Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbam Here. Let's say that someday
Speaker 1: in the distant future, explorers from Earth decide to visit Jupiter,
Speaker 1: the largest planet in our Solar system, and probe its mysteries.
Speaker 1: At the end of their nearly two year journey, they
Speaker 1: reached the giant planet, so immense that more than one thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred earths would fit inside of it. As the
Speaker 1: spacecraft descends, the astronauts marvel at Jupiter's sixty seven moons,
Speaker 1: so many that astronomers haven't even named them all yet.
Speaker 1: They gaze and wonder at the planet's great Red Spot,
Speaker 1: an immense perpetual hurricane like storm, and ponder the planet's
Speaker 1: shroud of brown, yellow, red, and white clouds. But when
Speaker 1: our fictional adventurers deploy the spacecraft's rocket thrusters to slow
Speaker 1: their descent, something awful happens. The heat and flames from
Speaker 1: the nozzles come into contact with the jovial an atmosphere,
Speaker 1: which is hydrogen, and ignite it. Quickly, the Jupiter sky
Speaker 1: turns into a fiery inferno. The astronauts realized that they've
Speaker 1: got to get out of there quick. They just accidentally
Speaker 1: ignited an entire planet's atmosphere. It might make for a
Speaker 1: great premise for a science fiction thriller. In fact, the
Speaker 1: idea made its way into an episode of the show
Speaker 1: Star Trek Enterprise, but fortunately it's not something that will
Speaker 1: ever happen in real life. Probably Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune,
Speaker 1: the three immense gas giants in the Outer Solar System,
Speaker 1: all have atmospheres made up of mostly hydrogen. That's a
Speaker 1: chemical that one is in its gas form on Earth
Speaker 1: can be explosively combustible. It's also the chemical that the
Speaker 1: Sun uses for fuel. If you need an example of
Speaker 1: hydrogen's flammability, consider the seven destruction of the Hindenburg airship,
Speaker 1: which suddenly turned into an inferno as attempted to dock,
Speaker 1: killing thirty seven people. Though the exact circumstances of the
Speaker 1: disaster remain murky, the leading hypothesis is that a leaky
Speaker 1: valve or broken wire caused hydrogen to leak into the
Speaker 1: ship's ventilation shafts, where it was then ignited by static
Speaker 1: electricity from a storm that the airship had flown through,
Speaker 1: combined with an incendiary group of compounds that had been
Speaker 1: used to make the skin of the Zeppelin air tight.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen explosion like that of the Hindenburg could occur on Earth,
Speaker 1: but not on one of the outer planets. For the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on How Stuff Works spoke
Speaker 1: by email with Drake Demming, an astrology professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland who studied planetary atmospheres as a scientist
Speaker 1: for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He said, the kind
Speaker 1: of ignition you're talking about is rapid oxidation, and there
Speaker 1: isn't enough free oxygen in the atmospheres of the outer
Speaker 1: planets to allow that to happen. How Stuff Works also
Speaker 1: spoke by email with Mark ray In, chief engineer and
Speaker 1: mission director of NASA's Dawn Mission. He said oxygen is
Speaker 1: the key. Combustion occurs when fuel combines with oxygen in
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction that releases heat. A Jupiter and Saturn
Speaker 1: have plenty of chemical fuel, as does Saturn's moon Titan,
Speaker 1: which has methane in its atmosphere, but without oxygen, they
Speaker 1: won't burn, and conversely, Earth's skies are similarly unlikely to
Speaker 1: burn because while there's plenty of oxygen, the nitrogen that
Speaker 1: makes up most of Earth's atmosphere isn't a very good fuel.
Speaker 1: If it were possible to ignite the atmosphere of Jupiter,
Speaker 1: it most likely would have happened by now, since the
Speaker 1: planet has been hit many times by objects much bigger
Speaker 1: and more energetic than a spaceship. As astronomer Phil Plate
Speaker 1: has noted, the planet gets hit with something that's big
Speaker 1: enough to see from Earth about once each year. The
Speaker 1: most famous example is the collision between Jupiter and the
Speaker 1: comet shoemaker Levy nine, which was oken by the planet's
Speaker 1: intense gravity into a dozen separate hot pieces that exploded
Speaker 1: with a huge release of energy. But those explosions didn't
Speaker 1: cause Jupiter's atmosphere to ignite. Demming said, if an object
Speaker 1: collides with Jupiter or Saturn, it will create high temperature
Speaker 1: chemical reactions and localized pressure and heating. But the over
Speaker 1: pressure from such an event would propagate as a shock wave,
Speaker 1: expanding and cooling. So if the atmosphere is stable before
Speaker 1: the collision, it isn't likely to become unstable afterwards. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what would it take to cause Jupiter's atmosphere to explode?
Speaker 1: Raymond said, Igniting an atmosphere would require providing it with
Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of whichever ingredient it lacks, either fuel
Speaker 1: or oxygen. Given how large planets are, the addition of
Speaker 1: a supply from something as small as a typical or
Speaker 1: even large comet or asteroid would be such a tiny
Speaker 1: fraction of the total atmosphere that it would be quite insufficient,
Speaker 1: Like trying to fan a huge bonfire with a single
Speaker 1: gentle puff. There might be some localized combustion, but it
Speaker 1: would quickly burn out, just as the fire from the
Speaker 1: hydrogen in the Hindenburg Zeppelin did. Basically, it would require
Speaker 1: half as much oxygen as there is hydrogen in Jupiter's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It's not likely that anybody is going to be able
Speaker 1: to transport that much oxygen there to start the fire.
Speaker 1: Could something like this happen somewhere that we haven't discovered yet.
Speaker 1: The universe is full of possibilities, but it looks as though,
Speaker 1: at least for now, a sci fi screenwriters will have
Speaker 1: to come up with a more plausible storyline. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article could our spacecraft accidentally ignite
Speaker 1: an alien world's entire atmosphere? On how Stuffworks dot Com.
Speaker 1: Written by Patrick Jake tiger A. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcast asks
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