Planet on Fire: A Manifesto for the Age of Environmental Breakdown

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Gliese 436 b is a Neptune-sized planet that orbits a red dwarf known as Gliese 436, a star that is cooler, smaller, and less luminous than the Sun. The planet completes one full orbit around its parent star in just a little over 2 days. This short orbital period indicates that the planet is located remarkably close to its star, perhaps orbiting Gliese 436 from one-hirteenth of the distance between Mercury (the innermost planet in our solar system) and the Sun. Artist rendering of Gliese 436 b (otherwise known as GJ 436 b) (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCF) We now face an environmental crisis that has to be confronted. This book sets out the scale of the emergency as well as marks out the route to a better society. This is an essential read. John McDonnell, MP The cause of this perplexing phenenenon is still unknown and, of course, the mystery of the missing methane still has astronomers scratching their heads. The Strangest Thing of All?

Observations of the planet's brightness temperature with the Spitzer Space Telescope suggest a possible thermochemical disequilibrium in the atmosphere of this exoplanet. Results published in Nature suggest that Gliese 436b's dayside atmosphere is abundant in CO and deficient in methane (CH 4) by a factor of ~7,000. This result is unexpected because, based on current models at its temperature, atmospheric carbon should prefer CH 4 over CO. [21] [22] [23] [24] In part for this reason, it has also been hypothesized to be a possible helium planet. [25]In response to the multitude of criticisms, Dudley published another short letter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. While accepting some of the criticisms, he raised additional what-if scenarios speculating that a runaway reaction may still be possible. Bernard Felt, editor in chief of the Bulletin at that time, wrote a wry conclusion to the debate between Dudley and Bethe: Rather than risk this contingency, I take the liberty of noting that, contrary to Dr. Dudley’s assertion, the hydrogen plus hydrogen reaction does differ in kind from that of deuterium plus deuterium, to the extent that this reaction requires temperatures and pressures comparable to those occurring in the interior of the Sun. Dr. Bethe’s point about the impossibility of a fusion chain reaction in the oceans therefore remains well-taken."

Exactly," Compton said, and with that gravity! "It would be the ultimate catastrophe. Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run the chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind!" Bethe, who led the T (theoretical) Division at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, said that by 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who eventually became the head of the project, had considered the "terrible possibility." This led to multiple scientists working on the relevant calculations, and finding that it would be "incredibly impossible" to set the atmosphere on fire using a nuclear weapon. At the time, Dr Heather Knutson, lead author on the paper discussed the significance of this atmosphere: “Either this planet has a high cloud layer obscuring the view, or it has a cloud-free atmosphere that is deficient in hydrogen, which would make it very unlike Neptune. Instead of hydrogen, it could have relatively large amounts of heavier molecules such as water vapor, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, which would compress the atmosphere and make it hard for us to detect any chemical signatures."In June 2015, scientists reported that the atmosphere of Gliese 436 b was evaporating, [26] resulting in a giant cloud around the planet and, due to radiation from the host star, a long trailing tail 14 × 10 In August 2022, this planet and its host star were included among 20 systems to be named by the third NameExoWorlds project. [12] The approved names, proposed by a team from the United States, were announced in June 2023. Gliese 436 b is named Awohali and its host star is named Noquisi, after the Cherokee words for "eagle" and "star". [2] Discovery [ edit ] And this strange ice substance can remain solid despite blisteringly hot temperatures — we're talking so hot, it could literally melt your face off ... if you somehow managed to catch a drop of it in your mouth (if you're wondering, human skin melts in water when it reaches 100°C/212°F). And if hydrogen, what about hydrogen in sea water? Might not the explosion of the atomic bomb set off an explosion of the ocean itself? Nor was this all that Oppenheimer feared. The nitrogen in the air is also unstable, though in less degree. Might not it, too, be set off by an atomic explosion in the atmosphere?" Hydrogen nuclei," Arthur Compton explained to me, "are unstable, and they can combine into helium nuclei with a large release of energy, as they do on the sun. To set off such a reaction would require a very high temperature, but might not the enormously high temperature of the atomic bomb be just what was needed to explode hydrogen?

As Astronaut reports, "Carbon, when it is cold, likes to hold onto hydrogen, but if it is hotter it likes to throw off the the hydrogen and steal oxygen from, say, water molecules, to make carbon monoxide."It is shown that, whatever the temperature to which a section of the atmosphere may be heated, no self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started. The energy losses to radiation always overcompensate the gains due to the reactions.