Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!CDC.ACC.VIRGINIA.EDU!pcp2g
From: pcp2g@CDC.ACC.VIRGINIA.EDU (=3545***)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Plutonium
Message-ID: <880829154722.000008A8.ABBF.AA@Virginia>
Date: 29 Aug 88 19:47:22 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

Well, it looks like I have to flame my own flame. I made several errors 
in my last mailing.
1) Plutonium is Pu, not Pt. Someone already e-mailed a correction to me.
   I'm an astronomer, not a chemist, dammit!
2) Replace "emission line" with "absorption line". Cold matter against
   a hot background absorbs radiation.
3) I was wrong about having to decelerate the package by 18.5 miles/sec
   to collide it with the Sun. Using Jupiter or the moon or even the
   Earth itself for a gravity assist (slingshot) would do the trick. It 
   would still be difficult, but not impossible. 
4) There are two problems I overlooked--one is that  what happens if
   the rocket carrying the Pu blows up twenty miles up? Scratch one eco- 
   sphere, that's what. A payload like that is too risky to launch. The 
   other problem was pointed out to me by a friend: To create an absorption 
   line, the absorber must be in the upper atmosphere of the sun, where the
   solar gas is tenuous enough to see through. A payload would tend to sink
   out of sight. Perhaps blowing up the payload might keep it in the upper
   atmosphere temporarily , but convection would eventually suck it down.
   And there still is the problem that you need a shitload of Plutonium 
   to be visible even from the Earth, let alone from another star. 

   So, I have fanned my own flame. Next time I'll open my brain before I 

open my mouth. 
PS- There may be another copy of this (a first draft, actually) that may
get sent. The tin box I use to get Digest on tends to massively screw up 
e- 
e-mail, as that last line shows (the editor is about ten years old on
this machine). 

{Philip Plait/PCP2G@cdc.Virginia.acc.edu/UVa Dept of Astronomy} 
[If you laid all statisticians end to end, they would all point in 
 diferent directions]