Comment on if jupiter gained enough mass to trigger fusion and ignite into a star...

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Skua@kbin.earth ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The sun and Jupiter are pretty close in terms of density, and Jupiter would need to get at least an order of magnitude heavier to start fusion. I think it's just a coincidence that the outward pressure of the sun's fusion makes these numbers roughly line up.

Thirteen Jupiters seems to be a commonly-given lower limit for fusion, so let's go with that. To increase mass by thirteen times while maintaining density (and assuming the whole thing is a perfect sphere, which it obviously isn't), Jupiter needs to increase its radius by a factor of about 2.35. This increases its equatorial radius to about 168,000 km, which does swallow up the three innermost moons, but leaves the four big ones alones

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