Not only is Jupiter physically larger than the Earth (meaning that it presents more of a cross-section for comets & asteroids to smack into), but its additional gravity gives it more “reach” to deflect such object towards itself. If you just had each planet sitting in deep space, with a uniform density of objects slowly moving by, you can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to show that you should expect Jupiter to have about 3600 times more impacts than the Earth does (the number works out to be the ratio of the planets’ radii multiplied by the ratio of their masses.) I’m not sure how this number would change in the presence of the Sun, but it’s probably accurate as a ballpark estimate.
Slightly off topic, but read this very interesting article:
<agent maxwell smart>
Missed us by that much!
</agent maxwell smart>
Well, something’s been keeping Ganymede hanging around the Big J for recorded history! 
RTGs arent nuclear warheads and dont explode like how the author thinks they would. Not to mention critical mass for a plutonium bomb is something like 100+lbs. RTG radioactive mass is broken up into pellets too.
Well, to be completely fair, critical mass depends on the density of the material. If you can squish plutonium to a greater density than normal, you can get it to go critical with less mass than normal. That said, though, I highly doubt that even Jupiter’s extreme pressures could squish the plutonium in the RTGs enough.
Back to the OP, yet another factor is that Jupiter’s orbit is larger, so a tube of space centered around that orbit like a giant bicycle tire would have a larger volume than Earth’s, so there’s more chance for assorted objects to pass through that volume. And yet another factor is that at Jupiter’s distance, solar system objects tend to be moving slower, so they’re easier to deflect out there.
Do you mean volume?
I got this far…
Then I broke out laughing.
I kept reading. And I kept laughing. And laughing and laughing and laughing…
For those who aren’t already in on the joke, Wikipedia.
Hoagland could be standing here in my room, telling me I’m composing a post to the Strange Dope, and I’d laugh in his face.
I think someone should wear a t-shirt with the word “Jupiter” on it to a bar and report back to us.
No, I meant what I said. Take a given quantity of fissionable material that’s stable at normal density, compress it enough, and that same mass of material will go critical. Again, though, I don’t think you could actually compress it enough.
And I didn’t notice that that piece was by Hoagland, which really is all you need to know about it.
You said “less mass” the first time around, and now you’re saying the same mass. I assume it was just a typo. I’m not trying to argue with you, just understand. A mass of material compressed now has less volume, but the same mass, no?
Don’t you mean sucks better ?
And, because the question has to be asked:
How often does Uranus get nailed?
:eek:
Si (and the answer is and always will be zero)
He’s saying that if you compressed the material, its density will go up, and if plutonium normally requires mass X to go critical, a smaller amount than X could potentially go critical if it was compressed sufficiently.
Hey, I didn’t say I believed it! I just thought it was an interesting read! 
I believe the thread you’re looking for is in IMHO.
Yep.
Indeed this is how the nuclear bomb detonated over Nagasaki worked. It only had about 13.5 pounds of plutonium in it (a sub-critical mass). In order to make it explode in sufficiently spectacular fashion the plutonium core was surrounded with explosives. These explosives detonated and compressed the core to a critical density for that mass.
Implosion type nuclear bombs became a pretty common design (although apparently getting the explosives to implode the core as a perfect sphere is quite tricky and very demanding from a technical/engineering standpoint).
It’s Not Rocket Surgery! said:
Ugh. No. The term is “near miss” as in “it was a miss that came really close, as opposed to a miss that was a long way away”. That is much different than “nearly a miss” which would be a hit.
It’s all about the English language. Use it right.
Irishman*, you may not recognize the name, but over here George Carlin was a famous comedian who loved to play with words in his stand-up.
And he was quite correct. Even thought the idiomatic expression of “near miss” is always used to indicate an almost collision, the literal meaning of the expression is opposite to the common usage. Idioms are often contra-logical, so this is absolutely correct English, but it’s also fodder for a stand-up routine.
*Assuming you’re not making a point and leaving off the smilie.