Here comes another doomsday scenario, this time from the friendly gas giant Saturn. The story goes like this: NASA is working with secret organizations (such as the Illuminati or the Freemasons) to fulfil their dreams of “playing God” and creating a second Sun in the Solar System. This plan has many aims, but primarily they want to use the Cassini probe to trigger a catastrophic chain reaction inside Saturn so nuclear fusion is possible, generating a mini-Sun. This has been tried before, when the Galileo probe was dropped into the atmosphere of Jupiter in 2003 (but it obviously failed at first attempt). Cassini is carrying about 33 kg of plutonium, making it the ultimate cruise missile aimed at Saturn, atmospheric pressures eventually kick-starting a nuclear explosion in two years time.
Whilst this makes for interesting reading, yet again, the science is deeply flawed. We can expect this doomsday scenario (and yes, it is predicting the end of the world) to gain some strength before the Cassini mission is terminated in 2010…. only this time the Devil (Lucifer) is involved…
In the first part of this mini-series on the Universe Today, I look into the science behind a doomsday scenario known as The Lucifer Project (or simply Project Lucifer). I have heard of variations on this theme for many years, and at first it sounds possible, but then simple logic dictates that turning Jupiter or Saturn into a Sun is rather more sci-fi than sci-fact. In fact, the transformation of Jupiter into a second Sun is not a new idea. In the novel and movie 2010: Odyssey Two (notice the correlation with the date?) created by the late, great Arthur C. Clarke, Jupiter is the focus of the mysterious storyline. Black monoliths breed inside the gas giant’s atmosphere, at first creating a big black spot (again, notice the similarity with the 2003 black spot observation?), increasing its density and mass to a point where nuclear fusion can be sustained. The movie finishes with various views of the new binary solar system. A great movie.
So, it would seem, Project Lucifer is loosely based on Arthur C. Clarke’s novel (minus Galileo creating a nuclear chain reaction). Obviously, the 2003 Galileo collision with Jupiter had no lasting effect on the planet, conspiracy theorists are now looking at the 2010 Cassini collision with Saturn for their story. Therefore, last night I wrote Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1) to address some of the technical reasons why a Cassini re-entry into Saturn’s atmosphere (or Galileo’s re-entry into Jupiter in 2003 for that matter) cannot miraculously pull all the tiny pieces of plutonium (non-weapon grade by the way) together to form a crude nuclear weapon. In the next part, I’ll look into the physics behind a star and look at why gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn are called “failed stars”…
