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 In summary, extremely conservative calculations have demonstrated that it is completely impossible for either the earth’s atmosphere or sea to sustain fusion reactions of either thermonuclear or nuclear chain reaction type. In particular, such reactions cannot be triggered by the explosion of nuclear weapons, even those having unrealistically high yield and impractically high yield-to-weight."

The planet's surface temperature is estimated from measurements taken as it passes behind the star to be 712K (439°C; 822°F). [5] This temperature is significantly higher than would be expected if the planet were only heated by radiation from its star, which was prior to this measurement, estimated at 520K. Whatever energy tidal effects deliver to the planet, it does not affect its temperature significantly. [15] A greenhouse effect would result in a much greater temperature than the predicted 520–620 K. [14] The largest bomb ever detonated was the Soviet Union’s 1961 behemoth Tsar Bomba. It was powerful enough to shatter windows more than 500 miles away, farther than Washington, D.C. is from Detroit. It was 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined. Its glowing fireball looked like a miniature sun rising above the horizon. By the time Enrico Fermi jokingly took bets among his Los Alamos colleagues on whether the July 16, 1945, Trinity test would wipe out all earthbound life, physicists already knew of the impossibility of setting the atmosphere on fire, according to a 1991 interview with Hans Bethe published by Scientific American. 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?"

Artist rendering of Gliese 436 b (otherwise known as GJ 436 b) (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCF) He also noted that while he shares Dudley's opposition to nuclear war, "it is totally unnecessary to add to the many good reasons against nuclear war one which simply is not true."

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). 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 ] Reading Planet on Fire feels like traversing a humming, interdependent ecosystem of ideas, porous to the post-crash movements and thinkers shaping today’s progressive environmentalism ... Starkly realistic whilst unflinchingly radical, Planet on Fire is a guidebook of hope for this crucial decade. Flora Parkin, LSE International DevelopmentRather 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." There was never any possibility of causing a thermonuclear chain reaction in the atmosphere. There was never "a probability of slightly less than three parts in a million," as Dudley claimed. Ignition is not a matter of probabilities; it is simply impossible." As the Dudley letter gained the attention of the public and appeared to possibly affect future nuclear policy and research in the U.S., it began to invite more scrutiny from other experts. In a classified letter sent to the U.S. Department of Energy, Roger Batzel, the then-director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, responded to the request to reassess the risk outlined by Dudley by saying:

Moffett Studio, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Weber Collection, W. F. Meggers Gallery of Nobel Laureates Collection 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. This clear and incisive book starts from the immensely important insight that we cannot understand climate breakdown outside of the capitalist social relations that produced it. Planet on Fire reminds us that climate breakdown is intimately linked to all the overlapping crises humanity faces - from the rise of the far right, to growing socioeconomic inequality, to the COVID-19 pandemic - and that ecosocialism is the only route to an equal and sustainable world. Grace Blakeley And therein lies the second mystery — carbon monoxide should not be present to this degree, as it becomes scarce when temperatures soar above a certain threshold.

Gliese 436 b / ˈ ɡ l iː z ə/ (sometimes called GJ 436 b, [7] formally named Awohali [2]) is a Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 436. [1] It was the first hot Neptune discovered with certainty (in 2007) and was among the smallest-known transiting planets in mass and radius, until the much smaller Kepler exoplanet discoveries began circa 2010.

Gliese 436 b was discovered in August 2004 by R.Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy of the Carnegie Institute of Washington and University of California, Berkeley, respectively, using the radial velocity method. Together with 55 Cancrie, it was the first of a new class of planets with a minimum mass (Msin i) similar to Neptune. [1] 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 December 2013, NASA reported that clouds may have been detected in the atmosphere of GJ 436 b. [8] [9] [10] [11] Nomenclature [ edit ] It is impossible to reach such temperature unless fission bombs or thermonuclear bombs are used which greatly exceed the bombs now under consideration. But even if bombs of the required volume (i.e., greater than 1,000 cubic meters) are employed, energy transfer from electrons to light quanta by Compton scattering will provide a further safety factor and will make a chain reaction in air impossible." There was a tone of annoyance shared among the physicists who tried to convince those outside of their field of the underlying science: Although the theories at first glance hint at a possibility for the apocalyptic scenarios, the outcomes are simply impossible in reality. However, since Dr. Dudley chose in his rebuttal to give new emphasis to the possibility of a hydrogen plus hydrogen reaction in the ocean, Dr. Bethe would be fully justified in wishing to respond to this, thereby setting off a chain reaction which we could probably not contain.