Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!CDC.ACC.VIRGINIA.EDU!pcp2g
From: pcp2g@CDC.ACC.VIRGINIA.EDU (=3545***)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: plutonium
Message-ID: <880825130944.0000072C.ABAY.AA@Virginia>
Date: 25 Aug 88 17:09:44 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19

Someone wrote in suggesting that we dump plutonium into the sun and kill 
two birds with one stone: getting dangerously radioactive stuff off of the Earth 
and also once the plutonium was in the sun it would be ionized and therefore
be detected by an alien race (if they are equipped with a damn good s[ppectro- 
meter).

I see two problems: one is that you'd have to decelarate your load of Pt by
the orbital speed of the Earth to have it drop into the sun, and that speed 
is 18.5 miles per second, which is as far as I know a damn sight faster than
we can go right now. The second problem is that to be seen as an emission 
line from several light years away you'd have to dump a lot (A LOT!!) of 
the stuff into the sun. I haven't actually done the calculation (line 
intensities are difficult to get) but I would think you're talking about
billions if not trillions of tons of plutonium.

If someone out there can do this calculation, I'd love to see it. I don't 
trust my numbers all that well.  But I'm pretty sure we don't have enough plut
onium on the planet to be seen. 
\ 
{Phil Plait/pcp2g@cdc.virginia.acc.edu/UVa Astronomy Dept.}