Converting Jupiter to a star

[KhashayarShatti]

Among many possibilities, I thought of the possibility of how to convert jupiter to a star.
How is it possible to have a better solar system with jupiter providing us the ultimate conditions to be able to develop life on its moons? I thought perhaps one possibility would be to add iron to the core of the planet so that by extreme pressure at the core due to gravity and application of intense electric arcs in the core the planet can be ignited and converted to a low energy star. Iron seems to have the highest stable nucleus for resonance and it seems to be essential for release of enormous amount of energy shrinking to helium and fusion to occur in the stars. Obviously I don't mean to make everyone to think of this method but as a starting point I mentioned it so that new ideas and possibilities could crop up.

[Trebuchet]

Already happened, when we crashed Galileo into it. You're just imagining you're still alive. At least that was the conspiracy theory at the time.

Seriously, I don't think there's enough mass there under any circumstances. And if you did manage to touch it off, I think you'd be more likely to eliminate any possibility of life on its moons than to enhance it -- they're too close. Others with more astro knowledge than I can probably state it better.

[NEOWatcher]

Obviously I don't mean to make everyone to think of this method but as a starting point I mentioned it so that new ideas and possibilities could crop up.

Off the top of my head, I don't even think that the method has much in the way of dreaming. According to Wiki, a star will need 75 times the mass of Jupiter for sustained fusion. I can't even begin to think of the problems that could cause in our neighborhood.

Besides, it's the pressure from the layers above that causes the fusion. So; you would need that kind of pressure at the surface of the iron core for fusion to begin. Even with the increased density and gravity, there won't be enough material above to provide those kinds of pressures. So; your core would have to be even larger. Now that we have a larger core, we spread material over a larger surface, so that reduces the depth of the hydrogen, which in turn lowers the pressure, and on and on.

[Daffy]

You start with this big monolith...

[astromark]

As 'Daffy' has pointed out, Its been done imagined written off and of.. and the film made..

Stanley K's 2001 A space oddity... added some mass to Jupiter and turns it 'on.'

The problem being that to add 75 times it current mass. Would change the gravity balance.. stability.

Planetary mass clears its vicinity of orbit of all debris.. Oops.

Earth would be thrown into a ellipse path that could see it ejected from this system.

and from where is this mass coming from.. ? A interesting old film, but its was rubbish idea then and now.

[antoniseb]

... a star will need 75 times the mass of Jupiter for sustained fusion. I can't even begin to think of the problems that could cause in our neighborhood. ...

The fusion wouldn't cause trouble, we'd barely detect it. Jupiter being 75 times more massive might affect the orbits of the asteroids in unfortunate ways.

I didn't really follow the OPs idea about somehow getting metallic Iron into the center and somehow creating lots of electrical arcs. If the goal is simply to find a way to start fusion in Jupiter, you'd want to pollute the core with Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen, and then compress the core of the planet's core to a thousandth of its current volume, and let the CNO cycle do its thing. Of course the tools to compress Jupiter and keep it compressed haven't been built yet, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader

[KhashayarShatti]

Now that the mass is critical, how can it be imagined that on earth we would be able to creat a fusion reactor? Though the nature has predefined rules of physics for itself I have made an analogy regarding the fact that iron didn't fly in the air but mankind made it fly. Let us imagine we would be able to shrink jupiter to a tenth of its size when nuclear reaction starts and solve the problem of its moons distances, and keeping the nuclear reaction of a low energy type similar to LENR so that heat will not cause much expansion of the planet. The other day when I calculated the pressure at the centre of earth I found that it is much more than the yield stress of iron and by magnetic flux calculations(regarding 0.5gauss at the surface and 1.8 tesla at the core) I got a figure of 3Km iron core in the centre of earth(if my rough calcalations would be correct). So there is bound to be a lot of nickel and iron in the centre of jupiter that could be enough for a LENR process with 5KW/litre energy density achieved recently compared to perhaps 40KW/litre fission reactors. May be we are not too far off the main road ,though the topic seems to be far away from reality. Iron, nickel and hydrogen with some magnetic field and electric current could be one possibility.

[Nowhere Man]

Stanley K's 2001 A space oddity [sic]... added some mass to Jupiter and turns it 'on.'

Please. You mean 2010: The Year We Make Contact, not 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Fred

[Van Rijn]

Now that the mass is critical, how can it be imagined that on earth we would be able to creat a fusion reactor?

We already have created fusion reactors on Earth (they currently take more energy to run than they generate, but there definitely are working fusion reactors).

The reason you can have a fusion reactor on Earth is because we aren't achieving fusion the same way as a star does it. A star relies on having enough mass to end up with a hot dense core. We use magnetic fields to maintain a hot plasma, or lasers or other schemes to implode small amounts of material. We also use isotopes that are easier to fuse than regular hydrogen.

[korjik]

Which means, if you used alot of lithium, deuterium, and helium-3, and and were willing to refuel every few million years, you might be able to get enough fusion to warm up jupiter in only a few times its mass. It would be sort of a hybridized young brown dwarf using the easiest types of fusion to heat up the surrounding moons.

[KhashayarShatti]

Now that it looks disappointing that critical mass and compression of the core seem to be far beyond beeing practical, and having got the experience of a small research tokomak where we used to use deuterium and spark and microwave ionization and using poloidal and toroydal field to compress the gas to fulfil Lawson criteria, I found that there is a peculiar process in magnetars that release millions of times of our Sun energy in a few seconds(By NASA: an energy equivalent to 150000 years of our Sun energy). Intense magnetic field that IMO could be triggered by intense electric arc but how it is achieved seems to me by a growing process that takes time to build up a condition suitable to be triggered. Now the question is that is it possible to arrange a growing process to start small and grow up so that the core of the jupiter gradually generates more and more of magnetic field and then by a trigger action to ignite it in a controllable manner?

[NEOWatcher]

The fusion wouldn't cause trouble, we'd barely detect it. Jupiter being 75 times more massive might affect the orbits of the asteroids in unfortunate ways.

I guess I wasn't clear, I was refering to the mass.

[eburacum45]

The magnetic field of Jupiter is already very strong, and the planet is nowhere near fusion conditions. So we can eliminate any magnetic route to fusion within Jupiter (unless you get hold of an ample supply of monopoles).

[eburacum45]

I've made this image showing a gas giant being converted into a star;
http://www.bautforum.com/album.php?a...chmentid=12386

note that, as it gets hotter the planet gets larger, due to expansion. I've assumed that this stellification is achieved through the use of magnetic monopoles, a hypothetical entity which may or may not exist but which would be very useful if they did. The strong magnetic field of a monopole would be sufficient to rip protons apart, a process that would liberate energy.


Note that Arthur C Clarke proposed a quite differnt method in his book 2010; there the monoliths replicated from the material in Jupiter, concentrating the hydrogen into monolith matter (something that was not defined, if I recall correctly) and thereby increasing the density of the planet until fusion started spontaneously. That method is just as speculative as the monopole method, since monopoles may or may not exist in reality.

[KhashayarShatti]

I've assumed that this stellification is achieved through the use of magnetic monopoles, a hypothetical entity which may or may not exist but which would be very useful if they did. The strong magnetic field of a monopole would be sufficient to rip protons apart, a process that would liberate energy.

Perhaps these monopoles could be generated locally by a very strong arc (trillions of amps of current for a short time) in which the force JxB will cause a concentrated magnetic field. Actually when I used the term resonance in fact it looks similar to your idea of monopoles. When the arc gets stronger and stronger, due to property of gluons acting as springs, there static force and magnetic force act as capacitors and inductors and then oscillations occur. At resonance enormous amount of energy could be radiated. As you propose protons perhaps fly apart and oxygen and helium could be generated. In fact strong arcs generate anti matter under special circumstances that could shrink iron to helium and oxygen or perhaps nytrogen and carbon. When ignited the process may build up gradually to stabilisation.

[KhashayarShatti]

Juno mission by NASA about understanding planet formation..., Does anyone have any idea that NASA may have similar plans?
http://missionjuno.s3.amazonaws.com/.../S/I/J/3/i.mov
If not, what sort of information is required for this enterprize that could be useful from this juno mission?