Discuss 2010
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Jupiter as a star/sun
posted by KnixonSTAFFMOD on July 22, 2021 at 4:35 PM
It's a nice dramatic point, but the fact is that for Jupiter to be a star/sun - even allowing for artificial rather than natural ignition - it would have to be far more massive than it is now. The gravitational effects on the rest of the Solar System would be... significant.
What I recollect is that Jupiter would have to be 48 times the current mass, to operate as a star/sun, and something like 1,000 times the current mass to ignite as a star/sun on its own. Which means that if the Monolith Aliens added Monoliths to Jupiter until it reached sufficient mass to cause spontaneous ignition, it would for a time have to become 1,000 times more massive than it is now; and even if that condition was temporary, it would likely still have long-lasting effects on the Solar System, and probably Discovery/Leonov could not have escaped its gravity.
Not that such technical issues are rare. For another example, in The Andromeda Strain (the great original), based on the blood pH chart shown, Andromeda would not have killed the test animals they were using: those animals have normal blood pH outside of Andromeda's growth range. Scientist Michael Crichton should have known/written better.
Reply by sukhisoo
on July 27, 2021 at 7:15 AM
I will have to look up my astronomer/science fiction writer friend and ask him his opinion. In the meantime, there is this brief but cited article that has a slightly different take on it than you.
Reply by Knixon
on July 27, 2021 at 2:28 PM
That article is mostly about the effect of Jupiter turning into a "red dwarf" star, at 80 times its current mass when the Solar System originally formed to get it to "ignite." Everything I've read says that doing so now, wouldn't cause it to ignite, that would require a multiple of about 1,000 times mass which that article also indicates. And in the movie, Jupiter doesn't become a red dwarf. more like a white dwarf, which is normally part of the "advanced age" of a more typical star. However since Jupiter apparently "ignited spontaneously" in the movie because of artificially added mass, that would mean the Monolith Aliens multiplied Jupiter's mass by 1,000 at least temporarily, and doing so even briefly might have long-term consequences for the gravitational makeup of the system.
And even at "only" 80 times current mass - and Jupiter already has more than double the mass of all the other planets combined - I think the gravitational effects would be more pronounced than the article suggests.