How NASA almost blew up Jupiter.

[NNadir]

One hears some really absurd things when people say the word "plutonium," but, even given all the dumb stuff I've heard here, this one has to be my favorite of all time:


Jupiter Ignition.

[phantom power]

1. Dr. Chandra... will I dream?

[Richardo]

4. ;-)

Great book, lousy movie.

[tridim]

8. I wish Clarke would have stuck with Saturn

as he did in the original story. Oh well, it was still a good book.

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. It wasn't Clarke's fault, it was Kubrik's

In making the movie, Kubrik couldn't get the special effects for Saturn to look right. He also believed that the gravity assist around Jupiter to Saturn would not have made any sense to his audience. For these two reasons, he made the decision to have the monolith in orbit around Jupiter rather than on Saturn's moon Iapetus.

When Clarke let himself get persuaded (oh, alright: bullied) in to writing a sequel, he knew that the vast majority of his audience had never read the original book; they had only seen the movie. So he moved the setting to the movie's universe.

[tridim]

14. Thanks for that.. I just remember getting chills

when I read, "The eye of Iapetus blinked.. It's hollow, it goes on forever. Oh my God, it's full of stars."

The entry into the monolith in the movie was a big letdown. It left out all the parallax/4th dimension stuff that made me fall in love with the book.

[htuttle]

7. Beat me to it

2010 was my first thought as well.

And forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought Jupiter already emitted more radiation than it absorbed, indicating the likelihood of nuclear reactions of some kind already occuring somewhere in it's depths.

:shrug:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. breakfast cereal without the milk.

great story!
Thanks, I needed that.

[mattclearing]

3. That is hilarious.

I cannot believe anyone ever thought that was a good idea.

[htuttle]

5. It reminds me of the movie '2010'

He speaks of a 'Jupiter-sun' igniting. Fascinating, but wildly implausible.

[ArbustoBuster]

6. Not Exactly Doctor Science

Reading that page was like reading the TIME CUBE guy. Only with less ranting and more crazy-go-nuts pseudo-science that only works if you've forgotten to take your thorazine today.

[HEyHEY]

9. I wish they would...lousy planet that it is

[ET Awful]

12. You see, I need to blow up this planet because it blocks my view of Pluto

[phantom power]

13. Can you imagine what a disaster an ignited Jupiter would be..

for the astronomy biz? Talk about light pollution.

[jpak]

11. Indeed

In the late seventies, I attended a debate on nuclear power at the University of Georgia. The pro-nuclear advocate was a professor of nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech.

During the debate, the good professor stated - quite seriously - that he would not hesitate to swallow a gram of plutonium.

This was a completely disingenuous claim. It is well known that plutonium is not absorbed by the human intestinal tract, and that the principal hazard posed by plutonium to human health is by respiratory ingestion and incorporation of Pu particles into lung tissue.

During the question-and-answer period, I asked him if he would pulverize a gram of plutonium into micron-sized particles and snort it through a rolled-up $20 bill.

He literally leaped out of his chair, pointed his finger at me and shouted "No! No!! No!!! - I said would swallow it!!!! - I said I would swallow it!!!"

I asked him what would happen if he ingested a gram of plutonium into his lungs.

His reply was more, "I said I would swallow it!!! I said I would swallow it!!!!".

I informed him that if he snorted a gram of micro-particulate plutonium, he would not die of cancer, but that he would succumb rather quickly to fibrosis of the lungs.

He told me to shut up and refused to answer any follow-up questions regarding his stupid disingenuous claim regarding plutonium toxicity.

So yes, one does indeed hear some absurd things when people say the word "plutonium"...

(true story)

[NNadir]

15. Ralph? Ralph Nader?

I thought I recognized the level of thinking.

http://astro.uchicago.edu/news/cassini+pu.txt

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/09/04/1031115879943.html

It really was a shame when Nader refused to each as much caffeine as Cohen would eat plutonium, since the 2000 debacle would not have happened and probably sanity would still rule the day...

But that was not to happen and we got to see "Bush is the same as Gore" to go along with our understanding that "Plutonium is the most toxic substance known to man."

Really though, this bit about Jupiter, typical of the rank stupidity surrounding the subject of plutonium, exceeds all that I've heard before. As we know, I am continually bombarded by stupidity on the subject of plutonium by fossil fuel apologists who imagine that all of the plutonium in a nuclear reactor will magically tunnel out of the reactor and immediately locate itself in the bones of radiation paranoids and cute little blond babies everywhere. But, dumb as they are, the radiation paranoids with whom I am personally familiar still haven't come up with anything this amusing.

The subject of the toxicity of plutonium has been exhaustively reviewed in the literature, including Chem. Rev. 2003, 103, 4207-4282, but one would probably need to know some science to know what understand it.

Here is an excerpt from that terrifying paper:

"Plutonium is immobilized readily in sediments in natural waters, in part due to poor solubility and the formation of polymers.9,23 Plutonium has, however, been found to migrate in nonhumic, carbonate-rich soils, presumably because these soils lack the humic materials left by the decomposition of plant matter that retard the migration of plutonium.23 These same humic materials also increase the solubility of plutonium in seawater. Increasing the solubility of plutonium increases the potential for environmental migration, thus increasing the bioavailability of the metal.24

It was long held that the inability of uncomplexed plutonium to cross physiological barriers greatly hinders its concentration in the food chain.21,25,26 Nonetheless, there continues to be concern that naturally occurring chelating agents, in particular those that coordinate iron, might complex sufficient Pu to alter that situation.21,23,27 Consequently, investigations using siderophores, naturally occurring iron-chelating ligands, were conducted to increase the rate of dissolution of plutonium(IV) hydroxides.28 One siderophore, desferrioxamine-B (DFOB), was shown to facilitate the uptake of Pu(IV) into bacteria; however, in this case, uptake of Fe(III) was inhibited, and cell reproduction ceased.29 The ability of a complexing agent to transport actinide(IV) ions depends on many factors. These include the rate of dissolution from solid hydrolysis and polymeric products formed by the metal, the stability of the metal-ligand complex, and the ability of the complex to compete with other substrates to retain the metal. The effects of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA), citrate, humic acid, fulvic acid, nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA), and siderophores (naturally occurring iron-coordinating species) on the migration of Pu(IV) and Th(IV) have been studied.30-36 Both EDTA and DTPA have been shown to increase the uptake of plutonium and americium into certain plants, with major implications for the introduction of actinides into the food chain.37-"

You see, if you try really, really, really hard, you can get that plutonium into the food chain, and as we all know, people do in fact try as hard as they can to achieve this result.

Well who knows how our radiation paranoid fossil fuel apologists will take this scientific review article. One thing that I've observed about radiation paranoids is that they know very little science, having apparently completed their science educations somewhere about the 4th grade.

Whatever. Plutonium is indeed a toxic element, and unlike uranium, it is both a chemical toxin and a seriousradiological toxin. This is not the question. The question is whether the existence of potential toxicity is grounds for banning it. I note that gasoline is also toxic. I argue that the events in New Orleans and elsewhere on the planet advance the case that carbon dioxide has toxic effects.

I am in favor of severely restricting carbon dioxide emissions because I, unlike those crying about the loss of these needles in the arms of the planet,



can compare.

(I have always opposed off shore oil wells. I don't think I will change this opinion in my lifetime.)

There is an excellent book on the subject of secret plutonium research in the cold war, pretty much an anti-plutonium book, Plutonium Files, a book probably widely read and probably widely misapprehended by radiation paranoids everywhere. (I say it is an excellent book, because, well, it is an excellent book. Even though I advocate the increased production of plutonium, I definitely it has something to say about ethics.)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385314027/104-8940464-9395912?v=glance

It is rather telling, if unintentionally so, that many of the first people to ingest plutonium accidentally, chemists working on the Manhattan Project, could be interviewed 50 years later on the subject of their accidents.

(The book also appropriately recounts the story of many people who were deliberately injected with plutonium who did in fact, later develop cancer in subsequent decades, not a pretty story at all.)

Nevertheless, the discoverer of plutonium, Glenn Seaborg, shown here with his co-discoverer, Arthur McMillan at the 25th anniversary of the discovery (1966)



died a few years ago, at the age of 86, from a (radiation induced, no doubt) stroke.

(McMillan also died a relatively young man; he was only 83.)

http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1951/mcmillan-bio.html

The plutonium injected into the atmosphere by nuclear weapons testing amounts to about 10 metric tons.

http://consolidationeis.doe.gov/PDFs/PlutoniumANLFactSheetOct2001.pdf

Thirty one kg were released by Chernobyl, killing, as we all know, every man, woman and child in Europe as well as most of the people in Africa and Asia. (Makes that stuff in New Orleans small potatoes, no?)

(One would need to know how to - gasp - do calculations to derive this figure, 31 kg, from the following link. The specific activity of plutonium-239 is about 2.3 X 10^9 Beq/gram.)

http://www.bellona.no/imaker?id=12663&sub=1

In a debate with Ralph Lapp, Ralph Nader informed the planet that one kilogram of plutonium could kill everyone on earth, and the statement entered urban mythology and is still widely repeated, sometimes in places like the New York Times.

http://www.sepp.org/radiation/nucdiscuss.html

Since Nader made his statement in 1975, when the population of the earth was around 4 billion, we have Nader's value for the lethal toxicity of plutonium: 0.25 micrograms is fatal.

Since 10 MT is 1 million grams, the amount of plutonium released by nuclear testing alone is enough, according to Saint Ralph - Saint Ralph being an oracle of revealed science - to kill 4 trillion people.

Since Ralph Nader is the most knowledgeable person on earth, the man who knows that Bush and Gore are the same, that chalk and cheese are the same, that owning Bechtel stock is the same as working for world peace, and that nuclear power is far more dangerous than having the earth's atmosphere break down completely, we immediately recognize that everyone on earth has already been killed by plutonium and that further discussion is therefore unnecessary.

In spite of my recent death from plutonium poisoning, I expect that I will now be bombarded with the usual stupidity, none of which, happily, will lead to the destruction of Jupiter. I had naively hoped that dying would excuse me from having to listen to stupidity, but it appears there is indeed a tortuous afterlife.

[jpak]

16. I've used DFOB and 55-Fe to investigate Fe limitation in marine bacteria

...and Chelex 100 in trace-metal-clean lab methods...

...and uranyl acetate to stain samples for TEM...

(don't know what TEM is??? Didn't think so...)

And I can tell you this.

Anyone that downplays the toxicity of Pu is a fucking fool.

:)

[NNadir]

17. Yeah right,

It's pretty typical of the exploding Jupiter crowd that they like to represent that they have actually been (gasp, gasp, gasp, terror, terror) in the presence radioactivity.

Usually such a representation is filled with jargon laced claptrap that is highly amusing, more for what it misapprehends than for the display of real authority.

I mean, let's stop for a moment and think how much fun this link would be without the following quote, which sounds awfully "scientific":

"The plutonium pellets aboard are protected against unexpected pressures (not Jupiter’s atmospheric pressures though). Since the craft will be traveling so fast (107,000+ mph), the pressure will increase suddenly. The upper crust of Jupiter’s atmosphere is gaseous hydrogen and helium about 600 to 700 miles thick (2% of the radius of the planet), followed by a more liquid substance of the two, and much further in, a more metal version (so it is guessed). At only 125 miles down the pressure is already 23 bars (Galileo would go from 1/2 bar to 23 bars in 4 seconds). If the craft is traveling at 107,000+ miles/hr, and the pellets (not the craft) last 20 seconds in Jupiter’s hostile atmosphere before imploding, they would have traveled approximately 500-600 miles inward if one accounts for the craft slowing down after entry..."

Or the author's description of his credentials:

"the author is a geographer and an engineer..."

Engineer indeed, a nuclear engineer, I'll bet. :-)

One of the hallmarks of radiation paranoids I've met and heard from over the years is an attempt to represent that they understand radioactivity because they claim to have worked with it. I recall one of them mumbling, in a very funny exchange, some tripe about how they cowered in the corner of their "lab" worrying about the "tritium" crawling quantum mechanically tunneling into the two or partially pickled neurons in their brains that still function.

It is a pleasure to think of an anti-environmental anti-nuclear radiation paranoid in the presence of the gasp terror terror fear fear horror horror "uranyl acetate," though. It must have been terrifying, especially with that specific activity of 0.34 microcuries per gram. I'd love to watch such a person washing his or her hands day after day, month after month, trying to wash the "stain" off, latter day Lady Macbeths. And to think that this was the stain for a microscope.

:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

How dramatic.

And fun. Fun. Fun. Fun.

(Excuse me, I have to duck, a fragment of Jupiter just missed my head.)

It's almost as much fun as thinking about as the detonation of Jupiter.

If plutonium exposure were a serious international health crisis, say like global climate change, it might be worth speculating about its toxicity. For now, of course, I think it would be more worthwhile, if we're going to talk about toxic elements resulting from power generation, mercury. The reason for this preference on my part is that plutonium only finds its way into the environment with deliberate release (as in a weapons test or attack) or through an extreme system failure (Chernobyl). Mercury on the other hand finds its way into the environment from normal operations of the fossil fuel plants continuously ignored by weak minded radiation paranoids. In fact the number of people who will die this year from normal fossil fuel power operations - not even counting New Orleans -differs by a factor of millions from the number of people who will die from the toxicity of plutonium.

That, of course, is the point.

I am not saying that nuclear power has zero risk. The use of energy always involves risk. Nor am I stating that plutonium is like sugar. It is not. However, there is essentially zero risk to anyone but professionals from how I represent plutonium or its toxicity, because there are very few people who have more than trace exposure. Indeed 100% of most people's exposure comes from nuclear explosions authorized by people President John Kennedy, who has been dead for more that 40 years, and who was the last American President to authorize the deliberate release of plutonium into the environment.

Therefore what I say about plutonium, it's danger or lack thereof, has little effect on the world at large, except to the extent I demystify it. Few people who work with plutonium need my advice, since the vast majority of them have already been educated on the subject. People who work with plutonium are trained, by and large, to do so. They certainly aren't third raters playing with microscopes.

The largest exposure most people could get even if they wanted such exposure would be to go downstairs at the Smithosonian Museum of History where Glenn Seaborg's original sample of plutonium - yes the real sample, not a replica - is in a display case with his Nobel Prize medal. I've been there. My children have been there. We're all still living.

(I recommend, BTW, this display to everyone who wishes to understand the history of nuclear energy. There is a full scale model of the original nuclear reactor built by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.)

What I am writing however, not that I expect illiterates to get it, is that in comparison to the risk from fossil fuels, irrespective of what the International Organization of Fossil Fuel Apologists spew stupidly on about, the risk of nuclear power is rather comparable to the risk of a fully assembled nuclear weapon when compared to an alcoholic :toast: uranyl acetate solution being used for the preparation of a microscopic sample.

Well I'd love to stay and chat. It certainly is more fun than thinking about reality. But I've got to go now, and spread plutonium and complexing agents of the fields to help it get into the food chain, what with that solubilily problem and all. We can't disappoint the members of the International Society of People Who Failed Chem One

[jpak]

18. LOL!!!

and typical...

Yes, sample preparation for transmission electron microscopy is a little too difficult for Larouchian twits to comprehend.

As are radioisotope tracer experiments and seawater trace metal chemistry.

Especially when the results of these experiments have been published in respected peer reviewed marine chemistry and microbiology journals.

:rofl:

[phantom power]

19. I just figured it out....

Watching you two go at it is like watching Dragonball-Z cartoons. Each episode is 90% trash-talk, mixed in with occasional actual combat.

And if that isn't a perfect metaphor for 21st century internet culture, I don't know what is :-)

:popcorn:

[jpak]

20. *smiling*

and agree