If Jupiter's All Gas, Will Fire Burn It Up

you're standing in a room full of explosive gas one spark could cause an explosion so powerful that all the windows and doors would be just blown out with a huge column of fire and you're holding a match you need a bigger target than this room how about the largest room of explosive gas in our entire solar system meet jupiter it's the fifth planet from the sun and the largest one in our system it's 11 times the width of earth and almost two and a half times heavier than all the other planets in our solar system combined if we put jupiter on the scales we would need about 317 earths to balance it but most importantly it has a lot of methane in its atmosphere it's the gas we use in our kitchen or fill up our car with and it burns just fine more importantly there's metallic hydrogen in its normal state hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe but on jupiter it's at great pressure more than 400 million atmospheres by comparison on earth you feel the pressure of one atmosphere so multiply that by 400 million and hydrogen is compressed so much that it looks like liquid metal metallic hydrogen can be a great fuel it'll give off 20 times more energy than burning ordinary hydrogen so you and your match can have great fun out there okay here we go the first problem is distance jupiter is only one planet away from us but the path is also blocked by the asteroid belt behind mars it's full of giant rock debris on average each asteroid could be as wide as the distance from los angeles to las vegas there's rocks the size of an entire state and the biggest asteroid of them all is ceres it's almost as wide as alaska it's even considered a dwarf planet and this dangerous journey to jupiter takes about 650 days that's almost two years of boredom inside a spaceship by comparison the longest time astronauts have spent aboard a spaceship is 84 days but we'll let you take your favorite dvd collection and a couple bags of popcorn at the end of the day you'll be able to get some sleep after a hard day at work fast forward two years into the future and you've arrived at your destination you're already imagining lighting a match at the surface of jupiter exploding it like a balloon oh be careful when you get close to it because of jupiter's great weight it has a strong gravitational force about three times stronger than back home on earth the closer you get to its surface the weaker you feel and you can even barely stand on your feet the maximum weight you can lift here is also three times less and even a match you're holding in your hand already feels heavier if you try to jump up you need more effort actually you can't even do that because jupiter is a gas giant that means it has no solid surface theoretically the deeper you dive into these clouds the more pressure you'll feel gradually the clouds and gases thicken and form a kind of liquid but you don't have to dive that deep methane is a light gas and it's closer to the surface so this is the moment of truth you take a match you flick it on the box and nothing happens well let's give it a couple more tries second match third nothing works okay you've got a gas burner in your backpack you unscrew the valve to maximum and nothing happens again well that's because it takes three components to start the combustion process the first is fuel luckily there's enough methane and metallic hydrogen on jupiter to blow up the whole planet in a matter of seconds the second component is the ignition source it's the initial force that will start the combustion process it could be a spark an electrical discharge or a match like the one you have in your hand and the last ingredient is oxygen yes the same oxygen that we breathe it's just as important to fire as the fuel itself for an experiment try lighting a small candle now cover it with a glass you see how the fire keeps burning for a few seconds and then goes out the fuel is still there but the fire has used up all the oxygen inside the glass and the burning process is over the same thing happens on jupiter there just can't be fire simply because there's no oxygen and you didn't even have to fly there to find that out from earth we can see hundreds of thousands of little meteorites falling on jupiter the asteroid belt next to it is to blame for this when they hit its atmosphere they start to burn and that doesn't instantly blow up the entire planet but don't be upset there's still a way to ignite this gas giant planet all you have to do is trigger a thermonuclear chain reaction on the planet then there'll be an explosion so powerful it'll be visible from earth and it will be like the birth of a new star to do that we need to detonate a nuclear reactor like the ones that give us electricity here on earth in fact we'd have to send everything we have to jupiter but even that won't do the trick big asteroids when they hit the planet cause a much bigger explosion in 2009 a meteorite the size of five soccer fields hit jupiter it caused an explosion of 5 billion tons of tnt this incident left a dark spot the size of the pacific ocean and an even bigger explosion happened there in 1994 after that collision there was a giant spot on jupiter almost the size of our planet but strong winds and storms quickly began to sweep away the traces of the explosion after a few weeks jupiter looked like normal the problem is that our attempts to blow up the gas giant took place on the planet's surface we need to plant a charge the size of the moon deep below a massive explosion will cause a thermonuclear reaction and cause the metallic hydrogen to detonate the explosive process is set and within seconds jupiter explodes like a giant balloon but this spectacle will be the last one that humanity ever sees the explosion would disturb the stable orbits of earth and the other planets the trajectory of earth around the sun might change and we may see the dawn not in the east but on any other side of the world when the strong wind from the explosion reaches the earth it'll start scraping our atmosphere soon our planet will lose its ozone layer it was our shield that protected us from solar radiation in such a situation we'll have to hide underground for the rest of our lives but even this can't protect us before long the earth will be showered with thousands of meteorites jupiter was so heavy that it held the asteroid belt in place without it the asteroids would start flying towards us earth would feel a constant meteor shower but there would be no one left on earth to observe it anymore jupiter's explosion can be compared to a supernova in fact jupiter is practically a star if it were just a little bigger and heavier it would start to shrink the intense pressure on the planet's core would start thermal nuclear reactions eventually jupiter will have turned into a brown dwarf and it would be 50 times heavier than it is now but because it doesn't have enough weight to do that jupiter is sometimes called a failed star well maybe we should visit other gas planets in our solar system and try to light our match there saturn saturn's atmosphere is similar to jupiter but there's no oxygen for combustion there either so all you have to do is admire the planet's beautiful rings and move on well uranus and neptune are much smaller and they don't have metallic hydrogen so their explosion wouldn't be as strong but you still wouldn't be able to ignite them with a match because there's no atmosphere full of oxygen but there is one planet where you could light a fire with your match it's gj1132b and it's 39 light years away scientists think it might have oxygen on it although it's not a gas giant that has combustible gases in its atmosphere but you can still sit on its rocky ground and make a fire to admire the unusual sunset

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 291,422

Rating: 4.8988276 out of 5

Keywords: bright side, brightside, bright side space, planets, solar system, Jupiter, space facts, Jupiter's atmosphere, Jupiter and Saturn, gas planets, gas giants, Jupiter facts, facts about Jupiter, Jupiter close up, Jupiter size, how big is Jupiter, Jupiter distance, how far away is Jupiter, facts about planets, can Jupiter explode, how Jupiter looks, how Jupiter saves Earth, role of Jupiter in solar system, what if Jupiter exploded, solar system without Jupiter, biggest planet

Id: LsOqCiCZMko

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021