Did NASA Accidentally Nuke Jupiter?
Here is one for the conspiracy theorists! NASA crashed the Galileo probe into Jupiter at the end of the probe's life. Galileo was powered by plutonium pellets. The author argues that under the crushing pressures of Jupiter's deep atmosphere (where it is speculated it might actually be liquid), these could have been compressed to the point of ignition. Galileo was doing over 100,000 miles per hour when it entered the atmosphere so it would have been very hot. Nuclear weapons are ignited by compressing plutonium with specially constructed charges- these pressures occur naturally in Jupiter's atmosphere.
It's well argued- aided by the appearance of a mystery splotch a month after the impact which was not unlike that formed from the impact of the comet Shoemaker Levy in the mid 1990s. Mind you Jupiter is so big and the atmosphere so dense that the impact from a Nuclear explosion is not exactly going to wreck the "ecosystem". It's the stuff of Sci Fi novels… I wonder if we'll ever know the truth…(cue X-Files theme!)
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Posted: November 30th, 2011 under default.
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