Just to clear up some of the points raised:
-it's NOT possible to convert either Jupiter or Saturn into even a proto-brown dwarf failed star using any type of explosion; nuclear or otherwise. In fact there wouldn't be much chance of a stellar ignition even if Jupiter and Saturn collided head-on.
-there are probably only a hundred or so grams of plutonium on the Cassini craft, ie: the fuel in an ultra-long-life nuclear battery (wherein a voltage is maintained on the surface of a metal container housing radioactive material via beta+; beta-; alpha decay and ionising photons)
-you can't have more than about 2.2 kg (5 lbs) of any fissionable material in a single lump without it beginning to fission (neutron flux within the material becomes sufficient to sustain a self-propogating fission chain). Any amount of fissionable material exceeding this critical mass simply goes BOOM!
-plutonium is not used in nuclear bombs for anything other than the trigger mechanism; no more than five pounds per trigger piece (usually much, much less). So 50 lbs of plutonium in a warhead would mean at least 10 trigger pieces which must all be compressed simultaneously (by shaped explosive charges) requiring the coordinated collision of all trigger pieces at supersonic speeds within a fraction of a millisecond. You'd have better odds attempting to fire ten high velocity bullets at each other in such a way that all the individual bullets collided to form neat ball of lead.
-no, there is no sound in space. Sound is a longitudinal vibrational wave, which requires a medium through which to propogate: either solid, liquid or gas. In space, no one can hear you scream... Ripley.
-yes, ALL of Jupiter's/Saturn's moons would probably be vapourised if Jupiter/Saturn converted into a star. If memory serves, the miracle of the 2010 Roy Schneider movie was the manipulation of Jupiter directly into a white dwarf star by an extra terrestrial intelligence (the Monoliths). Normally white dwarves are an end stage of larger stars which undergo decay.
-Titan might be three times further out than our moon (Luna), but that's just 750k miles (our moon being 250k from us). Light travels at 186k miles PER SECOND... so our moon is only 1.3 light-seconds away; and Titan is only 4 light-seconds from Saturn. But putting this in perspective, the Earth is a full eight and a half light-MINUTES from the sun.
-if Saturn somehow conveted into a 6,000 K yellow star (like our sun), Titan would be vapourised four seconds later. Even Mercury is a full two and half light-minutes from the sun.
-if Saturn was somehow converted into a white dwarf, even then Titan would be in trouble as a brand new white dwarf has a surface temperature of 100,000 K and takes billions and billions of years to cool to the temperature of our own yellow sun.
-if somehow, magically, Saturn could be converted into an old, old dim reddish-coloured white dwarf remnant much cooler than our sun... Titan is still too close at only 4 light-seconds distance.
This whole argument is what physicists term: "Not even wrong"
The Luke
