Jupiter is going to explode

You know how the sun will explode in 5 billion years, well I read that Jupiter will explode in less than that, because Jupiter is made of gas and it's trapping all that gas, and the gas is going to make it explode.

Can we have a link to this info?

Jupiter is made of gas,therefore it cannot trap gas. Before the sun "explodes" it will swell up in size. Big enough to consume venus,mercury,and earth's orbits.When all the suns nuclear fuel is used up,it will give a final burst of energy,then shrink down to a white dwarf. This is all i can remember off the top of my head atm.------------By the way i in no way meant to ridicule or flame your post.

no offence taken! here's the link
www.surfingtheapocalypse.net...

WILL JUPITER EXPLODE?

This story is going around among those who do not believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Lord's Church. This kind of event would definitely be a sign and wonder, so it is either a hoax, or the Rapture will come before it happens. The idea is that evil men will blow up Jupiter. Up front, please note the following:
www.balaams-ass.com...

CAUTION:
If you do not like your life style, religion, gender, national origin, or ethnic heritage discussed in a negative context, get out of here NOW!

...
1. God does not need the help of evil men, nor will He give credit to them for apocalyptic events.

Uh, so are we talkin space exploration here, or something else?

Jupiter lacks sufficient mass to sustain fusion. It's not even massive enough to become a brown dwarf, which, while being close in size, would be 5-10 times more massive.

There is no way it can/will become a star or explode.

If the aliens flew by and thump a lit cigarette out the window BOOM!!! sorry guys couldn't resist.

To answer the original question, "no."

Guy Fawkes gave us the original link, here:

www.balaams-ass.com...

This is a web page where a True Believer (tired of the shrieks about the Cassini Probe) tries to smack people over the head with what he knows of science because folks are getting all Rapturous (expecting the rapture any moment now) over "Jupiter's going to Explode."

He says "no" -- and he's right.

Uh, so are we talkin space exploration here, or something else?

To be blunt, we're talking Incredibly Stupid Astronomy, Physics, and Math and Inspirational Messages From ... some deity. In a nutshell, the urban legend says that the probe, Cassini (powered by 48 pounds of plutonium) is going to smack into Jupiter and cause it to become a second sun. This furor happened in the year 1999, so you can be excused from not knowing about it.

Let's talk a bit about what makes it Stupid Science.

First thing is the size:
You could pack a thousand Earths (with our cities and everything else) inside Jupiter and still have a tiny bit of room left.)
www.vendian.org...

48 lbs of plutonium is about (roughly, with lots of rounding off to make zeroes) 1/.0000000000000000000000001 (that should be 24 zeroes in front of the 1) of the mass of Earth. That much plutonium exploding here on Earth would scare a lot of folks and cause problems, but the total damage to Earth would be very slight (less impact than the meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Add 2 more zeroes into that chain of zeroes, and that's how the size of the plutonium compares to the size of Jupiter.

You need a certain amount of "stuff" (hydrogen gas) to start a star; in fact, you need about 100 times what Jupiter has in it to get a very small star started.

So... all that adds up to the bad science behind one of the silliest scaremongering attempts of 1999... that Y2K was going to be the year they ignited Jupiter to start the Apocalypse.

Pretty silly, eh?

Leaving out some alien tech like in 2010 I dont see Jupiter becoming a star or exploding.

Though its interesting to think that if our earlier solar system formation was a bit different we could have had a binary star system and the night would come a whole lot less.

I remember back in 2003 when people were clammoring on about Galileo crashing into Jupiter to turn it into a star, as well. To many people's disappointment, no star was born of this.

As for what used to be said about Cassini, it's obviously now been put to rest simply due to the fact it's currently orbiting Saturn. Of course, the JIMO probe, which was effectively canceled this year (or last, depending on your point of view), was going to use a small fission reactor to power its ion engines and Hall thrusters. Though, as I said, it was canceled.

Oh, and it still wouldn't have been able to turn Jupiter into a star either, despite being a fissioning reactor.

...because Jupiter is made of gas and it's trapping all that gas, and the gas is going to make it explode.

Good gravy, I should have exploded years ago!

I was going to say something scientific and smart like but everybody beat me to it. I will say this, if the website has the word apocolypse in it's address it probably shouldn't be your first stop for science news.

As mentioned earlier, do not get a cigarette or match anywhere near Jupiter especially after it's had some chili.

Spiderj

Originally posted by Spiderj
As mentioned earlier, do not get a cigarette or match anywhere near Jupiter especially after it's had some chili.

So I'm Jupiter now, eh? I'm a big, fat, ball of gas. No, I get what you're saying.

Geez I am in a weird mood...

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
I remember back in 2003 when people were clammoring on about Galileo crashing into Jupiter to turn it into a star, as well. To many people's disappointment, no star was born of this.

I always found that weird since Jupiter has been hit by some massive comets and asteroids in its history. I mean if a impact so big it left a plume of smoke bigger then the earth in the case of Shoemaker-levy 9 couldnt turn Jupiter into a star what made people think a tiny probe would be able to do that.

[edit on 6-6-2006 by ShadowXIX]

Sounds like the movie 2010... uh, gonna need to add oxygen for a bang that big... a hyper-golic reaction might be an outside possibility... maybe a gravity related anomaly... pie-in-the-sky, but no I don't buy it. Gimme some big fat scientific studies that are peer-reviewed and I might buy in... till then. I'll wait for the remake... an interesting post tho',

Edit: BTW Ever notice how many of these links end at a website with a pop-up and a cookie? Like surfing the apocalypse? Hmmm,

Victor K.

[edit on 6-6-2006 by V Kaminski]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
I always found that weird since Jupiter has been hit by some massive comets and asteroids in its history. I mean if a impact so big it left a plume of smoke bigger then the earth in the case of Shoemaker-levy 9 couldnt turn Jupiter into a star what made people think a tiny probe would be able to do that.

I believe they said SL-9 would do it as well. Again, they were wrong.

Besides, The probes have RTGs in them, and the comet wouldn't have had one. So of course, the tiny, RTG laiden probe is far more dangerous than the speeding, massive, comet.

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
So I'm Jupiter now, eh? I'm a big, fat, ball of gas. No, I get what you're saying.

Geez I am in a weird mood...

You lost me keen? Whats with the flames? I was refering to Skitzos post.

Spiderj

Like I said, I'm a weird mood.

(That other post was thickly laiden with sarcasm in my strange sense of humor. Be afraid that it's starting to show on the boards. Must be because of the the date. )

[edit on 6/6/2006 by cmdrkeenkid]

when it explode itll be one hell of a firework display,to bad i wont be around to see it

But... If... You had read this thread you would have seen that it's not going to explode...

No problemo. You know as well as I do how hard it is to communicate mood on the board...the flames through(edit: whoops, that should've been threw) me.

Just wanted to double check.

That's why I tend to veer away from sarcasm and go straight to the F_ _ _ T jokes whenever possible.

Spiderj

[edit on 6/6/2006 by Spiderj]