Jupiter did NOT explode today!

While Jupiter did not explode or turn into a star as some speculated it might, we did create our very first enviornmental disaster on another world! Yes, leave it to man, it is truly a first as far as I can tell, releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere of another planet. After all, it doesnt matter, we dont need that planet![/sarcasm] Yes, boldly leaving our trash wherever we go, anywhere in the pristine solar system!

And to top it off, we are only "Pretty sure" it crashed, as it was on the far side of the planet when it was supposed to do so!

The craft went silent just before 4 p.m. EDT, having slipped behind the far side of Jupiter. Minutes later, it presumably screamed across the cloud tops on the night side of the planet, just south of the equator, speeding at more than 100,000 mph.

The searing heat in the upper atmosphere, twice that of the surface of the sun, and the crushing pressure, which within minutes was more than 20 times that at Earth's sea level, likely vaporized the robot ship, according to astronomers.

www.cnn.com...

Jupiter did NOT explode today!

WOS, you say that like someone actually expected it to!

While the prospect of the spacecraft causing a massive nuclear chain reaction was impossible, there were those who were "open" to the possibility. I have seen it with my own eyes!

)(

NASA TV PRESENTATION 9/21/03 11:00 AM PST: The Galileo team declared just that they searched for and found water clouds and lightning on Jupiter. Then by the same reasoning they use concerning Europa is there the possibility of life on Jupiter as well?

www.cyberspaceorbit.com...


Not any more would be my answer!

[Edited on 9-22-2003 by William One Sac]

Ya'll is crazy. I just caught this with my telephotoshop-scope.

Originally posted by William One Sac

NASA TV PRESENTATION 9/21/03 11:00 AM PST: The Galileo team declared just that they searched for and found water clouds and lightning on Jupiter. Then by the same reasoning they use concerning Europa is there the possibility of life on Jupiter as well?

www.cyberspaceorbit.com...


Not any more would be my answer!

]

if there was life on jupiter we just pissed them off. Watch out for the invasion.

Read somewhere that they expect that the surface or is it exterior tempature is something like 7000 degrees!

The thing likely melted before it could explode.

I wasnt aware Jupiter was suppsoed to explode!

People seem to forget about that huge comet that smacked into Jupiter a few years back. A commet going at much higher speeds and much more velocity that a space probe caused one hell of a show, but no exploding planets, ect.

Nasa was simply bored, had some radioactive waste they didnt know what to do with, so they said, # it, lets play astroids.

Nasa was simply bored, had some radioactive waste they didnt know what to do with, so they said, # it, lets play astroids.

There's also no worry about an environmental impact on Jupiter. Remember that Jupiter is 100 times the volume of Earth.

The amount of material that crashed into the planet was the size of a Hum-vee (amount of radioactive material was around the size of two large microwave ovens.)

It's falling into an atmosphere where it will be quickly burned at temperatures that will kill every microbe left alive on it.

Id like to work for nasa when theyre board. I like blowing # up

likely vaporized the robot ship, according to astronomers

Well, if it was vaporized......

Then again, these are the same astrologers who conveniently forgot to add a zero when they tell us a comet will smash into us or use the Metric system instead of English for a measurement, and then forget it, etc.

Hahahaha, you know what I was thinking would suck so much damn ass? What if Jupiter had life on it, and we just killed it. Haha, that would be a bitch! Any pictures of the crash and explosion? I wanna see!

I wonder if the aliens habitating on Jupiter are likely to return the favor
Sounds like a pretty arrogant idea to dispose of our waste on Jupiter or any other planet.

So, suppose the headline was that through some freak unseen occurence of unearthly origin, Jupiter disintegrated with great gusto.

* Where would the bits go?
* How would we see it?
* What if any impact would there be on earth, orbits or anything else in the solar system?

I just had one of my brief moments where I realized I am sitting on a chunk of rock orbiting a dying sun at amazing speed, and held onto my desk for a second.

Originally posted by William One Sac
While the prospect of the spacecraft causing a massive nuclear chain reaction was impossible, there were those who were "open" to the possibility. I have seen it with my own eyes!

This is why I would've suggested sending the payload into the Sun instead of Jupiter...After all, it *is* a much bigger & closer target.

Not only that, but the chance of a catastrophic reaction that would cause an explosion or wipe out any life is much smaller too...After all, what *is* the Sun anyway but a huge-ass nuclear reactor?

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
I just had one of my brief moments where I realized I am sitting on a chunk of rock orbiting a dying sun at amazing speed, and held onto my desk for a second.

It sounds like you've just had a moment in the Total Perspective Vortex. Please refer to the five-book trilogy of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Doulas Adams for more details...

basics for making fire or explosion.

get the right mixture.

of fuel ( for example gasses )
air
and something to make it burn.

well if the craft would be something like a match and the gasses of jupiter could burn. but only if there was enough oxigine. and that isn;t so. and that is why there is no fire or explosion on jupiter.

otherwise it could have happent earlier just look at how many times it is being hit by astroids.

but if it would happen at earth there wil be a huge fire ball because of our level of oxigene

The point of the scare with the RTG "igniting" Jupiter was that someone somewhere who really didnt know a damn thing about nuclear physics thought that the atmospheric pressure of Jupiter would crush the fuel core of Galileos RTG reactor on reentry.

In some fantasy world, this atmospheric pressure would have been sufficient to force the fuel core to go supercritical and explode in an atomic detonation. (Please see my comments in other related threads as to just how impossible this is).

Furthering the hallucinogenic fantasy, this atomic explosion was then to trigger a massive fusion reaction at Jupiters core, which would then convert the gas giant into a small sun...

As I said elsewhere, someone is writing scifi on crack...

For another concise and well-put explaination (including that it's the wrong type of fuel to explode and Jupiter is made of hydrogen, not deuterium), see the Bad Astronomy Homepage:
www.badastronomy.com...

Silly question, but the radioactive materials aboard Galileo were not part of a reactor were they?

If there was not a reactor onboard then there would not have been any U238 to make a nuclear explosion from.

If there was a reactor, the Uranium has to be processed in order to get a weapons grade material in order to cause an explosion.

Or am I just over thinking this?