What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?

I know it is very implausible even though scientist have said that jupiter very well could have turned into a star during its formation. What do you think would happen if Jupiter were to ignite? What would the effects be on earth?What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?Jupiter qualifies as an "almost star" the same way that your back yard qualifies as an "almost continent."



Jupiter is about 1/12 to 1/13 the mass required to fuse deuterium... the lowest mass brown dwarfs, which are subject for debate as to whether they are stars or not, considering they cannot even maintain that form of fusion for any dependable length of time. So how massive would Jupiter need to be, to sustain hydrogen as a Red Dwarf, and give our solar system a second star?



About 70-80 times it's current mass. Since there isn't that much mass (Sun excluded) in the entire solar system, we can fully remove "implausible" from your sentence.



If we magically gave Jupiter that kind of mass, and it suddenly became a star, it is not the light/radiation that I would be concerned about, it would be the gravitational perturbances on all the inner planets. Mars' orbit would become even more elliptical than it already is, and might even get sent off into interstellar space or fall into the new 80 Jupiter-Massed Sun. A similar fate could be in store for the Earth as well, as these "multiple body" gravitational physics problems make things a little complicated.What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?
Jupiter would have to be much more massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star.



If Jupiter were large enough for this to happen, our solar system would be a binary star system. These are fairly common, many stars are orbited by other stars.



Depending on the brightness of Jupiter, Earth would be warmed slightly. Jupiter would probably be a brown or red dwarf, as these stars have a low mass. They are not very bright compared to the Sun.



At times when Jupiter and Earth were on the same side of the Sun, Jupiter would be very bright during nighttime, in fact, people living on Earth might refer to a brighter daytime, when Earth is lit by the Sun, and a lesser daytime, when Earth is lit by Jupiter. The brightest days of all would be when both Jupiter and the Sun are visible in the sky at the same time, but not when they are close together in the sky. However, if Jupiter were a dim star, it might not make much difference.



Jupiter's influence on the Earth would be least when Jupiter appears next to the Sun, as viewed from Earth. In this situation, Jupiter is behind the Sun, very far from Earth, so not much light would get from Jupiter to Earth.



As a star with the minimum required weight for fusion, Jupiter would have a long life span, outliving the Sun.



Jupiter as it is now has many moons. One of these moons, Europa, has more water than Earth, but it is covered by a thick layer of ice. If Jupiter could fuse hydrogen, it might heat up Europa, melting the ice and creating a habitable world. However, Europa might not be large enough to hold on to an atmosphere. In that case, the water would boil off and escape into space until Europa was dry.What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?I don't believe that Jupiter has enough mass to create the gravity needed for star formation. It does have a tremendous amount of Hydrogen, but if it somehow ignited it would likely just explode, which might cause us some problems (the gravitational disturbance could send large asteroids or other objects hurling our way). Plus, just having Jupiter around is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner in that it tends to suck up errant objects which might otherwise target us.



For the sake of discussion lets assume Jupiter could somehow become a star. If a gigantic cosmic truck of the right ingredients could be delivered by divine intervention to the planet and it did manage to collapse upon the weight of its own gravity, ignite and become a star...



It would have much, much more gravitational influence. Our system would become binary. It would move towards the sun and the Sun would move towards it. Though it could possibly collide with the Sun, this probably would not happen. Because the Sun and Jupiter are already in a tangential orbit, they would likely miss on the first pass, Jupiter's orbit would become elongated, and over millions (billions if they survive) of years their orbits would become tighter and more circular.



This process would not bode well for the other planets. All orbits would be thrown off. Planets would either be consumed by one of the two stars or they would be thrown out of the system and head off in to deep space like Voyager. Planets which are cast out could become part of a distant orbiting system like the Oort Cloud.



Either way it goes, we would not be here to have debates of this kind. Life on Earth could not exist in anything but bacterial form, and possibly not even that for very long. Unless we have something like the Battlestar Gallactica to slip away in, we're doomed.What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?
Not much more than a nice spectacle on some nights. Jupiter is always more than 4 times as far away from us as the Sun, so even if it would be as big as the Sun, it would be 16 times less bright. So we would receive in that case about 5% more radiation, when it's closest to the Earth.



That's bearable.



The situation in the Alpha Centauri system is quite similar, with Alpha Centauri B in an elliptical orbit ranging from the Saturn orbit to the Pluto orbit.What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?You know what, I did not know that, and I looked it up and saw the composition of Jupiter and that is really interesting. I have never studied Jupiter but instead Saturn, Uranus, and Titan (Saturn's Earth like moon). It's really interesting to know that if you were to "land" on Jupiter, you would go right through it eventually being crushed by pressure and then burned by the core.



But to answer your question, I do think if it were to catch on fire, it would have some very small effect on our temperature (as if we need that), but I don't think we would be fried. It is to small and to far away to let off any massive amount of heat like the sun. The sun is 1,390,000 Km as Jupiter is only 141,700 Km wide.



Furthermore, we are closer to the Sun at 149.63*10^6 Km than we are to Jupiter at 778.6*10^6 Km. So, when factoring the size of Jupiter and the distance we are away, we might not be effected at all.
Not "implausible", "impossible".



Perhaps several decades ago someone speculated on how close Jupiter came to lighting up. Now, however, we understand quite a bit more. The planet Jupiter has has about 1/13 of the mass required to become a brown dwarf, and about 1/80 of the mass required to become a red dwarf, which is the smallest true 'star'.



Having said all of that, Imagine a second, smaller dimmer 'sun' in the sky. If it were a brown dwarf I doubt it would be visible in the daylight, but it would be even brighter than it is now at night.



The upper limit of luminosity would be somewhere around 0.01% that of the sun. If my calculations are right (and there's always a good chance they're not) that puts a brown dwarf below the -4 magnitude brightness of the daytime sky.What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?
There would be two suns in the sky. but even J is much smaller than the sun and would use its fuel quickly. J is farther from us than the sun and would seem much smaller and dimmer.

You could not get " a Jupiter-burn" from letting it shine on you.



there are binary star systems where there are two stars close together
Read Arthur C Clarke's " 2010: Odyssey Two" - Jupiter does turn into a star, " 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey."I also highly recommend his "Childhood's End" which was written before "2001"What would happen if Jupiter turned into a star or ignited?
people would be able to get tanned fast. it's a win-win situation. too bad for Jupiter's inhabitants. They come to live on earth though. kthxbye.
Almost impossible...but theoreticallyy, we wouldn't be around to see the end of it.
we would fing die dude
my personal opinion, I think Jupiter was supposed to be a twin for our moon, a brown drawf, since most do galaxies have 2 moons, even though it is quite small in moon statistics.



our galaxy is the odd ball! hah ;]



But I do not think that's it is possible for Jupiter to just ignite out of no where %26amp;%26amp; transform into a moon. I don't think Jupiter even has enough radiation for it.