Jupiter is a gas giant, it's pretty big and is mostly hydrogen and helium. As it continues to compress in size is there any reason it could not begin burning hydrogen and eventually initiate a nuclear reaction, and hence become a star?
As it continues to compress in size is there any reason it could not begin burning hydrogen and eventually initiate a nuclear reaction, and hence become a star?
Jupiter isn't compressing, it's quite stable. It would need to be about 80 times larger (mass wise) to begin burning hydrogen as a red dwarf. I think (??) to burn deuterium as a brown dwarf the minimum size is about 15 Jupiter masses....don't hold me to that one though.
I always thought 'No', but I did read an article (must try find it again) that said that with a big enough 'Bump', Joop could go stellar. Something about if it got hit by a massive Asteroid or something it could cause a reaction that would make the gasses ignite each other I think (memory is going with age )
I read the article about 3 years ago, but I'll try find it in Google.
There is the case of the brown dwarf star. Which is basically a small body, around double the size of jupiter +, which didn't quite have enough energy to start core nuclear fusion. Because of this, it can often be difficult to work out the boundry between large gas giant planet and small star.
Let's assume a passing Martian drops a firelighter on Joop and boom, a star is born. What effects would we on Earth experience? No sunset? Two sunsets? Global warming?
Let's assume a passing Martian drops a firelighter on Joop and boom, a star is born. What effects would we on Earth experience? No sunset? Two sunsets? Global warming?
At the moment the cut off point is about thirteen Jupiter masses for T dwarfs but this could change as they seem to be finding more low mass dwarf stars closer to our Solar System.
As for Jupiter turning into a star, as Houghy says No Chance, it only has 0.00001% of the Suns mass.
I'd say almost by definition, that's the way all suns form. If you think of a gas cloud collapsing it will become a planet before its scales into a sun. Even if its only a planet for a few seconds, weeks, or millennium, the cloud must transform from a gaseous into a liquid or solid state well before fusion starts.
) 
How about those shots of Antares you took that make it look like a planet? Maybe it works both ways! 
