Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: Black spot on Jupiter from a nuclear explosion?

Sometimes it just takes common sense.
Tom Brosz — (archived)

We've had similar discussions here before, on things like nuclear particles in the atmosphere heating the Earth up.

Sometimes you don't need to do the numbers when the scales being dealt with are obvious.

You are not going to flood the shores of Lake Tahoe by taking a whiz in it. You cannot successfully balance an elephant on a raw egg. You can't pull a 747 out of its hangar using a kid on a tricycle. I don't need to do scientific experiments on these things. I don't need to collect numbers. I don't need to "prove" these statements.

And you can't blow a hole in Jupiter's atmosphere with an atom bomb. Hell, we didn't even blow holes in our own atmosphere with atom bombs.

In addition, Plutonium 238, used in RTGs, is not useful for bombs. You can't make it explode, even if you try. The Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man, used Plutonium 239. For the record, Plutonium 238 has a half-life of about 88 years.

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