11–20 of 67 posts
What a fascinating proposition. FYI: This blog article is from 2013 and is about scientific papers written in 2008 and 2005. A few minutes of cursory Googling turns up nothing else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Fowl:_The_Opal_Decepti...
Did this go anywhere? The only papers if find that reference the original ideas (2005 and 2008) mention nuclear waste that melts itself into the Earths core.
Probably not. That's a scary thing to build. Cobalt-60 gammas are hard to shield, and 2000K is really hot. The laws of physics don't forbid building such a thing, but I wouldn't want to be in the same building with it. Okay, so you have something that's so self-heating that it'll easily melt rock. In fact, it's hot enough that it self-liquifies quickly at STP. Cobalt reacts weakly with oxygen, but you'll still have t…
(Apparently the cobalt would be inserted into the tungsten sphere as a not-yet-liquid sphere. That would make the multiple deliveries and robotic assembly more difficult, so maybe a liquid-assembly like you suggest could be arranged.)
How the hell do you weld tungsten anyway? Maybe make the sphere in two halves, then spin them up in opposite directions and push them together, to friction weld them?
Seems that the technique would also work on Europa to melt its way into the ocean underneath the ice.
But if there really is live down there, how do you then explain to them that you just dropped some nuclear waste into their ocean?
Worked fine with all the depleted uranium dropped on Iraq.
With the accelerating change in the earth's magnetic field it would be fantastic to drop a few of these bad boys and see what's actually going on down there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably not. That's a scary thing to build. Cobalt-60 gammas are hard to shield, and 2000K is really hot. The laws of physics don't forbid building such a thing, but I wouldn't want to be in the same building with it. Okay, so you have something that's so self-heating that it'll easily melt rock. In fact, it's hot enough that it self-liquifies quickly at STP. Cobalt reacts weakly with oxygen, but you'll still have t…
I imagine the safe way of deploying the thing would be to assemble it on-site, over the bore hole, robotically. Don't have any humans anywhere near the entire operation as long as all of that cobalt is in the same place (deliver it to the site with several delivery missions, each only having a relatively safe amount of cobalt). (Apparently the cobalt would be inserted into the tungsten sphere as a not-yet-liquid sphe…
For a similar fabrication job, check out the LARES satellite (which is awesome, elegant, and the densest free-falling object in the Solar System):
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/Launch_vehicles/...
The article doesn't mention - why will the probe stop descending?
> As the probe descents deeper, the rate of descent will gradually slow until the probe reaches a depth of 100 km after ~30 years The article doesn't mention - why will the probe stop descending?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if there really is live down there, how do you then explain to them that you just dropped some nuclear waste into their ocean?
"We have reasons to believe you posses weapons of mass destruction" Worked fine with all the depleted uranium dropped on Iraq.
The article also suggests using the probe to analyze the composition of other planets. Is that doable? It seems pretty tough to me to carry on a space ship a nuclear probe hot enough to melt rocks.