Re: [OT]Nukes... tunnels.... boom....

Brian Burger wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Tomb wrote:
> 
[...]
> On an SF note: my geology is shaky, so can someone tell us whether
> radioactive elements can be found in asteroids or moons? Or are the
heavy
> elements only (probably) going to be found in/on planets?

Define the term "planet".  Dr Stone of the Voyager Project at NASA JPL
once described our solar system as "a star, 4 planets, and debris."  ;-)

Don't see why you couldn't find radioactive elements on moons, assuming
you've had the proper geological forces going on. And since even
planetary geologists haven't gotten a strong handle on what makes up
other planets (moons, et al) in detail (since we haven't dug in vey
far beneath the surface of the few we have sent probes to), I'm sure you
can PSB it with no problems in an SF environment and find necesary
radioactive elements. Asteroids might be a bit trickier, but again you
could simply say that said asteroid was originally from a
fully-developed
planet and thus be able to scrounge up some radioactive elements (but
probably not in the quantities you'd find on our fair chunk of debris).