Could We Terraform Jupiter?
About | Information | History | Online | Facts | Discovery
So just what would it take to terraform Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system? Support us at: http://www.patreon.com/universetoday More stories at: http://www.universetoday.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Follow us on Tumblr: http://universetoday.tumblr.com/ Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/universetoday Google+ - https://plus.google.com/+universetoday/ Instagram - http://instagram.com/universetoday Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain Jason Harmer - @jasoncharmer Susie Murph - @susiemmurph Brian Koberlein - @briankoberlein Chad Weber - weber.chad@gmail.com Kevin Gill - @kevinmgill Created by: Fraser Cain and Jason Harmer Edited by: Chad Weber Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tcoZNrSveE&feature=youtu.be Just a few videos ago, I blew minds with a “How to” on terraforming the Moon. Once we’ve developed a Solar System spanning civilization and have claimed mastery over the laws of physics, and have common-place technology which staggers and dwarf our current comprehension of what’s possible it should be easy enough. In fact, it might even be easier than terraforming Mars or Venus, as long as you keep a steady flow of gas to the Moon replenishing the constantly escaping atmosphere. And in the comments on that video, ABitOfTheUniverse threw down , he wants to know what it would take to terraform Jupiter. All right “ABitOfTheUniverse”, if that is your real name… I’m up for it. On the surface, this is madness. We already explained how Jupiter is completely and totally inhospitable to life. An alien started a “Build a star kit” and stopped a ⅓ of the way through, because he got bored and wandered away. Just like his Mom said he would. Jupiter is a ball of hydrogen and helium, which compresses these gasses to almost starlike temperatures and pressures. Fine, Jupiter is the absolute worst. It makes traveling to Venus look like a spa visit. Jupiter does have something we can work with. Astronomers think below the septillions tons of hydrogen and gas, there’s actually a rocky core. The mass of the core is still a mystery, but recent computer simulations put it at somewhere between 7 and 45 times the mass of the Earth, complete with plenty of water ices and other chemicals you might require on an Earthlike planet. Furthermore, this core may contain similar constituents as the internal structure of Earth. This means a central core of iron and nickel, surrounded by liquid metal, surrounded by rock. The problem is you need to strip away 95% of the planet’s mass. It’s all that hydrogen and helium, and that’s pretty much impossible. And almost completely impossible, is still very slightly completely possible. Jupiter is made of fuel. It’s like looking at a pool of gasoline and wondering if there was some way to get rid of it all. What good Solar System-spanning civilization hasn’t worked out hydrogen fusion? It’s a technology that’s probably only 30 years away from us now. You could fly a spacecraft down into Jupiter’s gravity well and scoop up hydrogen fuel from the clouds. Or you could create fusion-powered dirigibles filled with hot hydrogen, which float around the cloud tops of Jupiter, using their fusion reactors to spew hydrogen off into space. Over untold lengths of time, you could get at that rocky juicy center, once you stripped it of its hydrogen. Then you’ll need to do all that other stuff I mentioned in previous videos, to turn it into a habitable world. Sure, it’s a world with much higher gravity than Earth, but that’s not my problem. You said “Earthlike”. That’ll teach you to make wishes with a monkey’s paw! What if you need to move Jupiter first, perhaps a little closer to the Sun. There’s an awesome idea cooked up by Larry Niven in his book, “A World Out of Time”. It’s a fusion candle, and it lets you shift gas giants around. You take a long space station, and light up fusion thrusters on both ends. You dip one end down into the upper clouds, where it siphons hydrogen fuel. Both ends of the space station start blasting. One end keeps it from dropping down into the planet, and the other end pushes on the entire planet, pushing it around the Solar System. Instead of trying to terraform Jupiter, we could just push the planet closer to the Sun, where its icy moons warm up and become habitable themselves.
Comments
-
There was an idea about igniting the Jupiter, turning it into a brown dwarf star, which could make it's moons and Mars more habitable. Could you do a vid on that?
-
better to turn Jupiter in to a little sun and terraform its moons.
-
Pushing Jupiter closer to the sun would destabilize orbits of a lot of objects.
-
Could we colonize or terraform the planet Saturn?
-
After Mars, Venus, and the Moon, I think the next worlds to terraform would be Mercury, Callisto, and Ganymede.
-
for a challenge, how about terriforming Saturn's largest moon Titan
-
It would be more reasonable to terraform one or two the larger moons of Jupiter.
-
Strip all that mass away and see what happens to its moons, the asteroid belt, and the orbit of the other planets...
There won't be anyone left to live on it. -
Jupiter produces energy, it's literally a brown dwarf star or at least on the verge of becoming one and there is no indication that at the pressures and temperatures of it's core would rocky type materials actually be solid. Hyping on terraforming Jupiter based on a presumed rocky core is a throwback to 1950's scifi. Terraforming is a foolish venture as it's always easier to build large space habitats such as O'Neill Cylinders, Bernal Spheres and Stanford Torus's. Also, the public's view on controlled fusion is ridiculous, let's say we could produce the controlled fusion of our Sun's core, how much energy does that produce? Well we know that, it would be 300 watts per cubic meter, about the energy output of a hot compost pile. Controlled fusion is an oversold concept. Any attempt to produce more energy than a compost pile means some compromise between a known inherently stable process of our Sun and the unstable fusion bomb. Sure, fusion research is good research but if it's plentiful safe nuclear power that you want, just spend a small fraction of what's spent on fusion on molten salt fission reactors, particularly Thorium breeder reactors.
-
Mercury
-
Why bother. Just mine the planet clean
-
if we made 2 fusion candles with the exact same force, we could strip away the hydrogen and mine the stuff in the core. there could be huge deposits of diamonds in there. space elevator, anyone
-
could we terraform an asteroid
-
The biggest trouble I have with fusion is that it ALWAYS seems to be thirty years away. Care to walk us through a few prospective fusion development timelines?
-
we should terraform earth
-
terraform the sun!
-
Terraforming a black hole
JUST KIDDING LOL -
total nonsense.
-
Dyson Sphere time...
-
tell-us haha great joke 😂😂
5m 5sLenght
971Rating