I've read multiple sides about a nuclear Mars incident.
Going over some of the article and tossing some ideas out...
Ever wonder why the red planet is red?
It's called iron oxide (rust).
About 180 million years ago, a planet-shattering yet naturally occurring nuclear reaction may have wiped out everything on
Mars, sending a shockwave that turned the planet into dry sand.
A natural nuclear reaction blowing up Mars as claimed isn't possible. The uranium ore that would generate this massive event would have to be weapons grade and in a very high concentration. Even if it was, it would have fissioned itself out during planetary formation. At best this would have melted rocks and made a volcano like lava flow.
Mars going dry and airless is mostly due to a lack of a magnetic field and the atomsphere being blown off into space by solar winds. This includes all the older gases. 180million years is plenty of time for a recovery from a large impact or detonation. Scientists claim Mars has been dry and lifeless for a long time, but they only have a guess and no real hard proof.
“A nuclear explosion could have sent debris all around the planet," he said. "Maps of gamma rays on Mars show a big red spot that seems like a radiating debris pattern ... on the opposite side of the planet there is another red spot."
Single spots don't seem to indicate a natural process. A couple large detonations wouldn't be enough to strip the atmosphere and dry the planet.
According to Brandenburg, the natural explosion, the equivalent of 1 million one-megaton hydrogen bombs, occurred in the northern Mare Acidalium region of Mars where there is a heavy concentration of radioactivity.
We really don't want to meet the aliens who are capable of tera-ton level nuclear events.
This explosion filled the Martian atmosphere with radio-isotopes as well, which are seen in recent gamma ray spectrometry data taken by
NASA, he said.
If these isotopes can still be easily read in the atmosphere and on the ground from orbiters, then they happened in "recent" geological history. "Recent" is probably defined as less than 50k years. These are probably mixed with other natural radioactive sources that could skew the numbers.
Brandenburg said gamma ray spectrometry taken over the past few years shows spiking radiation from Xenon 129 -- an increase also seen on Earth after a nuclear reaction or a nuclear meltdown, including the one at Chernobyl in 1986 and the disaster in
Japan earlier this month.
Notable Xenon 129 concentrations only comes from reactors or nuclear detonations. Older Xenon 129 gasses would have been blown off into space by now by the solar winds.
If Xenon 129 really is increasing naturally, that would seem to indicate an extremely concentrated vein of uranium that is off gassing.
If Xenon 129 is increasing unnaturally, that would seem to indicate that aliens (or maybe idiot humans from the secret space force) had a meltdown in their underground reactor.
And there are more pressing issues, including missions to find extraterrestrial life. “You have to assess the importance of the question relative to the cost of answering the question,” he said.
As I said before, we really don't want to meet the aliens who are capable of tera-ton level nuclear events.
Still, Beaty expressed doubts, saying the geological conditions on this planet and Mars have existed for millennia -- what exists has existed for a long time, and there are few sudden changes. “Rocks are what they are. [A natural nuclear reaction] could happen in another billion years, but it is not something to make you want to go home to your family and move to the mountains right away,” he said.
"Millennia" is in the lower thousands, not millions. And he's right about the mountains. Any aliens capable of tera-ton level nuclear events would level mountains. There's no place to run or hide.
Brandenburg -- who once worked at Livermore himself -- defended his research, arguing that defense experts he talked to off the record said they agreed there are signs of a nuclear reaction.
Weapons specialists tend to agree on the Xenon 129 issue. The "scientists" who deny it are the same ones who call UFO sightings just a high speed weather balloon filled with swamp gas and piloted by crash test dummies. Those dummy bastards really seem to enjoy going on joy rides in the sky.
A massive nuclear explosion on Mars would have created huge craters on the surface, visible from orbiting telescopes like Hubble and from the Mars rovers. Brandenburg said such craters could have filled in with sand over the past 180 million years, leaving no visual cues to prove the theory.
This statement would seem to support constant bombardment by smaller nuclear devices instead of a few larger ones.
Another possibility is that the reaction occurred in mid-air and did not leave a crater -- which is exactly what happened at
the Tunguska event in Russia in 1909, presumably by a large comet.
Excluding nuclear bunker busters, all the other nuclear weapons are supposed to be detonated some hundreds to thousands of feet in the air depending on the yield. Airbursts are meant to burn the ground as far as possible, not dig holes. Holes are dug by meteor impacts.
So I'm not convinced that these Xenon 129 concentrations are natural, and that's my $0.02.