if scientists tried to turn Jupiter into a second sun, could it destroy earth?

Question

what would be he consequences of having jupiter as a second sun?

Answer 1

In order to have Jupiter ignite, it would have to be a lot more massive, by orders of magnitude. If you dumps 5 Jupiter mass in Jupiter, then this is not really Jupiter anymore, is it? It is mostly the stuff you added.
Now, there is a lot of variations as to how bright a star can be. A red dwarf can be so dim, produce so little heat that it would not change much, given that Jupiter is 5 times further from the sun than Earth is. At worst, the Earth would be 4 times closer to the sun than it is to a star that could be located on Jupiter's orbit, so if that star produces a negligible amount of heat, it would not destroy earth.
Now, given that just dumping a bit of CO2 in our atmosphere can produce huge change over time on this planet, even the little extra heat a red dwarf located at Jupiter's location may add up to a lot of trouble. Earth would not be destroyed, but it sure would be affected.

Another thing to consider would be that, if in order to ignite Jupiter a lot more mass be added, this extra mass would disrupt the current gravitational equilibrum of the solar system. And that could cause very weird orbital change, including, but not limited to, having Mars on a collision course with Earth for instance. That would surely destroy Earth.

Answer 2

Why does everybody keep saying "it's too small" and "can't be done"? True, our knowledge of astroengineering at present makes those statements valid in fact, however this is speculation. Everybody keeps concentrating on the MASS of Jupiter. Jupiter does not have enough MASS for stellar fusion to be triggered naturally. However, increasing it's mass -- say by crashing the other three giant planets of the solar system into it at once -- is really not the only means that could be considered. How about increasing its density? Why hasn't anybody addressed that? If Jupiter's density was increased dramatically, then nuclear fusion could be triggered with the existing material. This is speculation, remember. Science-fiction often uses a variety of pseudo-technologies to make what we know to be impossible to appear plausible. One technology often used is artificial gravity. Projecting an intense artificial gravity field into Jupiter (say 1000 times what Jupiter generates) would compress the planet's material enough to trigger fusion. Of course we don't have that technology or the knowledge to create it. But who knows.

Answer 3

Assuming the mass of Jupiter did not change, then our orbit would be unaffected, and Earth would survive. If Jupiter somehow increased in mass to the same size as the sun then it is hard to say how our orbit would be affected. Otherwise, Jupiter is a lot further away from us than the Sun currently is, so I would not expect much to change really on the surface unless our orbit was pushed closer to either the Sun or the new Sun/Jupiter. Regardless, this will never happen so there's nothing to really worry about but we can still wonder, eh?

Answer 4

It would depend on how large a sun it was. If it was a small red dwarf, that would not be much of a problem. If it were as large as the Sun, that would be a problem. The extra gravity would totally mess up the Earth's orbit. But to make it that large would be totally out of the question. Where you you get all the extra mass? The Sun has 99% of all the mass in the solar system. Jupiter now has most of the other 1%. We would need to increase the mass of Jupiter 99 times to get it as large as the Sun. We would have to get that mass from outside the solar system. Doing that would be as hard to do as dragging another star into the solar system!

Answer 5

Jupiter Second Sun

Answer 6

Jupiter has about 2 1/2 times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System added together. However, the Sun contains around 98% of all the mass in the Solar System. It is all a matter of comparison. Jupiter's volume is about 1300 times that of the Earth, but it's mass is only about 320 times that of the Earth, which shows that it is considerably less dense. In order to sustain nuclear fusion, Jupiter would need to be about 50 times it's current size. If we had the technology to move large amounts of matter around via wormholes, I doubt we would need to make ourselves a second sun!

Answer 7

It can't be done... Jupiter has twice more mass than all the planets combined, there's simply not enough matter in our solar system to get it to 'light up'; you would need about 80 times its current mass for it to to be able to fuse hydrogen in its core and become a star.

In the hypothetical scenario where a star would 'appear' in the place of Jupiter, aside from obvious gravitational implications, that would most certainly affect our orbit and thus destroy life as we know it, there are other considerations like another solar wind to contend to. Jupiter is when closest to Earth about four times as far away from us than the sun, so heat is if not insignificant then very small; but if you are asking would we die? Yes probably.

Answer 8

How about we don't worry about what it would do to our Earth. What if Jupiter just turn into a small red dwarf sun and generate enough heat to affect it's many moons, then we can populate them.

Answer 9

Jupiter doesn't have enough mass to become a star. At best Jupiter could be considered a failed brown dwarf.

Answer 10

Considering Jupiter is the size of a hot air balloon when compared to the Earth, which is a grain of sand, science couldn't even DENT Jupiter's composition and make it something its not.