Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space

Journal Jack William Bell's Journal: Did NASA Nuke Jupiter? 6

Journal by Jack William Bell

According to Richard C. Hoagland NASA may have accidently set off a nuclear explosion on Jupiter when they sent the Galileo probe plummeting into its depths.

A fascinating idea, and the background information is very interesting on its own. However Hoagland's tendancy towards conspiracy theories makes him an unreliable source. In so many ways...

Via Flutterby.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Did NASA Nuke Jupiter? More

Did NASA Nuke Jupiter?

Comments Filter:

  • As much as I detest ad hominem arguments, I would personally put a lot zeros between the decimal place and the first significant digit of the probability of Hoagland being right on any his claims. This one is just as bogus as the rest. The amount of energy Galileo dissipated in the Jupiter atmosphere is a mite on the elephant's back. Certainly larger objects collide with Jupiter all the time, SL-9 just being the first that we observed.

    • Certainly larger objects collide with Jupiter all the time
      Larger items containing plutonium?

    • The amount of energy Galileo dissipated in the Jupiter atmosphere is a mite on the elephant's back. Certainly larger objects collide with Jupiter all the time, SL-9 just being the first that we observed.

      But do these larger objects contain ordinarily-safe P238 pellets, which get crushed by Jupiter's intense pressure, into a very small space? The probe's kinetic energy isn't what he's talking about. Airplanes crashed into Japan's ground all the time, but an object lighter than a B-29 (and speed-retarded

      • The thesis is that these pellets sink deep into Jupiter's complex, high velocity atmosphere while staying close together, never achieve buoyancy, and somehow are forced supercritical by pressure on the outer casing alone. An actual fission bomb uses high explosive that crushes the Plutonium together in microseconds.

        The SL-9 impacts were far more powerful than a small fission bomb.

  • Yeah, I'm sure NASA landed the craft at 19.5 degrees for the greatest effect, and they were trying to wipe out the archaeological remnants of an ancient alien speices to keep "the truth" from the American people.

    Hoagland's tendancy towards conspiracy theories makes him an unreliable source.

    That's an understatement. From the "article":

    ...ultimately, igniting Jupiter as the solar system's second sun!

    Wasn't this from 2010? (the movie, I didn't read the book.) His ideas at least seemed original (to

    • Wasn't this from 2010? Yeah, the new sun was named Lucifer.

      I read 2010, but I may be confusing it with one of the other 20xx books.

      There was an aside about the core of Jupiter being a huge spherical diamond because of extremely pressurized carbon. It somehow got dislodged by something hitting it I think.

      I wonder whether the reaction would be inevitable. A question is if the vapourizing plutonium could get enough neutron-absorbing inert matter between it and any potentially critical plutonium chunks. Thre

Slashdot Top Deals

No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list.

Close