Dr. John Brandenburg, Tuesday, 2-22-11 February 23, 2011
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Dr. John Brandenburg, Tuesday, 2-22-11
http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1516-BWB-2011-02-22.mp3
Guest: Dr. John Brandenburg. Topics: “Life And Death On Mar” and the evidence for a one time large nuclear reactor process on Mars around 200 million years ago. Please note that you are invited to comment, ask questions, and discuss the Space Show program/guest(s) on the Space Show blog, http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com. Comments, questions, and any discussion must be relevant and applicable to Space Show programming. Dr. Brandenburg’s book, “Life And Death On Mars: The New Mars Synthesis” can be purchased from the OGLF Amazon partners page and then Amazon contributes to The Space Show/OGLF. Please use http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935487361?tag=onegialeafou-20. During our first segment, Dr. Brandenburg put forth his theory and talked about components in the Martian atmosphere that supported a long ago nuclear catastrophe on Mars. We specifically talked about Xenon 129 and 132 but he also talked about other elements supporting the theory of a long ago nuclear explosion. While our guest discussed nuclear fusion and fission physics, this is a very important segment for our discussion so do stay with the discussion though for many of us, myself included, it was challenging given the lack of background in the subject. One of the major issues facing his theory which he repeated throughout the discussion was the absence of a large crater on Mars which would have resulted from a catastrophic Martian nuclear explosion. At the end of the first segment, Charles called in to discuss parallels with Uranium, specifically U235 when both Earth and Mars were formed. In the second segment, Charles called in to further discuss the natural fission deposits found in Africa which seem to have been deposited slowly over time. Charles was asking if the same thing could have happened on Mars, thus there would be an absence of a large crater. Charles and John had quite a lively discussion on this and related issues. The subject of Thorium in India came up and then Dr. Brandenburg talked about some of the Voyager findings and mentioned presenting his theories to the Pentagon’s Mars Desk. Thorium reactors were discussed later in this segment when Tim called in from Huntsville. Later in this segment, I asked Dr. Brandenburg to tell us why those of us interested in Mars and even wanting to go Mars should care about this theory. You don’t want to miss was Dr. Brandenburg had to say about living in a living universe and the need to become space fairing. He also talked about science being conservative and Martian science being even more conservative. John from Atlanta called in and talked more about controlled fusion and the subject of hybrid reactors came up, that is, putting a uranium blanket around a Tokamak which Dr. Brandenburg said would facilitate reaching breakeven very quickly. Don’t miss what Dr. Brandenburg had to say on the subject of fusion energy, especially using hybrid reactors. A listener asked him about his science fiction novels which he publishes using the name Victor Norgard. We then talked about his upcoming poster presentation at the upcoming 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, “Evidence For A Large, Paleo-Nuclear Reactors On Mars.” Near the end of our discussion, our guest talked about space being a long term technology investment. As our discussion was drawing to an end, he took a listener question regarding the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. Dr. Brandenburg had much to say about the Moons, especially Phobos being the ideal place for the first Earth base to study and explore Mars. His pearls of wisdom stated that Mars lived as Earth lived and in many ways, may be pointing the way to us. If you have comments or questions for Dr. Brandenburg, post them on the blog URL above. You can also email them to me at drspace@thespaceshow.com and I will forward them to our guest.
[...] 4:04 Interview with John Brandenburg on thespaceshow.com, Feb 22, 2011-06-12 http://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/dr-john-brandenburg-tuesday-2-22… [...]
I read the following April1, 2011, Fox News SciTech story by writer John Brandon titled, “Was there a Natural Nuclear Blast on Mars?”t:
Source URL = http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/01/natural-nuclear-blast-mars/
After briefly Googling and reading some of the readily available technical literature on the matter, I must say that his bold idea is truly fascinating and, as far as I can tell at his point, seems to be supported by the available isotopic data. In other words, he may well be right.
Fascinated by his hypothesis about the possibility some sort of large-scale ‘nuclear event’ potentially occurring on Mars ~200 MY ago, I did some Googling and discovered The Space Show’s excellent live webradio interview with Dr. Brandenburg.
After listening to this interview and reading several other recent stories about his work, it appears that Brandenburg is now leaning further toward a shorter-duration ‘airburst’ event as the source of the needed neutron fluxes, as opposed to some type of long-running Oklo-type geo-fission reactor that somehow experienced a late-stage, catastrophic prompt criticality ‘explosion’ (for lack of a better descriptive word).
Interestingly, here is another potential nuclear mechanism that I think supports what appears to be Brandenburg’s latest thinking about the ‘Mars event.’ In particular, our recently published theoretical work strongly suggests that a previously obscure physical phenomenon called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENRs), which can produce copious fluxes of low energy neutrons in condensed matter systems, could also potentially operate during the course of some types of planetary impact events. Perhaps surprisingly, in our theory it turns out that, stars, supernovae explosions, and natural or manmade fission reactors are not necessarily the only places in Nature where substantial amounts of neutron-catalyzed nuclear transmutations, i.e., nucleosynthesis, can potentially occur.
Applying the Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs to the anomalous Mars data in question (for the purposes of argument, I assume that particular collection of data is correct as stated), I would speculate that a Thorium- and/or Uranium-rich asteroidal impactor (which was either mixed- in with hydrogenous water ice and/or struck the surface of a hypothetical Martian ocean that might have existed ~200 MY ago) could have struck the region on Mars north of the Acidalia Colles at a steep angle.
According to our theory, during such an event LENRs could have occurred on the surfaces of small particles comprising ablating surfaces of the impactor as it sped through Mars’ atmosphere and/or in the ensuing huge, hydrogen- and nitrogen-rich dusty fireball that would have been created immediately after it strongly interacted with the atmosphere and/or had actually struck the surface of the planet.
The possibility that LENRs might occur in such extraterrestrial impact events is specifically discussed and a proposed mechanism articulated on pages 31 – 36 in a Lattice Technical Report dated December 7, 2010, that can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/lewisglarsen/bacteria-lenrsand-isotopic-shifts-in-uraniumlarsenlattice-energy-dec-7-2010-6177275
Our latest peer-reviewed theoretical paper, “A primer for electroweak induced low-energy nuclear reactions”, was published in the Indian Academy of Science journal, “Pramana – Journal of Physics” in October 2010, and can be found at (free copy) http://www.ias.ac.in/pramana/v75/p617/fulltext.pdf
I finally listened to my podcast of this show, and really enjoyed it. I’d like to track down some of Dr. Brandenburg’s sci fi works, but neither Google nor Amazon seem to know anything about Victor Norgard. Does anyone have a pointer to where I can find these works?
Thanks,
Kevin Horton
Ottawa, Canada