Truth of Jupiter.

Some scientists are saying that Jupiter is an under-devolped star. Lets go over the facts:
~ Its diameter is 88846 miles( the sun is 865000 miles and it is a medium)
~ It has over 16 moons. The one,Ganymede, is bigger then Mercury (the moon- 3273 miles, mercury- 3031 miles)
~ Its atmospher has methane and ammonia in it, which are two of the starting gasses for a star.
~ It gives off more energy then it receives from the sun( almost twice)
~ It attracks many large objects to it which then orbit around it.

Do I need to go on?

What do you think of it? Belive it is a star or not?

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by nobody]

I've heard that since I was a kid in school, probably something to it.

I actually do not. Brown dwarves, the smallest stars we've found to date, have to be about 30 times larger than Jupiter. Also, a star has internal neuclear reactions going on with hydrogen. In order for that to happen, a planetary body needs to be much larger then Jupiter is...So no, I don't think Jupiter is a star. It's an attempted star that just never got enough material to form.

This topic should be in another subject area, like science and technology.

A star is usually defined as a body whose core is hot enough and under enough pressure to fuse light elements into heavier ones with a significant release of energy. The most basic (and easiest, in terms of the temperatures and pressures required) type of fusion involve the fusion of four hydrogen nuclei into one helium-4 nucleus, with a corresponding release of energy (in the form of high-frequency photons). This reaction powers the most stable and long-lived class of stars, the main sequence stars (like our Sun and nearly all of the stars in the Sun's immediate vicinity).

Below certain threshold temperatures and pressures, the fusion reaction is not self-sustaining and no longer provides a sufficient release of energy to call said object a star. Theoretical calculations indicate (and direct observations corroborate) that this limit lies somewhere around 0.08 solar masses; a near-star below this limit is called a brown dwarf.

By contrast, Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is only 0.001 masses solar. This makes the smallest possible stars roughly 80 times more massive than Jupiter; that is, Jupiter would need something like 80 times more mass to become even one of the smallest and feeblest red dwarfs. Since there is nothing approaching 79 Jupiter masses of hydrogen floating around anywhere in the solar system where it could be added to Jupiter, there is no feasible way that Jupiter could become a star.

i think jupiter started life as a star but had to abort its developement in that direction due to lack of resources (our star stole them all) so it had to live with being a mere planet... its probably still bitter about it now 4.6 billion years later... i would be

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by specialasianX]

Originally posted by nobody
Some scientists are saying that Jupiter is an under-devolped star. Lets go over the facts:
~ Its diameter is 88846 miles( the sun is 865000 miles and it is a medium)
~ It has over 16 moons. The one,Ganymede, is bigger then Mercury (the moon- 3273 miles, mercury- 3031 miles)
~ Its atmospher has methane and ammonia in it, which are two of the starting gasses for a star.
~ It gives off more energy then it receives from the sun( almost twice)
~ It attracks many large objects to it which then orbit around it.

Do I need to go on?

What do you think of it? Belive it is a star or not?

[Edited on 23-12-2003 by nobody]

A star, by deffinition has sustained nuclear fusion on a large scale. Jupiter does not show signs of this therefore it is not a star.

Its just a matter of deffinition. Jupiter is the basis of a star, given more mass it would indeed start to 'burn' and be a star.

Saying jupiter is a star if going against the very deffinition of a star. Its like calling a bicycle a car. Just cause a bike has some of the steps toward being a car (wheels, handles for control) doesn't mean it is actualy a car.

One might ask if Jupiter has nuclear fusion at its core (no good evidence of this yet) however, it is not a star.

Many scientists and astronomers actually believe Jupiter may in fact be a failed star.

Jupiter emits more energy than it actually receives from the sun--twice as much.
Jupiter began as an enourmous gas ball, 2 and a half times larger than all the other planets combined. It contracted and heated up, just as the infant sun was doing. But unlike the sun, Jupiter had far too little mass to send its core temperature high enough to start fusion reactions. Instead of reaching the millions of degrees needed, the core heated up only a few tens of thousands of degrees. So Jupiter became only hot enough to glow cherry-red, like a red dwarf star, and for a while it bathed its inner moons in light and heat that faded as Jupiter slowly cooled.

-Taken directly from National Geographic's picture atlas of "Our Universe", by Roy A. Gallant

So, would there be a way to add mass to Jupiter and create a fusion reaction thus turning it into a star?

Originally posted by �any
So, would there be a way to add mass to Jupiter and create a fusion reaction thus turning it into a star?

we could send up king crimson. that's some heavy fusion. we'd need to get levin and bruford back in the band, though.

if jupiter did suddenly erupt ( a big if), what would the effect on this solar system be, considering we would have 2 suns. We would be pretty much screwed huh?

Originally posted by Hemps
if jupiter did suddenly erupt ( a big if), what would the effect on this solar system be, considering we would have 2 suns. We would be pretty much screwed huh?

Yes. We'd bake to a crisp is short order.

It would also do major damage to the other gas giants, as LOTS of new energy rained down on them.

But it would look really neat while we burned up.

if jupiter did suddenly erupt ( a big if), what would the effect on this solar system be, considering we would have 2 suns. We would be pretty much screwed huh?

Not really. If Jupiter for some reason would become a star, it would just become a lot brighter. It would remain the same mass, so our rotation around the Sun would remain unchanged.

The only danger would be in any potential temperature increases. It only takes a sustained 5 or so degrees temperature change on our planet to effect mass extinction. However, global warming (if its a reality) is doing that without the help of any additional stars. since Jupiter is 80 times less dense than a small star and its even further away than our Sun, I doubt our planet would even get 1 degree hotter.


[Edited on 24-12-2003 by heelstone]

i just realized, we would have to completely change our time perception and our seasons, because of the two rotations. if jupiter was another star, we could have worldwide daytime. winter probably wouldnt happen either...how crazy would that be

The brightness would not be horribly bright. More than likely no brighter than the moon, but just a pinpoint of light. You would see no large circle, Jupiter would just be a tiny twinkling, but very bright star.

how far away is jupiter anyway?
i think if the entire planet became engulfed in flames, we would be able to see it, considering its close proximity, as opposed to the other stars which are thousands upon thousands of light years away.
right?

This sounds like Arthur C Clarke's theory from his book "2001".
As someone else has stated here, it is likely that Jupiter would not destroy the Earth if it were a sun. It would have to be much bigger to make any major temperature change to our part of the Solar System.
The big difference would be the light that it would give off and this would affect our planet. Many different species of life would be affected by more light.
I disagree that it would be a mere pinprick of light. Jupiter has almost the same elemental compostion of the Sun.

But Jupiter cannot become a Sun due to it's mass. It would require 10 times more mass just to become a brown dwarf and as stated earlier in this thread, 80 times more mass to be able to initiate the nuclear reactions that make a star shine.
Arthur C Clarke got around this problem in his book by having the black monoliths multiply on the surface of Jupiter and add to the mass of the planet until this was so.

Originally posted by heelstone
This topic should be in another subject area, like science and technology.

You right.

Good answers, guys!

As everyone's saying, Jupiter's just a gas giant. The chances of it becoming a star are about the same as your chances of blowing up the Pentagon with a nitroglycerine pill (the kind people take for heart problems.) I'd forgotten the Clarke monolith bits and Jupiter in "2001." I think it seemed so lame to me back then that the mind just kind of forgot it.

Jupiter is 390700000 - 600000000 miles from Earth.