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To: X-FID
There is some info out there about how much bigger Jupiter would have to be to turn into a star.

Roughly speaking, Jupiter is 300 times the mass of the Earth. The sun is 300,000 times the mass of the Earth, or about 1,000 times the mass of Jupiter.

As best I recall, stars don't form unless the mass is at least 0.1 solar masses (and maybe even bigger), so a minimum stellar mass would be about 30,000 times the mass of the earth, which would be 10 times larger than a planet with a mass of ten Jupiters.....

That makes Jupiter too small to be a star by a factor of about 100....

Objects that are slightly too small to initiate fusion reactions and become full fledged stars are called "brown Dwarfs"... a google search will probably tell much more than I can about them....

5 posted on 11/28/2002 5:07:07 PM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow
I have been around for a few years now, and re-establish my love for FR by the occasional info post such as yours. Thanks...makes it a great place.

SR

7 posted on 11/28/2002 5:18:39 PM PST by sit-rep
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