Jupiter...another star?

[C3H5(NO3)3]

Is it possible? I mean, it's so huge I'm sure if...it somehow grew a little nucelar fusion would occur, if it did....would it be anywhere near as bright as our Sun, or would it be a red star?

 

Also, is there metallic H at Jupiter's core, and liquid H as you go farther out, and then of course ending with H2?

 

 

So many questions, it's a debate I have with this other guy at another forum...

[Ophiolite]

There is no debate. Jupiter is insufficiently massive by a factor of about twenty. That's not a little growth. Sorry to disappoint, it would make for great sunsets.

[C3H5(NO3)3]

Ok, just clearing it up...it would have to grow 20x it's current size to "turn on" and become a star, right? But there is metallic H at it's core...right? If you want, I can get you the link from the thread I am talking about and see what I'm trying to get at.

 

BTW, does the Sun take up ~99.9% of all mass in our solar system? Is that true?

[mmalluck]

How much larger would it have to be to fuse Tritium or Deterium and therefore become a brown dwarf?

[Ophiolite]

The figures are debated in the fine detail, also I'm quoting from memory, but the rough figure of a 20x times increase was intended to include the sputtering effort at fusion practiced by Brown Dwarfs.

Right. After some quick checking, here we go

(Data from Chapter 10, Worlds Without End, by John S. Lewis, Helix Books, ISBN: 0-7382-0170-7)

The sun (G2 main sequence) Mass: Sun 1 Jupiter 1300

Red dwarf (M8 main sequence) Mass: Sun 0.07 Jupiter 90

Anything smaller and less massive cannot sustain hydrogen fusion

Brown dwarf Mass: Sun 0.01 to 0.07 Jupiter 13 to 90

These can generate a little heat via deuterium fusion.

 

There may be metallic hydrogen at the core, or it may be a rocky mass similar in size to the Earth. This depends upon how it formed, and is the subject of much current debate.

[Spyman]

Ok, just clearing it up...it would have to grow 20x it's current size to "turn on" and become a star, right?

Size and mass is not the same thing. The gravity would pull harder and compress the body so it would be more compact with higher pressure. It would have larger radius but not 20 times larger.

 

A remarkable property of brown dwarfs is that they are all roughly the same radius, more or less the radius of Jupiter. At the high end of their mass range [60-90 Jupiter masses], the volume of a brown dwarf is governed primarily by electron degeneracy pressure, as it is in white dwarfs; at the low end of the range [1-10 Jupiter masses'], their volume is governed primarily by Coulomb pressure, as it is in planets. The net result is that the radii of brown dwarfs vary by only 10-15% over the range of possible masses. This can make distinguishing them from planets difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

 

BTW, does the Sun take up ~99.9% of all mass in our solar system? Is that true?

Very close, it depends on the estimate of the mass of all the bodies in the system.

 

The Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest).

http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/sol.html