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Gas Giant Ignition


AtomSplitter

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yes it is theoretically possible

 

all you need to do is dump a load of hydrogen onto it. however, the amount of hydrogen you need to dump on it would outweigh the gas giant itself.

 

and stars and the sun were created by a whole bunch of hydrogen getting together in one place.

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It's estimated that 600 million tons of hydrogen is converted to helium each second in the Sun. While that's not the only kind of fusion that keeps it going, it illustrates well what kind of resources you would need to extend a star's lifespan, even if you could dump it all directly into the core.

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ok, so would it be theoratically possible to re-create this on a very small scale, even for a matter of a nanosecond?

I think this experiment has alread been tried but i am not completely sure, any thoughts, feelings, or arguments welcome

 

Small-scale nanosecond sun? That's pretty much what thermonuclear weapons ("H-bombs") do.

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Is it Theoretically possible to ignite certain gas giants or even create a large ball of gas in space that we could ignite to create something that might resemble a miniature sun?

 

If you think about it enough you can come up with a theoretical way to do almost anything, it's actual practice that is difficult. If you wanted to "ignite" Jupiter and could do anything but needed to keep it close to the same mass then drop in a large ball of neutronium, maybe a ball of neutronium a few meters in diameter should be enough to start fusion at the surface of the sphere once it's at the core of Jupiter (maybe not, it might take a lot more but the principle should work) of course this would make Jupiter more massive. In the book/movie 2001 a Space Odyssey part of the mass of Jupiter was turned into neutronium or something similar to ignite fusion at it's core. It probably wouldn't support fusion for more than a few million years but it would shine for a while.

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ok, i will forget that then. could there be a way to merge suns?

 

We probably cound not merge stars. But in some Binary Star systems when one star starts to die and its gravity increases it can start stealing the other stars material through a process known as Roche Lobe overflow.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star#Mass_transfer_and_accretion

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I heard that had jupiter had 15% more mass it might have ignited. Go watch the movie 2010.

 

Deuterium ignition, the lowest energy ignition you can get, starts at about 17 Jupiter masses, so no 15% would be nowhere near enough. These things are classified as brown dwarfs...

 

All the other planets in the solarsystem added together are about 1/3 of a Jupiter mass...

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If you put a bunch of thermonuclear weapons spaced appropriately and deep within Jupiter, would it not be possible to "light up" Jupiter into a miniature supernova? Even if Jupiter does not have the mass to keep itself together at high temperatures, inertial confinement might allow it it stay lit for several seconds at the very least.

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