific details of the claim on badastronomy that
it's not possible to make a bomb out of it is not true.

See:

http://www.euronuclear.org/info/ency...iticalmass.htm

http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/ms9900313/ms9900313.html

http://www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/o...technical2.asp

http://t2.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/nuclides/map8?242,287

http://wwwndc.tokai.jaeri.go.jp/cgi-...nfo2002?94,238

The basic situation is this: Pu-238 is a fissionable material
and has a manageable critical mass (bare spherical metal alpha-phase
critical mass of around 10 kilograms, about Pu-239's equal).
Pu-238 is such an energetic neutron emmitter that a bomb
made out of it will begin to 'predetonate' as soon as it
passes the critical point.

Basically, any nuclear fission bomb is a race, between the
physics and geometry of the compression / implosion system
and the rate of nuclear activity building up in the core or
'pit'. A fission system which reaches 1.0000...1 critical
masses is going to begin a (very slow rate) exponential
increasing fission reaction. But fission reactions usually
are self-limiting; as they release more energy, the
material heats up, and will start to expand, and
additionally the fission cross section of many nuclear
materials drops as they get hotter. If you just pile
slightly over one critical mass of Uranium or Plutonium
together in a sphere, for example, it goes "pop" and
breaks apart with on the order of 10E15 to 10E17 fissions
after a few seconds: the US did this in experiments (and 3
known published accidents) with the "Godiva" and "Jezebel"
Uranium and Plutonium pits in the 1940s. The Godiva
accident didn't kill anyone, but there were two fatalities
with the Jezebel pit in criticality experiments,
people standing right at the assembly receiving several
hundred rads of radiation exposure. There's a good DOE
nuclear criticality accident survey report which unfortunately
got taken offline after 9/11 which goes into the details
on those accidents, and many other writeups on them.

How fast the reaction proceeds depends on the criticality
of the system and how many neutrons are present.
A system which is very slightly over critical and
has no or a few neutrons present will take seconds to
start noticable energy and radiation release, and then
it dissassembles itself rapidly. A system has to be
pushed to several times the bare critical mass before
it will react fast enough that it can explode with
kilotons of yield. And it has to be pushed to
several times the bare critical mass fast enough
that it doesn't explode before the reaction reaches
kilotons of yield.

Avoiding several pages of detailed calculations...
Pu-238 has so much natural spontaneous neutron
activity that imploding it fast enough that it won't
lose the race with the reaction too soon after it
reaches criticality is impractical. The rate of
spontaneous neutron generation is about 2,600
neutrons per gram per second. In a say five
kilogram moderately advanced bomb core the
material would be generating 13 neutrons per
microsecond. I

Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapons FAQ section on
Predetonation gives analytical and numerical
values for normal plutonium systems at:

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfa...ml#Nfaq4.1.5.3

....which depends a lot on the previous sections...

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfa...html#Nfaq4.1.2

Instead of a small likelyhood of having one neutron
possibly present at the instant of criticality, we are more
or less guaranteed to have something like ten present.
That will mean that the effective yeild calcuation of
something like 0.5 kiloton is high, and real yield for such
a weapon would be somewhat lower (all of this is assuming
we can model it as Pu-239's nuclear properties with
Pu-238's spontaneous fission rate, which is acceptable for
back of the envelope...).

So one can, with great effort, make a marginally useful
fission bomb out of Pu-238, but building one which reaches
even a kiloton yield is extremely difficult from an engineering
point of view.


Back to Galileo...
Galileo's RTGs used Plutonium Oxide (PuO2) not plutonium-238
metal pellets. The oxygen present creates a moderated system,
not a fast fission system. This lowers the critical mass
but changes the reaction rate so that the nuclear reactions
happen roughly 100 times *slower*... supercritical moderated
systems will physically dissassemble faster than they can
react even when they are highly imploded. The US built
two test bombs on that principle, Upshot-Knothole Ruth
and Ray in 1953, and neither generated more than about 200
tons yield. They were very highly compressed cores, too,
similar to the compression factors in metal cored fast
fission bomb systems.

A gentle compression over time is not going to implode
the plutonium oxide. Unlike plutonium metal, it has no
sudden phase change transitions as pressure increases,
as far as any documentation I am aware of indicates.
Even if an intact fuel pellet did sink to the point that
it was gradually compressed into criticality, it would just
heat up and expand again and eventually break up due to
the internal heat generated, the same way that the
Godiva and Jezebel assemblies reacted when pushed
slightly over critical.

That is assuming that the plutonium is intact;
from what I can tell, it appears likely that the entry
into Jupiter would completely vaporize the spacecraft
and all its constituent parts, putting enough thermal
energy into them to break them apart and vaporize them.
The velocity is so high compared to the design cases
for the RTGs that it's probably not survivable.
If the PuO2 dispersed in the atmosphere it's never
going to collect into a critical mass anywhere.

So the end result is that the answer (no, it can't go
BOOM) is right though some details were wrong.
And nobody's to be faulted for the incorrect details,
really; very few people know enough about nuclear
weapons and materials and such to know what the
specific errors were in source materials and info.


-george william herbert

onegod wrote:
Nuclear reaction always happens even in your body. And chances are
huge planet such as jupiter are frequently banbarded with asteroid
etc which are probably megaton bomb and cause some huge increase in
nuclear reactions.

No. Deuterium amounts only to a tiny fraction of all hydrogen on Jupiter.
When an asteroid impacts, it does not cause "huge increases in nuclear
reactions". I think people have a misconception here. Just because an
asteroid impact releases many megatons of energy, doesn't mean it creates
conditions favorable for fusion. For the sake of simplicity, say that the
energy an asteroid carries to Jupiter is contained within the volume of the
asteroid. That turns out to be quite a lower energy density when compared to
a measly kiloton explosion from the fission trigger confined within the
hydrogen bomb (I did a crude calculation - 1 kg of material hitting with
60km/s generates 0.4 tons TNT equivalent, while fission of 1 kg material
gives around 17500 tons TNT). Overall, an asteroid can be astonishingly more
destructive, but when contemplating fusion, it's all about energy density
per unit volume.