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How Big Is the Biggest Possible Planet?
- myrandomcomment 9y agoI wonder if anyone has every looked at the 2010 (book or movie) idea of turning Jupiter into a star and what would really happen?
- saboot 9y agoTake an orbital simulation with our current planet positions and velocities, change the mass of Jupiter and keep momentum the same, and see what happens! I'd predict not good things though, our solar system is somewhat chaotic / unstable over long time scales so a sudden change would probably eject some planets.
- gonvaled 9y agoIncreasing mass will require changing Jupiter's momentum in order to get a stable binary. The rest of the planets will go wild, true.
- Retric 9y agoSimulating these interactions over very long timescales is rather tricky. So, getting this right is very hard and must include not only energy calculations including rotation, but also full on General Relativity. Remember, because you need a lot of energy to change a planets orbit and planets only very weakly interact things are more stable than you might think.
- Retric 9y agoLet me put it another way, how do you validate your model?
- taneq 9y agoDepends whether you do it by squeezing Jupiter, or by adding mass. Squeezing wouldn't do much except make Jupiter's moons brighter/hotter. Adding mass (if you added the mass at the right orbital velocity so as to not mess with the orbit) would probably not make much difference given that the current solar system seems stable, but it's an N-body problem so it's anybody's guess what would happen.
- flukus 9y ago> Squeezing wouldn't do much except make Jupiter's moons brighter/hotter If we had a way to squeeze it hard enough could we make a stable star or would it explode back to some non-fusion equilibrium point?
- taneq 9y agoI'd assume that we'd need to keep squeezing it or it would just revert to its current state, but I'm pretty much guessing now.
- madez 9y agoThis is an interesting read. It is not intertwined with a story I have no interest in. It links to useful references. It has facts, not an opinion to share.
- sitkack 9y agoThanks for sharing. Why don't you like opinion and narrative?
- madez 9y agoIt's not that I don't like narrative or couldn't appreciate opinion. But I want them seperated from the facts. If the title of the article promises interesting news and facts, then that is what I expect. When I want narrative, I read a novel. I want to form my own opinion after seeing the facts. Then I can compare my opinion with others. This article strikes a good balance between a blunt bullet-point list of facts, and too much talking. When in doubt, I prefer the list of facts. When I see an article starting with "It was a long and rainy summer day when John McDoe..." I stop reading and close the tab.
- taneq 9y agoThey seem to be exclusively considering gas giants. A planet made of heavier elements would be much more resistant to fusion at its core (but then would be much heavier as well) - someone more familiar with the numbers could calculate whether this would make the limit higher or lower.
- sitkack 9y agoAre you saying a planet made entirely out of Iron? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_peak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_star