[identity profile] leemur.livejournal.com 2003-11-10 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
The guy who wrote that is a crank.

Two things.

Firstly, Jupiter is off sufficent size that the intense pressure at its centre causes fussion reactions to occour anyway. These reactions are not sufficent to cause Jupiter to initiate a chain reaction. If they were, then Jupiter would have already become a sun. And it hasn't, because....

Secondly, Jupiter is *far* too small to become a sun. Granted that Jupiter is a huge planet, but it is tiny compared to the sun, only 1/1000 the size. The minimum size for a cloud of gas to form the self sustaining reactions necessary to form a sun (and wouldn't *that* be cool to watch?) is 70% of the size of Sol, or, in other words, 700 times the size of Jupiter.

There is also the obvious point that we don't have a second sun.


[identity profile] gemfyre.livejournal.com 2003-11-10 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah I'm not too sure about the whole sun thing.

When the sun goes nova and burns up the terrestrial planets then Jupiter is likely to change and become earthlike, but not sun like.

But the reasoning behind the black spot is kinda freaky.

[identity profile] arkem.livejournal.com 2003-11-10 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm sure the whole sun thing is hyperbole but the rest about Galileo and the plotonium and the black spot thing is interesting