13 ms·

Brandenburg's been focused on this for a while, here is his 2011 theory that it was a natural fission reactor: EVIDENCE FOR A LARGE, NATURAL, PALEO-NUCLEAR REA

by huxley 12y ago

Brandenburg's been focused on this for a while, here is his 2011 theory that it was a natural fission reactor: EVIDENCE FOR A LARGE, NATURAL, PALEO-NUCLEAR REACTOR ON MARS. J. E. Brandenburg http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1097.pdf However, over time he has been getting deeper and deeper into pseudoscience. It was covered in Pharyngula a while back: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/22/the-two-faces-of-je-brandenburg/ http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/22/the-two-faces-...

api 12y ago
I heard an interview with Brandenburg a while back. He sounded sane, smart, and his understanding of physics seemed sound. I can't stand this secular inquisition bullshit of cherry picking any sign of possible 'out there'-ness and using it to completely trash peoples' entire bodies of thought and work. It's anti-scientific. Please point out a problem with Brandenburg's actual published work, or go away. Even if he does hold non-traditional or strange religious beliefs, it's not relevant. Roman Catholicism is no more rational than Eastern mystic cults, so do we throw out all scientific papers by Roman Catholics? I'm not much of a fan of PZ Myers either. I read him a bit back during the mid-2000s 'intelligent design' creationist PR offensive, but stopped reading him as he got more and more shrill and irritating. IMHO Myers is as much a shrill fundamentalist as the religious bozos he constantly wars with. One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human. Around here we've seen some IMHO irrational fears of super-human dangerous AIs circulating recently, and it seems to have led to a similar amount of metaphysical anxiety among some very brilliant and notable people in the CS field. I'm very skeptical of Brandenburg's thesis here, but I have to admit that the evidence he puts forward is very interesting. It either points to what he says -- some kind of incredibly ancient use of a nuclear device -- or an as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon that can yield a similar signature. One possibility (other than 'reaper' aliens) I can think of would be a natural nuclear reactor that actually went fully supercritical and detonated. Another would be a hypervelocity object, possibly traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light, that impacted Mars and went thermonuclear in the atmosphere on kinetic energy alone. Maybe an asteroid or comet that got flung by a high-gravity body (black hole? neutron star?) or supernova debris could do that?
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  This is very much the same place I came too with regard to Brandenburg. Regardless of the speculation, the sites look to be interesting places to explore on future missions. In hypothesizing possible causes, I wonder about the relative size of the ejecta of a type 2 super nova. Given that the Uranium, on the planet originated in such events at some point, and the 4.7 billion year half life, one could imagine perhaps a modestly dense fragment cloud of U235 which was traveling at relativistic velocity away from a Type II supernova, and it collides with the atmosphere of a planet in a far away star system. If the pieces were small enough they might simply heat up and impact the ground, however if they were massive enough, the shockwave of hitting the atmosphere might be sufficent to compress them into a supercritical mass. At which point the meteor would undergo rapid, and energetic, disassembly.
  - sounds 12y ago
    A supernova-created natural nuclear bomb in asteroid form. Acting just like a human or alien nuke, but completely arising from natural processes. Or did I miss something? :)
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Exactly, the original 'thin man' HEU A-bomb[1] was really pretty simple, compress two subcritical chunks of fissile material into a supercritical chunk and hold it there as long as possible. So imagine you've got a bunch of sub critical chunks all in a line, they hit an atmosphere which gets them to pile up like a line of tailgating cars on the freeway. The numbers should be quite computable to figure out a bounds box on the possible yield. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29
    - api 12y ago
      Yup, but you left out the part where it is traveling at relativistic velocities and thus also causes the gases in the atmosphere to go thermonuclear on impact from kinetic energy alone. So a "hypervelocity critical mass" might be a thing.

by huxley 12y ago

api 12y ago

I heard an interview with Brandenburg a while back. He sounded sane, smart, and his understanding of physics seemed sound. I can't stand this secular inquisition bullshit of cherry picking any sign of possible 'out there'-ness and using it to completely trash peoples' entire bodies of thought and work. It's anti-scientific. Please point out a problem with Brandenburg's actual published work, or go away. Even if he does hold non-traditional or strange religious beliefs, it's not relevant. Roman Catholicism is no more rational than Eastern mystic cults, so do we throw out all scientific papers by Roman Catholics? I'm not much of a fan of PZ Myers either. I read him a bit back during the mid-2000s 'intelligent design' creationist PR offensive, but stopped reading him as he got more and more shrill and irritating. IMHO Myers is as much a shrill fundamentalist as the religious bozos he constantly wars with. One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human. Around here we've seen some IMHO irrational fears of super-human dangerous AIs circulating recently, and it seems to have led to a similar amount of metaphysical anxiety among some very brilliant and notable people in the CS field. I'm very skeptical of Brandenburg's thesis here, but I have to admit that the evidence he puts forward is very interesting. It either points to what he says -- some kind of incredibly ancient use of a nuclear device -- or an as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon that can yield a similar signature. One possibility (other than 'reaper' aliens) I can think of would be a natural nuclear reactor that actually went fully supercritical and detonated. Another would be a hypervelocity object, possibly traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light, that impacted Mars and went thermonuclear in the atmosphere on kinetic energy alone. Maybe an asteroid or comet that got flung by a high-gravity body (black hole? neutron star?) or supernova debris could do that?

ChuckMcM 12y ago
This is very much the same place I came too with regard to Brandenburg. Regardless of the speculation, the sites look to be interesting places to explore on future missions. In hypothesizing possible causes, I wonder about the relative size of the ejecta of a type 2 super nova. Given that the Uranium, on the planet originated in such events at some point, and the 4.7 billion year half life, one could imagine perhaps a modestly dense fragment cloud of U235 which was traveling at relativistic velocity away from a Type II supernova, and it collides with the atmosphere of a planet in a far away star system. If the pieces were small enough they might simply heat up and impact the ground, however if they were massive enough, the shockwave of hitting the atmosphere might be sufficent to compress them into a supercritical mass. At which point the meteor would undergo rapid, and energetic, disassembly.
- sounds 12y ago
  A supernova-created natural nuclear bomb in asteroid form. Acting just like a human or alien nuke, but completely arising from natural processes. Or did I miss something? :)
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Exactly, the original 'thin man' HEU A-bomb[1] was really pretty simple, compress two subcritical chunks of fissile material into a supercritical chunk and hold it there as long as possible. So imagine you've got a bunch of sub critical chunks all in a line, they hit an atmosphere which gets them to pile up like a line of tailgating cars on the freeway. The numbers should be quite computable to figure out a bounds box on the possible yield. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29
  - api 12y ago
    Yup, but you left out the part where it is traveling at relativistic velocities and thus also causes the gases in the atmosphere to go thermonuclear on impact from kinetic energy alone. So a "hypervelocity critical mass" might be a thing.