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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, the production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbam Here. Let's say that someday

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Speaker 1: in the distant future, explorers from Earth decide to visit Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: the largest planet in our Solar system, and probe its mysteries.

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Speaker 1: At the end of their nearly two year journey, they

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Speaker 1: reached the giant planet, so immense that more than one thousand,

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Speaker 1: three hundred earths would fit inside of it. As the

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Speaker 1: spacecraft descends, the astronauts marvel at Jupiter's sixty seven moons,

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Speaker 1: so many that astronomers haven't even named them all yet.

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Speaker 1: They gaze and wonder at the planet's great Red Spot,

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Speaker 1: an immense perpetual hurricane like storm, and ponder the planet's

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Speaker 1: shroud of brown, yellow, red, and white clouds. But when

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Speaker 1: our fictional adventurers deploy the spacecraft's rocket thrusters to slow

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Speaker 1: their descent, something awful happens. The heat and flames from

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Speaker 1: the nozzles come into contact with the jovial an atmosphere,

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Speaker 1: which is hydrogen, and ignite it. Quickly, the Jupiter sky

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Speaker 1: turns into a fiery inferno. The astronauts realized that they've

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Speaker 1: got to get out of there quick. They just accidentally

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Speaker 1: ignited an entire planet's atmosphere. It might make for a

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Speaker 1: great premise for a science fiction thriller. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: idea made its way into an episode of the show

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Speaker 1: Star Trek Enterprise, but fortunately it's not something that will

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Speaker 1: ever happen in real life. Probably Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune,

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Speaker 1: the three immense gas giants in the Outer Solar System,

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Speaker 1: all have atmospheres made up of mostly hydrogen. That's a

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Speaker 1: chemical that one is in its gas form on Earth

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Speaker 1: can be explosively combustible. It's also the chemical that the

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Speaker 1: Sun uses for fuel. If you need an example of

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Speaker 1: hydrogen's flammability, consider the seven destruction of the Hindenburg airship,

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Speaker 1: which suddenly turned into an inferno as attempted to dock,

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Speaker 1: killing thirty seven people. Though the exact circumstances of the

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Speaker 1: disaster remain murky, the leading hypothesis is that a leaky

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Speaker 1: valve or broken wire caused hydrogen to leak into the

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Speaker 1: ship's ventilation shafts, where it was then ignited by static

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Speaker 1: electricity from a storm that the airship had flown through,

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Speaker 1: combined with an incendiary group of compounds that had been

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Speaker 1: used to make the skin of the Zeppelin air tight.

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Speaker 1: Hydrogen explosion like that of the Hindenburg could occur on Earth,

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Speaker 1: but not on one of the outer planets. For the

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Speaker 1: article this episode is based on How Stuff Works spoke

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Speaker 1: by email with Drake Demming, an astrology professor at the

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Speaker 1: University of Maryland who studied planetary atmospheres as a scientist

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Speaker 1: for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He said, the kind

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Speaker 1: of ignition you're talking about is rapid oxidation, and there

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Speaker 1: isn't enough free oxygen in the atmospheres of the outer

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Speaker 1: planets to allow that to happen. How Stuff Works also

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Speaker 1: spoke by email with Mark ray In, chief engineer and

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Speaker 1: mission director of NASA's Dawn Mission. He said oxygen is

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Speaker 1: the key. Combustion occurs when fuel combines with oxygen in

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Speaker 1: a chemical reaction that releases heat. A Jupiter and Saturn

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Speaker 1: have plenty of chemical fuel, as does Saturn's moon Titan,

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Speaker 1: which has methane in its atmosphere, but without oxygen, they

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Speaker 1: won't burn, and conversely, Earth's skies are similarly unlikely to

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Speaker 1: burn because while there's plenty of oxygen, the nitrogen that

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Speaker 1: makes up most of Earth's atmosphere isn't a very good fuel.

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Speaker 1: If it were possible to ignite the atmosphere of Jupiter,

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Speaker 1: it most likely would have happened by now, since the

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Speaker 1: planet has been hit many times by objects much bigger

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Speaker 1: and more energetic than a spaceship. As astronomer Phil Plate

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Speaker 1: has noted, the planet gets hit with something that's big

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Speaker 1: enough to see from Earth about once each year. The

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Speaker 1: most famous example is the collision between Jupiter and the

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Speaker 1: comet shoemaker Levy nine, which was oken by the planet's

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Speaker 1: intense gravity into a dozen separate hot pieces that exploded

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Speaker 1: with a huge release of energy. But those explosions didn't

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Speaker 1: cause Jupiter's atmosphere to ignite. Demming said, if an object

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Speaker 1: collides with Jupiter or Saturn, it will create high temperature

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Speaker 1: chemical reactions and localized pressure and heating. But the over

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Speaker 1: pressure from such an event would propagate as a shock wave,

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Speaker 1: expanding and cooling. So if the atmosphere is stable before

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Speaker 1: the collision, it isn't likely to become unstable afterwards. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but what would it take to cause Jupiter's atmosphere to explode?

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Speaker 1: Raymond said, Igniting an atmosphere would require providing it with

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Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of whichever ingredient it lacks, either fuel

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Speaker 1: or oxygen. Given how large planets are, the addition of

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Speaker 1: a supply from something as small as a typical or

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Speaker 1: even large comet or asteroid would be such a tiny

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Speaker 1: fraction of the total atmosphere that it would be quite insufficient,

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Speaker 1: Like trying to fan a huge bonfire with a single

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Speaker 1: gentle puff. There might be some localized combustion, but it

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Speaker 1: would quickly burn out, just as the fire from the

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Speaker 1: hydrogen in the Hindenburg Zeppelin did. Basically, it would require

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Speaker 1: half as much oxygen as there is hydrogen in Jupiter's atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: It's not likely that anybody is going to be able

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Speaker 1: to transport that much oxygen there to start the fire.

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Speaker 1: Could something like this happen somewhere that we haven't discovered yet.

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Speaker 1: The universe is full of possibilities, but it looks as though,

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Speaker 1: at least for now, a sci fi screenwriters will have

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Speaker 1: to come up with a more plausible storyline. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: is based on the article could our spacecraft accidentally ignite

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Speaker 1: an alien world's entire atmosphere? On how Stuffworks dot Com.

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Speaker 1: Written by Patrick Jake tiger A. Brain Stuff is production

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Speaker 1: by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com

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Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcast asks

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Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,

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