is jupiter really a planet?

[damienpaul]

hi again!

just wondering what arguments are there for jupiter being a planet rather than a brown dwarf star?

[Littlemews]

cloudy, stormy atmospheres on brown dwarfs, the celestial bodies that are less massive than stars but have more mass than giant planets like Jupiter. <<<<That one?

I hope the website still working ><
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=8416

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/images/t...rowndwarfs2.ram (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/images/trapezium/browndwarfs2.ram)

[damienpaul]

i wonder if it is possible that jupiter at some stage was a brown dwarf and has lost mass - just a thought

[North Star]

If i remember corectly jupiter has a cor temperature of 30,000 &#39;c, In orde for nuclea fusion to start the core has to be 15 million degrees. For this to happen jupiter would have to be 8 time bigger. Which means a brown dwafs size would have to be someware inbetween.

As for jupiter once being bigger and evaperating. I have never thougth of it my self. But i thinks it is possible after all steven hawkins think even black holes might evapourate over millions or billlions oy years.

[damienpaul]

Is it at all possible that Jupiter is a very slowly evaporating version of a cthonian... (i apologise if this is a silly question, just had sports day at work)

[Matthew]

For Jupiter to be a brown dwarf it would need to be much, much bigger. The amount of mass it would have needed to lose from it forming to toaday would be phenomenol.

[lilroff9000]

If Jupiter is not really a planet then Saturn,Uranus,and Neptune are not ones either.

[Christopher]

Its a matter of semantics I suppose. Gas giants can be considered planets when they are orbiting nearby stars. They just aren&#39;t "terrestrial" planets.