Actually, if one were to ignite Jupiter, there would be hell to pay. Astronomers would be blinded and it would affect the orbits of the planets. I, for one, would not want to be responsible for explaining why I did it.
What happens if you ignite Jupiter?
- Thread starter Bluesteel
- Start date
First off, professional astronomers almost never actually look through telescopes anymore. It's all done with cameras and computers now.
Second, it would have no effect whatsoever on the orbits of the planets. Even if Jupiter's mass were compressed enough to undergo fusion, it would still be the same amount of mass and would have the same gravitational effect on other bodies.
Doesn't that mass have to go somewhere though?
We can see Jupiter now because it is reflecting light from The Sun. We can see The Sun because it is light. It's compressing hydrogen atoms into Helium atoms and the result is "stuff" it sheds off in the form of light and various other forms of radiation. Since that "light and various other forms of radiation" are energy that's energy to has to come from somewhere, from a loss of mass. So, shouldn't The Sun be getting infinitesimally less mass as it goes on?
Sure if Jupiter was "ignited" into fusion and if it's mass is slowly leaking away as various forms of energy it wouldn't be losing its mass at any appreciable rate to make any difference any time soon, but it would be losing mass. Right?
Key word, "infinitesimally." Not quickly enough to have any significant effect on the orbits of the other planets within the lifetime of the Solar System.
And people also think you could put it out with enough water. I'm looking at YOU, Spider-Man!
^Well, why couldn't you? Fusion requires great heat and pressure to be sustained. Take away the heat, by, say, dissipating it in a body of water, and the reaction would die down. After all, nuclear fission reactors are water-cooled. Water has a high heat capacity, making it an excellent working fluid for a coolant system.
Of course, if a fusion reactor were cooled to shutdown by dumping it in the East River (or was it the Hudson?), the sudden, enormous influx of heat into the water would probably have resulted in a massive steam explosion that could've done considerable damage to the surrounding area, and almost certainly killed any unmasked superheroes or off-Broadway actresses that had been in the immediate vicinity.
Of course, if a fusion reactor were cooled to shutdown by dumping it in the East River (or was it the Hudson?), the sudden, enormous influx of heat into the water would probably have resulted in a massive steam explosion that could've done considerable damage to the surrounding area, and almost certainly killed any unmasked superheroes or off-Broadway actresses that had been in the immediate vicinity.
Perhaps I misunderstood. I always thought the heat was merely a byproduct of the reaction, not a requirement for it. If it's a requirement as well, then I guess enough water would do it. I stand corrected.
Plecostomus
Commodore
You can't cool a fission reactor into stopping with water.
Water regulates and magnifies the reaction, it's a MODERATOR. Free-flying neutrons bounce off the H2O and slow down enough to produce additional fissions, causing the reactor to run.
Take the water away, and the reaction STOPS. Of course this is ALSO very bad because you have secondary nuclear reactions generating heat for several hours/days... enough heat to damage the core.
There is reason to suspect that Chernobyl was actually a COLD WATER accident. The interaction between the water coolant/moderator and the graphite reflector/moderator was very complex. Given that there was an extraordinary increase in the reaction rate due to a xenon decay event the operators may or may not have increased the water flow through the core to carry away the generated heat... with the new incoming cold (dense) water further amplfying an already out of control situation. No other nation on earth currently uses such a flaky technology, or anything remotely similar to it.
This is why Three Mile Island they didn't just pour water into the reactor willy-nilly. They had no idea what was going on or the state of the reactor or even if the control rods were intact at one point... just adding water to the damaged core could have been catastrophic.
Simple nuclear physics my friend, easy to look up and verify. Don't rely on comics and movies for your understanding of How Shit Works.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
How about crashing Saturn, Uranus and Neptune into Jupiter first before ignition?
Plecostomus
Commodore
Not quite. Fusion requires enormous pressure to start, heat is required and is also a byproduct. Once you start the reaction you don't need to inject more heat into the process it becomes self-sustaining from a thermal standpoint... you need a way to remove the waste heat to prevent the system from melting.
It's that initial startup and getting it to the point where just pressure is required that eludes us for the most part. We can make fusion happen it's just getting it to the self-sustaining/break-even point like a fission reactor... that's still quite a way off in the distance.
Within our lifetimes though.
My jamming device works! HOORAY!
A giant mountain of diamond would be ejected from Jupiter's core during ignition, and we would build space elevators out of it.
That's right, because we only need 1N of force to move planetary bodies!
I'm fairly certain that if I had the power to do that, I could find something better to do with it.
I'm not positive that to thrive an algae population wouldn't need both a substantial presence of carbon dioxide as well as oxygen. CO2 isn't the oxidizer; despite their respiration of CO2 for structural and energy storage, as a eukaryote, most plants nonetheless use molecular oxygen. I don't think they would be able to store the O2 they liberate during photosynthesis, so I think they would fail before conditions reached an optimal level. I mean, algae didn't show up till about a billion years after cyanobacteria.
Now, those cyanobacteria (which are related to the chloroplasts in algae) should be able to do it. They did it once already.
I never claimed you could. You take my analogy too literally. I'm perfectly well aware of the role water plays in moderating a fission reaction, but my point is that it illustrates how effective water is in general as a means of heat dissipation. I was not claiming that it would serve the exact same function, since the hypothetical situation we're discussing -- Doc Ock's fusion reactor being dumped in the river -- is clearly not equivalent to the operation of a nuclear fission reactor, and because, obviously, fission and fusion reactions are two very different things. A fusion reaction is far more difficult to initiate and especially to sustain. A fission reaction can run away if not moderated. A fusion reaction, conversely, is far more tenuous and more easily shut down by altering the conditions that allow it, namely heat and pressure.
Simple nuclear physics my friend, easy to look up and verify. Don't rely on comics and movies for your understanding of How Shit Works.
I have a physics degree, so your condescension is totally off the mark.
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I'll TELL ya what happens if you ignite Jupiter. Saturn spends the next six weeks sleeping with the LIGHTS ON. MUHHAHAHahahaha!
I suspect you're right.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/sun/images/sun_jove_earth_size_compare.jpg
The Sun is approx 93million miles from Earth.
Jupiter is between 390million and 576million miles from Earth.
Jupiter is something like 1/50th the diameter and 1/1000th the mass of the Sun.
In other words, compared to Sol, giant planet Jupiter is very small and very far away. If it could "ignite" in the sense of fusion, I think it would be essentially a brown-black dwarf anyway.
I still think it would piss off a lit of people.
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