5 ms·

In a cosmic timescale, it's practically instant.

renewiltord 2y ago
Yeah but if it flips every 11 years and takes 5 years to flip that's got a little less of the "about to flip" flavor to it.
- deleted 2y ago
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ck2 2y ago
On a solar scale though earth goes through a full orbit in just a year, Mars two years. It is interesting that Jupiter has an 11 year orbit and that kind of matches the flip, might just be coincidence but that mass has a huge tug though. Sun is only 1000 times the mass of Jupiter, if you think of it like a "failed star" it's kinda like a pseudo binary? Eh I am grasping at straws.
- lukan 2y ago
  If Jupiter was a failed star, it failed big time. "Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times more massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star,[66] its diameter is sufficient as the smallest red dwarf may be only slightly larger in radius than Saturn." It got as big as it could be, though. "Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had over 40% more mass, the interior would be so compressed that its volume would decrease despite the increasing amount of matter. For smaller changes in its mass, the radius would not change appreciably.[63] As a result, Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition and evolutionary history can achieve.[64] The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass would continue until appreciable stellar ignition was achieved" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter
  - kulahan 2y ago
    I think the point is that it's pretty darn close to the very fuzzy limit of when something can be a star vs. when it can't. If it were off in space on its own, rather than orbiting our star, it might be a contentious classification
    - vikingerik 2y ago
      No - the definition of a star isn't fuzzy at all. It's defined by hydrogen fusion - if it's doing that (or did in the past), it's a star, or if it isn't then it's not. Jupiter fails this by a factor of 75. Brown dwarfs (which fuse deuterium but not regular hydrogen, starting at about 13x Jupiter's mass) were thought to be in a fuzzy area, but then their own category was created for them.
      - kulahan 2y ago
        Thankfully I didn’t say “what a star is” was the fuzzy thing! :)

Yeah but if it flips every 11 years and takes 5 years to flip that's got a little less of the "about to flip" flavor to it.

deleted 2y ago
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ck2 2y ago

On a solar scale though earth goes through a full orbit in just a year, Mars two years. It is interesting that Jupiter has an 11 year orbit and that kind of matches the flip, might just be coincidence but that mass has a huge tug though. Sun is only 1000 times the mass of Jupiter, if you think of it like a "failed star" it's kinda like a pseudo binary? Eh I am grasping at straws.

lukan 2y ago
If Jupiter was a failed star, it failed big time. "Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times more massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star,[66] its diameter is sufficient as the smallest red dwarf may be only slightly larger in radius than Saturn." It got as big as it could be, though. "Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had over 40% more mass, the interior would be so compressed that its volume would decrease despite the increasing amount of matter. For smaller changes in its mass, the radius would not change appreciably.[63] As a result, Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition and evolutionary history can achieve.[64] The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass would continue until appreciable stellar ignition was achieved" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter
- kulahan 2y ago
  I think the point is that it's pretty darn close to the very fuzzy limit of when something can be a star vs. when it can't. If it were off in space on its own, rather than orbiting our star, it might be a contentious classification
  - vikingerik 2y ago
    No - the definition of a star isn't fuzzy at all. It's defined by hydrogen fusion - if it's doing that (or did in the past), it's a star, or if it isn't then it's not. Jupiter fails this by a factor of 75. Brown dwarfs (which fuse deuterium but not regular hydrogen, starting at about 13x Jupiter's mass) were thought to be in a fuzzy area, but then their own category was created for them.
    - kulahan 2y ago
      Thankfully I didn’t say “what a star is” was the fuzzy thing! :)