Is it predictable when a gas giant planet could burst into a sun?

Question

Can it actually be calculated when a gas giant planet or star could burst into a sun?

Answer 1

The only way a gas giant could become an actual star would be to suddenly accumulate about 75 times the mass of Jupiter on that planet.
Anything less than about that mass just doesn't have the internal energy or heat to ignite nuclear fusion to become a star.

So simple answer: it is NOT predicable, it CANNOT be calculated when.

Answer 2

First off, I should make it clear that a gas giant "planet" cannot become a star. It's mass is far too small to cause nuclear fusion. However, for a protostar, or very small star, we can predict when it will move into it's next stage of development (give or take a few million years). We can do this by looking at the spectrum of the star. this will tell us what types of elements it is currently fusing together. At a certain point, a star will run out of Hydrogen and fuse Helium causing it to expand into a Red Giant. By seeing how much mass is left in the star and how quickly and how fiercly it is burning the current element, we can determine what will happen next.

Answer 3

Unless you pour a whole lot of mass on a gas giant planet, it will never become a star. The minimum mass for a star to actually be a star (to fuse hydrogen into helium in its core) is 0.08 times the mass of our Sun. That would take 80 Jupiters!