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Plasma physicist and nuclear weapons specialist John Brandenburg has an out-of-left-field theory about two gigantic hydrogen bomb-type nuclear explosions that supposedly took place on Mars within last hundred million years. He points to overabundance of radioisotope Xenon 129 that results from fission of heavy nuclei as evidence. Xenon 129 is a signature of nuclear explosions and exists in Earth's atmosphere because of the atmospheric nuclear testing and plutonium production that had gone on in the twentieth century. It is also made in supernova explosions as a result of intense neutron bombardment and is therefore embedded in asteroids and meteoroids within the Solar System. John Brandenburg claims that the only way the amount of Xenon 129 that is inferred from 1976 Viking Mars mission data and verified by mass spectrometer on Curiosity rover could have been produced in the distant past is by the way of nuclear explosions. No meteor showers could explain this because meteors contain both Xenon 129 and 132 in equal quantities and the amount of Xenon 129 contained within them is tiny and gets released only at very high temperatures. Mars has 2.5 times more Xenon 129 than Earth's atmosphere prior to 1937 (no nuclear production) and the meteorites. He points to two sites on the Red Planet where the hypothetical explosions took place: in the Northern plains in Mare Acidalium at approximately 50N, 30W, near Cydonia Mensa and in Utopia Planum at approximately 50N 120W near Galaxias Chaos.
He was a recent guest on The Space Show, where he reiterated his theory. It's a long podcast and nukes on Mars talk starts at 47 minutes into the show.
Here is a link to his paper and his website.
He also gave a presentation to a packed auditorium at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) 2016 about a different theory of his:
Mars in one Month: The GEM theory of Energy and Momentum Exchange With Spacetime and Forces Observed in the Eaglework Q-V Thruster
Wacky, but interesting, no?
(Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:10AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor [wikipedia.org]
"[Example on Earth:] The natural nuclear reactor formed when a uranium-rich mineral deposit became inundated with groundwater that acted as a neutron moderator, and a nuclear chain reaction took place. The heat generated from the nuclear fission caused the groundwater to boil away, which slowed or stopped the reaction. After cooling of the mineral deposit, the water returned and the reaction restarted, completing a full cycle every 3 hours. The fission reaction cycles continued for hundreds of thousands of years and ended when the ever decreasing fissile materials no longer could sustain a chain reaction.
Fission of uranium normally produces five known isotopes of the fission-product gas xenon; all five have been found trapped in the remnants of the natural reactor, in varying concentrations. The concentrations of xenon isotopes, found trapped in mineral formations 2 billion years later, make it possible to calculate the specific time intervals of reactor operation: approximately 30 minutes of criticality followed by 2 hours and 30 minutes of cooling down to complete a 3-hour cycle.[6] A key factor that made the reaction possible was that, at the time the reactor went critical 1.7 billion years ago, the fissile isotope 235 U made up about 3.1% of the natural uranium, which is comparable to the amount used in some of today's reactors. (The remaining 96.9% was non-fissile 238 U.) Because 235 U has a shorter half-life than 238 U, and thus decays more rapidly, the current abundance of 235 U in natural uranium is about 0.70–0.72%. A natural nuclear reactor is therefore no longer possible on Earth without heavy water or graphite.[7]"
Some have even suggested: "Published in 2010, a controversial hypothesis about the origin of the Moon proposes that the Moon may have been formed from the explosion of a georeactor located along the core-mantle boundary at the equatorial plane of the then-rapidly rotating Earth, 4.5 billion years ago.[12][13]"
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:40AM
This sounds like the logical explanation.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 11 2017, @12:25PM
Yeah, but this dude is claiming a tightly packed hydrogen shell around the naturally occurring uranium deposit... one is unlikely, two is unlikely squared.
🌻🌻 [google.com]