Re: [sl4] giant planets ignition - one more existential risk

From: Alexei Turchin (alexeiturchin@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Dec 13 2008 - 15:27:09 MST


John, how would you explain that in 1979 scientists returned to the
question and wrote the article there they said that detonation is
possible if concentration of deiterium are higer then 1 to 300?

Maybe you remeber Teller''s idea of Simple Super bomb which doesn''t
work. It was a tube with liqiud deiterium, and it doesn''t want to
propogate detonation wave. But why?

Because it was too small - and radiation losses take from it much more
energy than rested in the tube. But this situation is different with
the case of large ocean, there all emmited energy eventualy is absord
by surrunding matter.

In fact if Teller Simple Super would have widhth of several hundreds
meters it would work. But it is inpractical for military purposes.

On 12/13/08, John K Clark <johnkclark@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:22:03 "Larry"
> <entropy@farviolet.com> said:
>
> > I certainly can't claim to rule it out, it certainly
> > seems a liquid hydrogen ocean might be able to support a fusion detonation wave.
>
>
> It was ruled out in the late 1940's. It won't even work in a ocean of
> pure Deuterium and Tritium, and the composition of the gas giant planets
> are about a billion times less fusion friendly than that. The only way
> they got it to work in the H bomb is use clever geometry so that one
> fission bomb compress the fuel and then at just the right instant
> another fission bomb heats it.
>
> Just setting a bomb off in a ocean of fuel will do nothing, that's why
> it took 7 years after the invention of fission bombs to figure out how
> to make a H Bomb.
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
> --
> John K Clark
> johnkclark@fastmail.fm
>
>
> --
> http://www.fastmail.fm - mmm... Fastmail...
>
>



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