Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you ever think about what the night
Speaker 1: sky looked like to our ancestors? I do. I wonder
Speaker 1: how it looked at them. And I also like thinking
Speaker 1: even further back in the past, like what did the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs see in the sky? Yeah, they probably should have
Speaker 1: looked at this guy more carefully, you know, looking for
Speaker 1: meteors for example. I know dinosaur astronomers totally fell down
Speaker 1: on the job, but you can even think further back,
Speaker 1: like the first eyeballs on Earth five million years ago,
Speaker 1: you mean, like microbe astronomers, or you know, I think
Speaker 1: to the future. I wonder what the night sky will
Speaker 1: look like to humans billions of years from It could
Speaker 1: be totally different. I mean, if there even our humans
Speaker 1: then yeah. Well I'm thinking about the future cockroach astronomers
Speaker 1: and hoping they will keep an eye on the stars
Speaker 1: for us. Whatever they see doesn't bug them. I am
Speaker 1: more hamming cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist. And that was the first time
Speaker 1: I ever said cockroach on the podcast and astronomers in
Speaker 1: the same sentence Publicly. I love astronomers, I love astronomy.
Speaker 1: I'm nothing but pro astronomers. I did like the idea
Speaker 1: of dinosaur astronomers. That's pretty cool. My favorite story about
Speaker 1: dinosaur astronomers is that they really did have a chance
Speaker 1: to save themselves. Your favorite I feel like you thought
Speaker 1: about this before. Well, yeah, absolutely. You know that the
Speaker 1: meteor that came and wiped out the dinosaurs made a
Speaker 1: near past by the Earth ten years earlier, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: came close enough that they should have been able to
Speaker 1: look up and see it in the sky. So if
Speaker 1: they had funded their version of NASA, they could have
Speaker 1: saved their own lives ten years. Do you think dinosaurs
Speaker 1: could have built spaceships? And necessity is the mother of invention, right,
Speaker 1: do you think they should have called the dinosaur Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis put them on a spaceship and getting to deflect
Speaker 1: that asteroid in ten years? Well, you know the other
Speaker 1: option is what happened, So anything is better than that.
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge talk
Speaker 1: about dinosaur astronomers. That's all we do. Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: digress in the very first moments of the podcast. That's
Speaker 1: right now. Welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained
Speaker 1: the universe a production of I Heart Radio in which
Speaker 1: we talk about all the amazing and beautiful and crazy
Speaker 1: things about the universe, the violent events, the incredible drama
Speaker 1: happening in the inside of stars, the tiny little particles
Speaker 1: that apparently make up everything you see and touch and taste. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the spacey stuff out there, happening in the
Speaker 1: universe and even in our own backyards, or I guess
Speaker 1: our solar system backyard. That's right, because when you look
Speaker 1: out into the night sky, you are not seeing a
Speaker 1: still picture. You are not seeing a flat image. You
Speaker 1: are seeing a drama unfolding on cosmic distance sales and
Speaker 1: time scales. If you were to look at the night
Speaker 1: sky sped up a little bit, you would see incredible events,
Speaker 1: huge explosions, massive collisions. It would put Hollywood to shame.
Speaker 1: It's like a cosmological telenovella, a lot of twists and turns.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's really like backstabbing anybody, or
Speaker 1: does the Earth have an evil twin on the other
Speaker 1: side of the Sun Planet X Extreme close up. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's so much political intrigue, but there
Speaker 1: is definitely drama. There are things that happened rapidly, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden. There are sudden changes of fate. There
Speaker 1: are things that are happening, and so I think it's
Speaker 1: fun to think about how our solar system will evolve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because as we as humans found out about a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, the universe is not static. Things are changing.
Speaker 1: The stars are moving, the galaxies are blazing across the universe,
Speaker 1: and new stars are being born all the time. That's right.
Speaker 1: And stars can change right there, formed from the collapse
Speaker 1: of gases into a hot dense object that confuse eventually
Speaker 1: to and into something else like a black hole or
Speaker 1: a white dwarf. They go through this evolution, and so
Speaker 1: it's natural to also wonder, like what about planets? Do
Speaker 1: planets have future stages in their evolution? Are they like Pokemon?
Speaker 1: They can evolve into different versions. They say that Earth
Speaker 1: is only stage one. I don't know enough about Pokemon
Speaker 1: to even really make that joke. I just watched my
Speaker 1: kids play, so I can say energy cards and pokemons evolved.
Speaker 1: Then we're at the end of my knowledge. I think
Speaker 1: our planet is Earth type. Is it an e X
Speaker 1: or a g X? Does it have the shiny glint
Speaker 1: on it? It used to. I think that's right. And
Speaker 1: we did a podcast recently in which we talked about
Speaker 1: Jupiter and how close Jupiter was to having become a star,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of listeners wrote in asking us about that.
Speaker 1: Jim Sanchez, Doug Dodds, and Ryan Kyrkiss all wrote and
Speaker 1: asked us like, well, is Jupiter on the verge of
Speaker 1: becoming a star? Could it one day eventually become a star?
Speaker 1: Because I guess it's kind of a fine line between
Speaker 1: the being a giant cloud of dust and being a
Speaker 1: giant gas planet and maybe being a giant ball of
Speaker 1: flaming gas like the Sun. It's kind of a fine line.
Speaker 1: It turns out. How final line is it either on
Speaker 1: fire or you're not? That seems pretty clear cut to me. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean what does it take, like a match or
Speaker 1: you know, a spark. I guess that's the question we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about today. That's right. So to the other program,
Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question could Jupiter become a star?
Speaker 1: Is it too late for Jupiter or can it still
Speaker 1: you know, find the right role and suddenly be the
Speaker 1: new darling of Hollywood. Hey, you know, jump on the
Speaker 1: TikTok and anybody can become a star. Oh hey, that's
Speaker 1: what Jupiter needs. That's right. But there was some actual
Speaker 1: serious talk about this. A couple of decades ago. NASA
Speaker 1: sent a probe out to study Jupiter, and they didn't
Speaker 1: want the probe to infect any of Jupiter's moons where
Speaker 1: we think there might potentially be life, right, my crobial life.
Speaker 1: And we didn't want to cray Galileo this probe onto
Speaker 1: any of Jupiter's moons because we didn't want to bring
Speaker 1: any earth microbes. Right, once you bring Earth's microbes, you
Speaker 1: can no longer ask like are their native microbes? And
Speaker 1: so instead they crashed the probe into Jupiter itself because
Speaker 1: we don't care about infect the Jupiter. I think the
Speaker 1: idea was that it would burn up and get crushed
Speaker 1: because Jupiter has this incredible atmosphere, so we get immolated
Speaker 1: in descent, whereas the moons don't have those atmospheres, and
Speaker 1: so it would actually land on the surface and potentially survive.
Speaker 1: But there was some concern about that. Yeah, people were wondering, like,
Speaker 1: if Jupiter is on the verge of becoming a star,
Speaker 1: if it's this huge ball of gas and you drop
Speaker 1: a match into it essentially, is there impossibility that it
Speaker 1: could have ignited the atmosphere or Jupiter and birth a
Speaker 1: new star, because I mean Jupiter. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's a giant ball of hydrogen, right, kind of like
Speaker 1: the Hindenberg. Kind of like the Hindenburg, but much bigger.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. It's like the big balloon made
Speaker 1: out of hydrogen and all you need is a little
Speaker 1: flame and some oxygen. All of a sudden, it sounds
Speaker 1: very unstable, does it sounds like a nine twenties idea? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you know this actually appears in science fiction as well,
Speaker 1: in the well known series two thousand and one, two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, etcetera. They turn Jupiter into a star on purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on purpose, I guess. You know. The aliens. We didn't
Speaker 1: really ever understand their psychology, but they turn it into
Speaker 1: a new star. They call it Lucifer. The Aliens call
Speaker 1: it Lucifer. I don't remember the details that book. Who
Speaker 1: calls it Lucifer, Whether it's the aliens naming it or
Speaker 1: you know, earthbound cartoonists who are elected to a naming
Speaker 1: committee who gave it that name. But I do remember
Speaker 1: the sequel to two thousand and one two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: I think that that the end, Jupiter does become a star.
Speaker 1: Sorry spoiler um, because the star at the end of
Speaker 1: that movie. And I was wondered, like, oh, that's pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: but what does that mean? Is that going to change
Speaker 1: our solar system or what's the big deal? Yeah? Exactly,
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting question. It's right here in our backyard.
Speaker 1: It seems relevant. So we thought we would try to
Speaker 1: figure out how close is Jupiter to becoming a star?
Speaker 1: If you wanted to turn it into a star, what
Speaker 1: would you have to do? So, as usual, Daniel went
Speaker 1: out there into the wilds of the Internet and ask
Speaker 1: people to submit their answer to the question could Jupiter
Speaker 1: become a star? That's right, So thank you to everybody
Speaker 1: who participated, And if you'd like to participate in future
Speaker 1: rounds of person on the Internet interviews, please send us
Speaker 1: a note to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to answer our questions. And before
Speaker 1: you listen to these answers, think about it for a second.
Speaker 1: Do you think Jupiter could become a star. Here's what
Speaker 1: people had to say. I think anyone who claims to
Speaker 1: know where the Jupiter can turn into a star. Absolutely
Speaker 1: is probably exaggerating their knowledge in order to make up
Speaker 1: one last say. I think Jupiter is like a filed
Speaker 1: star because it's not massive enough to have the fusion
Speaker 1: reactions at the cool The only way I can think
Speaker 1: of that it could become a star would be if
Speaker 1: it pulled in enough matter. Well it didn't for our reason,
Speaker 1: I suppose not enough mass um. I didn't hear that
Speaker 1: almost became a star. Well, well maybe it's if a
Speaker 1: lot of planets I think the universe is are unlikely
Speaker 1: to happen, But it happened, So perhaps it's just as
Speaker 1: unlikely that Tupiter would turn into a star. But I
Speaker 1: suppose it could happen. Yeah, what kind of what kind
Speaker 1: of start? Jupiter is a gas giant and it's made
Speaker 1: of gas, and stars are also made of gas. So
Speaker 1: I think maybe if a small star came into it.
Speaker 1: I suppose if it became big enough and had enough gravity,
Speaker 1: it could turn on and become a star. But I'm
Speaker 1: not aware that it's so it's growing. My short answer
Speaker 1: is I don't think so. Yes, I think that it's
Speaker 1: eight times more massive that it would need to become
Speaker 1: in order for Jupiter to start burning hydrogen and fusing
Speaker 1: it into helium. But even if you were to combine
Speaker 1: all the planets in the Solar System, you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: to the mass needed. So by natural means, no, it's
Speaker 1: not possible. But theoretically could Jupiter become a star? Then yes,
Speaker 1: you just need to add eight more jupiters to it.
Speaker 1: If Jupiter's ape does extremely well, I think Jupiter might
Speaker 1: be able to become a starmp if anyone could be
Speaker 1: a start with. Oh my gosh. I believe that the
Speaker 1: gas giants have cleaned up our Solar system enough that
Speaker 1: it is unlikely that Jupiter would be able to get
Speaker 1: enough mass to turn into a star. Well, theoretically possible
Speaker 1: in time. I think the way that it might happen
Speaker 1: is maybe if there are a rogue planet that collided
Speaker 1: with Jupiter or sufficient other material like comets and asteroids
Speaker 1: and so on, But that seems implosible. Alright. Some great
Speaker 1: answers I like the one that said yes, I mean no, wait,
Speaker 1: what's the star? If you're not going to be accurate,
Speaker 1: you should at least be well. I guess that perfectly
Speaker 1: reflects how I feel. I'm like, yes, no, wait, let's
Speaker 1: define a star. Yeah. I think it is an interesting
Speaker 1: question because you know, different stuff out there have evolutions,
Speaker 1: you know, we see stuff changing in the universe, and
Speaker 1: we haven't ever talked about the question of like, is
Speaker 1: a planet stable? Could a planet just hang out forever
Speaker 1: or does it have the next natural stage in its evolution? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is this possible that we suddenly have two stars in
Speaker 1: our sky? You know, kind of like star wars? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What would that mean for when you have to go
Speaker 1: to work and abaly make our days longer? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: would make our days longer and much more irregular. Right,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have regular patterns. You have times when both
Speaker 1: stars were in the sky and times when only one
Speaker 1: of them was in the sky. Have you ever read
Speaker 1: the three body problem? You know, the calendar on that
Speaker 1: planet is very complicated. All right, let's jump into it, Daniel.
Speaker 1: What makes something a star versus a planet? I guess
Speaker 1: let's start with that question. What happens at that fourth
Speaker 1: in the road for a big ball of gas where
Speaker 1: it turns into a jupiter, or it turns into a star,
Speaker 1: and or can it kind of switch over? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: really it's all about mass, Like if you are a
Speaker 1: big enough blob of stuff, then gravity will pull you
Speaker 1: in and compress you hard enough that you will start
Speaker 1: to fuse. You'll create the conditions necessary to squish these
Speaker 1: particles together so they fuse, which releases a huge amount
Speaker 1: of energy. And that's really the distinction between a planet
Speaker 1: and a star. A star is using, it's releasing energy,
Speaker 1: it's burning itself, and a planet is much more inert
Speaker 1: than no fusion happening at the center of the Earth
Speaker 1: or at the center of Jupiter, for example, And that's
Speaker 1: just because we don't have enough stuff, Like if we
Speaker 1: had more stuff, it would be heavier, and things get
Speaker 1: more compressing you sort of get to that pressure where
Speaker 1: fusion happens. That's right. It's all about the stuff, and
Speaker 1: it depends on which kind of stuff. Like if you're
Speaker 1: just hydrogen, just gas, then you need less stuff. Then
Speaker 1: if you're like a huge ball of oxygen or carbon,
Speaker 1: because the heavier elements take higher pressure or higher temperature
Speaker 1: conditions in order to fuse, So hydrogen is the easiest.
Speaker 1: So if you're gonna go all hydrogen, you need a
Speaker 1: big ball of gas. If you're gonna go all carbon
Speaker 1: or all oxygen or something heavier, you need a bigger bone.
Speaker 1: But in principle, if you took the Earth and made
Speaker 1: it much more massive, same stuff, same mixture of stuff,
Speaker 1: it would turn into a star. Wow, how much more stuff?
Speaker 1: I guess? I guess The question is what does it
Speaker 1: take to be a star? How much stuff do you need?
Speaker 1: And we can think about it in terms of like
Speaker 1: pounds or kilograms or squirrels, but those units are hard
Speaker 1: to grasp because the numbers are so big. Let's just
Speaker 1: talk about in terms of stuff. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: in terms of units of like one sun. So the
Speaker 1: minimum amount of stuff you need to reach any sort
Speaker 1: of fusion is about one one of the mass of
Speaker 1: the sun of our son, of our son. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: using our suns as a unit. You could have something
Speaker 1: one one of our sun and it could be a star.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that's only like really special. That's the
Speaker 1: absolute minimum. It gets you above the shelf for the lowest, weakest,
Speaker 1: lamest kind of fusion. And if you reach that threshold,
Speaker 1: you're called a brown dwarf. And it's a special kind
Speaker 1: of fusion. It's not just hydrogen fusion. It's deuterium fusion
Speaker 1: and deuterium, if you remember, is an isotope of hydrogen,
Speaker 1: and the nucleus you have a proton and a neutron,
Speaker 1: not just a proton, and that neutron is crucial because
Speaker 1: it helps sort of bring those protons together and stick
Speaker 1: them together. I see, um, that sounds small, like one
Speaker 1: hundreds the size of the Sun. But that's it like
Speaker 1: what like ten earth? That's yes, something like ten thou earths.
Speaker 1: It's a lot bigger than the Earth, and so it's
Speaker 1: not that small, all right. I mean, it's small compared
Speaker 1: to our Sun, but it's a big object. And they're
Speaker 1: called brown dwarfs, but they're pretty badly named because they're
Speaker 1: not actually brown. They're not actually dwarves if they're ten
Speaker 1: thousand earths. Also, so two strikes there for the physics
Speaker 1: community in one name their dwarfs compared to the other stars.
Speaker 1: But they don't look at all brown. They look magenta
Speaker 1: or like orange red. And that's just because the kind
Speaker 1: of fusion that happens in the kind of light that
Speaker 1: they admit I see. But they're still sort of big
Speaker 1: balls of fiery stuff. They just they don't glows brightly
Speaker 1: and they're kind of tinged in a certain color, and
Speaker 1: these things exist and they're not that rare in the universe.
Speaker 1: Is one like six and a half light years away
Speaker 1: from us. It's called Luman sixteen. And so they're not
Speaker 1: that easy to see because they're not that bright. But
Speaker 1: you know, theoretically we understand that they should exist and
Speaker 1: we see them out there, and so this is totally
Speaker 1: a possibility. It's the minimum threshold to become a star.
Speaker 1: And then those are the smallest stars. So then what's
Speaker 1: the next step up? Next step up is you know,
Speaker 1: really you might call the first kind of real star,
Speaker 1: and this is a red dwarf, a brown dwarf. People argue, like,
Speaker 1: you know, is it a big, hot burning planet. Is
Speaker 1: a star that's you know, it's kind of lame, but
Speaker 1: a red dwarf nobody argues about, Like, it's definitely a star.
Speaker 1: It burns hydrogen. Like essentially, this is the minimum star
Speaker 1: you need if you just start from hydrogen. If you
Speaker 1: have one tenth the mass of the Sun and a
Speaker 1: huge ball of hydrogen gas, gravity will pull it together
Speaker 1: and squeeze it hard enough for it to fuse fuse.
Speaker 1: But in a brown star, there's no fusion. There is fusion,
Speaker 1: but it's deterior and fusion. It's not hydrogen fusion. A
Speaker 1: brown star is not hot enough to fuse hydrogen. You
Speaker 1: need that extra neutron in the nucleus to make the
Speaker 1: fusion happen, and so the fusion doesn't release as much
Speaker 1: energy either. There's sort of like a cooler, weaker lam
Speaker 1: or kind of fusion, but it's still fusion. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of an easier fusion. It's easier and it's not
Speaker 1: as dramatic. It doesn't produce as much energy. So that's
Speaker 1: why the brown dwarfs aren't so luminous. All right. So
Speaker 1: then when you get to one tenth of the mass
Speaker 1: with the Sun, then you get the real cooking coin.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's a legit star. It's a red dwarf,
Speaker 1: and you know there's one that's only six years away.
Speaker 1: It has a name that's all like letters and acronym,
Speaker 1: so it's totally unpronounceable. But the cool thing about it
Speaker 1: is that it's really dense, like it has one tenth
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun, but it's radius it's the
Speaker 1: same as Saturn. Wow, So it's tiny, but it's it's compact.
Speaker 1: It's a little dwarf. It's a little red dwarf. It's
Speaker 1: perfectly named and is it red? So there you go
Speaker 1: to check marks for the astronomy community terms. You're you're
Speaker 1: up to zero then zero zero zero physicists, this is
Speaker 1: zero public. But you know, something the size of a
Speaker 1: planet can definitely be a star. That's not an issue.
Speaker 1: It's not just about size, it's about mass. Remember, gravity
Speaker 1: will gather this stuff together and make it really dense
Speaker 1: for density. Yeah, all right, well it's clear that things
Speaker 1: about the size of planets can become stars. And so
Speaker 1: now let's talk about Jupiter and whether Jupiter could or
Speaker 1: could have become a star. But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, Daniel, we're talking about making a
Speaker 1: star in our own backyard. So what do we need?
Speaker 1: A grill, some matches, a lot of flower which is
Speaker 1: on short supply. Oh no, better order a crate of it.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's we're talking about whether Jupiter could
Speaker 1: be one day become a star, which is a crazy idea.
Speaker 1: But you're telling me that it's all about the stuff.
Speaker 1: You have enough stuff and you're compressed enough, then almost
Speaker 1: anything can become a star. Yeah, And so let's talk
Speaker 1: about Jupiter. How how massive is Jupiter. Jupiter is about
Speaker 1: one tenth of one of the mass of the Sun,
Speaker 1: so one of the song Okay, so it's it's ten
Speaker 1: times too small to be a brown Earth. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember the threshold is one hundred of the Sun for
Speaker 1: a brown dwarf, one tenth of the Sun for a
Speaker 1: red dwarf. And so Jupiter it's ten times too small
Speaker 1: to be a brown dwarf and a hundred times too
Speaker 1: small to be a red dwarf. And it's made out
Speaker 1: of roughly the right stuff. It's mostly hydrogen. It's just
Speaker 1: not big enough icy and you need that stuff because
Speaker 1: I mean, while you like, the Earth could become a
Speaker 1: star if you compress it down enough, but there's nothing
Speaker 1: really compressing the Earth that much except for its gravity,
Speaker 1: and so without that stuff to create the gravity, you
Speaker 1: can't turn into a star. Yeah, the Earth is like
Speaker 1: one three hundred thousand's the size of the Sun, and
Speaker 1: so we're nowhere near massive enough to ever become a star.
Speaker 1: Jupiter is like it's in within shouting distance, you know,
Speaker 1: like ten times too small to be a pathetic little
Speaker 1: brown dwarf is like it's you know, ten times. It's
Speaker 1: not a small thing to overcome, but it's still ten
Speaker 1: times too small. Like that doesn't seem likely to happen
Speaker 1: anytime soon. No, And Jupiter is already really big, right,
Speaker 1: So it sends the In order for Jupiter become a star,
Speaker 1: you have to multiply its mass by a factor of ten.
Speaker 1: That means like gather nine more jubiters somewhere somehow and
Speaker 1: added to junior. Al Right, well, it doesn't sound very
Speaker 1: likely then that Jupiter is going to turn into star.
Speaker 1: Why was NASA worried about it years ago? You know,
Speaker 1: I think they just thought that crashing a probe into
Speaker 1: it could spark a reaction. You know, the process we're
Speaker 1: talking about, a sort of a natural gathering due to gravity.
Speaker 1: You know, the Hindenburg went into flames without being the
Speaker 1: mass of the Sun, and so people were just worried
Speaker 1: that adding a spark to a ball of gas could
Speaker 1: potentially ignite it. But I think that was a small
Speaker 1: community of paranoid voices inside NASA, and most people weren't
Speaker 1: too worried. But you know, if you know the story,
Speaker 1: we were worried about igniting the atmosphere when we tested
Speaker 1: the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. Really, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a possible concern. Yeah, before they tested it, they
Speaker 1: did the calculations and they couldn't rule out igniting the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But you know, they went ahead and tried it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what's the worst that can happen? So it's not just
Speaker 1: particle physicists that are potentially ending the world. Okay, oh good,
Speaker 1: it's other kinds of physicists, that's right, and even ending
Speaker 1: potentially other worlds. Yeah. So if you wanted to turn
Speaker 1: Jupiter into a star, you'd have to somehow gather these materials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. If you're an alien in the
Speaker 1: Arthursday Clark novel, how would you do it? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: where can you get these materials? Like, what is the
Speaker 1: source of raw materials you need to turn Jupiter into
Speaker 1: a star. There's really the biggest things in the Solar
Speaker 1: system are the Sun and Jupiter, and after that everything
Speaker 1: else is a tiny detail. So the only place to
Speaker 1: get this up is from the Sun. So you have
Speaker 1: to basically steal from the Sun, siphon off a huge
Speaker 1: amount of matter, and you know, feed that into Jupiter somehow. Really,
Speaker 1: there's not enough gas floating around or asteroids floating around
Speaker 1: to kind of feed Jupiter. There's only a tiny little
Speaker 1: bit of gas and asteroids. Most of the stuff is
Speaker 1: coalesced into the Sun and into Jupiter. And you know,
Speaker 1: even Jupiter is like a tiny fracture. Remember it's one
Speaker 1: one thousands of the mass of the Sun. So if
Speaker 1: you like made a bar chart of all the stuff
Speaker 1: in this solar system, it would basically just be the
Speaker 1: Sun and then you know, a few crumbs. So Jupiter
Speaker 1: is just like the biggest crumb, and after that there's
Speaker 1: basically nothing of note. Al Right, So you would need
Speaker 1: Jupiter to be ten times bigger, and so maybe let's
Speaker 1: talk about how that would look like, Like, let's say
Speaker 1: we increase the massive Jupiter by two how would it
Speaker 1: look different. It wouldn't have enough energy to fuse, right,
Speaker 1: and so it just looks like a bigger Jupiter. It
Speaker 1: just you know, be bigger and fatter, and it would
Speaker 1: have just as many crazy storms, but really no fundamental change.
Speaker 1: It might emit more radiation because it would have more
Speaker 1: activity in the interior do the increased pressure, Like the
Speaker 1: surface would look sort of the same, would just be bigger.
Speaker 1: It would just be bigger yeah, and the service would
Speaker 1: look sort of the same. But we don't really understand jupiters,
Speaker 1: like cloud patterns and what's going on there, the crazy vortices,
Speaker 1: the red spot. That's the kind of thing we don't understand.
Speaker 1: And if we preet Jupiter's mass, then all the features
Speaker 1: that contribute to that craziness would be doubled, and so
Speaker 1: we'd probably get it, as you know, twice as many
Speaker 1: bands and much more craziness, and maybe the red spot
Speaker 1: would be even more insane. Right, But there are a
Speaker 1: lots of questions about these gas giants. Remember, Saturn has
Speaker 1: a hexagon on his north pole that we don't understand either, Right.
Speaker 1: We did a whole podcast about that mystery. It would
Speaker 1: be a fascinating experiment to do to double the massive
Speaker 1: Jupiter and just see what happens, Like, hey, turn that
Speaker 1: knob and see how crazy these planets get. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: do it, Daniel, Okay, I'll write a proposal. What's the
Speaker 1: worst that can happen? Well, what what would be happening
Speaker 1: on the inside, Like I know that the inside of
Speaker 1: Jupiter there's like what is it frozen hydrogen or something?
Speaker 1: Metallic hydrogen? Metallic hydrogen yea oceans of liquid hydrogen is
Speaker 1: all these layers of more and more compressed hydrogen, and
Speaker 1: as you add more stuff to it than those layers
Speaker 1: get denser and denser, right until at the very core
Speaker 1: that's where the fusion would begin. When you get enough
Speaker 1: match you sort of like gradually approved and you get
Speaker 1: these layers and layers of more intensely squeezed hydrogen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so then as I increased man, let's say I'm I'm
Speaker 1: pouring more hydrogen into Jupiter. Now we're at like four
Speaker 1: times the size of Jupiter right now or the mass?
Speaker 1: Do things still change? Like, you know, does it suddenly
Speaker 1: become more solid at the core or does it become
Speaker 1: like a this nebulous ball of gas or does it
Speaker 1: Would it look the same just bigger. It would look
Speaker 1: the same, just bigger. I don't know that you would
Speaker 1: see much different from the outside. Like again, we don't
Speaker 1: understand the patterns on the surface, so it's hard to
Speaker 1: predict what those would look like. But on the inside
Speaker 1: you be getting new layers, you'd be getting the core
Speaker 1: would be denser. Right as you add more mass, you're
Speaker 1: creating new layers in the core that are denser and hotter,
Speaker 1: and eventually you're gonna make the one that's going to fuse.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it would grow another eye. Wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be cool? Totally awesome. In fact, we wonder if that happened,
Speaker 1: if it was typical or unusual. So really, we should
Speaker 1: replicate this project. We should make like d you know,
Speaker 1: double jupiters or ten quad jupiters, just to see if
Speaker 1: it's a systematic or not. Wow. I mean, while we're
Speaker 1: scooping matter out of the sun and playing god, let's
Speaker 1: be systematic about it, all right. So now let's say
Speaker 1: I keep going and I'm now I've pumped up Jupiter
Speaker 1: up to one on the size of the mass of
Speaker 1: the Sun, where it could become a brown dwarf. I
Speaker 1: guess would it just automatically turn into a brown dwarf
Speaker 1: or does it need like some kind of event to
Speaker 1: trigger it, or does it happen slowly? Jupiter wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: turn into a brown dwarf if you've got it to
Speaker 1: one mass of the Sun, because that's a special kind
Speaker 1: of process. It needs deuterium. And if we're just adding hydrogen,
Speaker 1: remember which just protons and electrons that needs to get
Speaker 1: to one tenth the mass of the Sun. Deuterium is
Speaker 1: a special thing, and you need a proton and a
Speaker 1: neutron and the electron around it, and the neutron helps
Speaker 1: that fusion happen. You might think like, well, that's weird.
Speaker 1: How's a neutron help fusion happen. It's neutral anyway, right,
Speaker 1: Remember neutrons and these ound objects of quarks that have
Speaker 1: the strong force. The neutron is what helps hold things together,
Speaker 1: like in heavier elements. The neutron is the reason why
Speaker 1: the element is stable. It keeps the protons separated, and
Speaker 1: the little residual strong force from the quarks helps tie
Speaker 1: everything together. So the neutrons are like the little helper
Speaker 1: assistant particles making the fusion happen. The Brown Doors used
Speaker 1: this special channel only available when you have deterior So
Speaker 1: Jupiter isn't mostly deterium, it's mostly hydrogen. Oh man, alright,
Speaker 1: So I did all this work. I inflated Jupiter to
Speaker 1: ten times in size, and apparently nothing happens. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's let's keep going. Let's keep pressing the accelerator
Speaker 1: and see what happens to juventer. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break, all right, Daniel. If I pop Jupiter
Speaker 1: to one one hundreds the size of the Sun or
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun, nothing would happen. I would
Speaker 1: need to take it to one tenth of the mass
Speaker 1: of the Sun in order for Jupiter to be a star.
Speaker 1: That's right, Make a blob of gas that's one tenth
Speaker 1: the mass the Sun. Then gravity will coalesce it and
Speaker 1: it will start to fuse, and it will start to glow,
Speaker 1: and it will be a new star and you can
Speaker 1: name it whatever you like. Well, now I feel all
Speaker 1: this pressure to come up with a grid name. But
Speaker 1: basically you need a hundred jupiters. You need Juiver to
Speaker 1: be a hundred times bigger or more massive in order
Speaker 1: for it to ever become a star. And even then
Speaker 1: it would be a red dwarf, which is not like
Speaker 1: the shiniest, prettiest kind of star. That's right. It would
Speaker 1: be much smaller than our star and not as bright.
Speaker 1: And would it ignite right away? Or is this like
Speaker 1: like a slow burn where it slowly turns into a
Speaker 1: red torch. Well, it depends on how dense it is
Speaker 1: when you start, Like if you just start from a
Speaker 1: big diffused cloud of gas the way our solar system started.
Speaker 1: Then it's going to take a long time for gravity
Speaker 1: to pull that together. There. If you start from a
Speaker 1: place where it's already pretty dense, like about it Densis Jupiter,
Speaker 1: then it's not going to take gravity that long because
Speaker 1: everything is already pretty close together. But it'll start to
Speaker 1: burn from the inside, right, and then that we'll have
Speaker 1: to heat the next layers and the next layers and
Speaker 1: the next layers, and so this isn't the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's going to happen, you know, in five seconds.
Speaker 1: But it's also not going to take a billion years.
Speaker 1: Oh I see. It's gonna start at the inside, and
Speaker 1: then it's the heat the explosion of that. It's going
Speaker 1: to gradually make it to the surface, and then that's
Speaker 1: when you'll see its glow exactly. And it's just like
Speaker 1: any other kind of fire, you know, the energy put
Speaker 1: out by it sustains it, keeps that temperature hot, keeps
Speaker 1: those fusion processes going. All right, Well, it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're not likely to get a hundred jupiters all in
Speaker 1: the same spot suddenly, although it's kind of cool to
Speaker 1: think about, and so maybe um step aster, what is
Speaker 1: the future of Jupiter. What's going to happen to it.
Speaker 1: It's not going to become a star, but what is
Speaker 1: it going to become? Yeah, and you know, even if
Speaker 1: Jupiter did become a star, like if it turned on,
Speaker 1: I just want to mention that it's not going to
Speaker 1: be as bright as our sun. And it's much further
Speaker 1: from us, right, Jupiter is much further from us than
Speaker 1: the Sun is. So even if it became a star,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be nearly as bright in our sky as
Speaker 1: the Sun. It wouldn't even be as bright in the
Speaker 1: sky as the moon is. Actually, one of our sharp
Speaker 1: listeners did this calculation, Dmitri Rudoi, found that a red
Speaker 1: dwarf would be a bit brighter than the moon in
Speaker 1: our sky. Thanks for keeping us honest, Dmitri. So it
Speaker 1: would just be like a fairly bright star in the sky.
Speaker 1: Oh really, even as is without inflating in Jupiter. If
Speaker 1: suddenly Jupiter ignited became a star, which we said, well,
Speaker 1: it couldn't happen. But even if you turn Jupiter into
Speaker 1: a red dwarf, if you made it a hundred times
Speaker 1: as big and it ignited and it was a red dwarf,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be as bright as our Sun, and it's
Speaker 1: much further away from us, so it would appear dimmer
Speaker 1: in our sky, So it wouldn't be very bright. Oh,
Speaker 1: the distance from us to the Sun is much closer
Speaker 1: than us to Jupiter. Yeah. Wow, Jupiter six times as
Speaker 1: far away from the Sun as we are, which means
Speaker 1: that at its closest approach, it's like four times as
Speaker 1: far away from Earth as the Sun is. And so
Speaker 1: that makes it one is bright if it was the
Speaker 1: same brightness as the Sun, but it's going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, much smaller than the Sun at the minimum threshold,
Speaker 1: and so maybe just not that bright in the sky
Speaker 1: compared to the Sun or even the Moon. So pretty
Speaker 1: much nothing would change if Jupiter suddenly became a star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't really change at all. I mean, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be as bright as elon Musk's star link satellites. Even
Speaker 1: we wouldn't get that dramatic too, suns floating in the sky.
Speaker 1: Look Skywalker looking out into the sundown of two stars.
Speaker 1: It would just be like a bright star in the sky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so for that to happen to have like two
Speaker 1: effective suns in your sky. You really need a second
Speaker 1: star that's as big, as bright and as close. That's
Speaker 1: really critical, and that that would probably be kind of
Speaker 1: a mess, wouldn't it, Like if you had would be
Speaker 1: acute these sons that close together to each other and
Speaker 1: to you, It wouldn't be a happy, happy solar system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you somehow created that son and then inserted
Speaker 1: in there our existing solar system, there's no way that
Speaker 1: any of our orbits would be stable, right, would like
Speaker 1: completely gravitationally perturbed all the orbits. Like say, for example,
Speaker 1: a huge sun came and ate Jupiter, like some sun
Speaker 1: from another solar system happened to intersect our solar system
Speaker 1: and just gobbled up Jupiter, and then we call that
Speaker 1: the new Jupiter for some reason, that would totally destroy
Speaker 1: our solar system, Like Earth would get flung out into
Speaker 1: interstellar space. There's almost no chance that all the planets
Speaker 1: would then like suddenly fall into a new stable set
Speaker 1: of orbits around this pair of suns. Like that's very
Speaker 1: totally disrupt our our orbits and probably tosses out into space. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd become a rogue planet. We'd end up with no
Speaker 1: stars all right. Well, so then what is more likely
Speaker 1: to happen to Jupiter. What is Jupiter's most like feature?
Speaker 1: Jupiter future is actually not that exciting. I mean, planets
Speaker 1: are pretty stable. They're just hunks of stuff that are
Speaker 1: mostly inert. I mean the stuff going on in the
Speaker 1: center of the Earth, but it's not burning itself, it's
Speaker 1: not consuming itself. So like stars have a lifespan because
Speaker 1: they're burning their fuel and eventually they can't manage that
Speaker 1: anymore and they collapse. Right The fire from that fusion
Speaker 1: is sustaining them. But we're not really burning anything here
Speaker 1: on Earth, and Jupiter isn't burning anything. It's just a
Speaker 1: lump of stuff in space. And they can do that
Speaker 1: basically forever. Lump of gas. Yeah, Like if you just
Speaker 1: have a blob of gas, it can just be a
Speaker 1: blob of gas forever. Yeah, exactly. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Earth has an uncertain future because we're so close to
Speaker 1: the Sun that when the Sun evolves and becomes a
Speaker 1: red giant, it's going to become much much larger. In
Speaker 1: the end stages of its life, it's going to grow
Speaker 1: and eventually the Earth will be inside the Sun. Like
Speaker 1: the Sun will grow so large that where we are
Speaker 1: currently will be inside the radius of the Sun, but
Speaker 1: for jim But Jupiter it's much further away. It's got
Speaker 1: a good spot, so they're not going to be consumed
Speaker 1: by the Sun or maybe even affected by it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the Sun goes red giant and absorbs the Earth,
Speaker 1: Jupiter will be fine out there. I mean the radiation
Speaker 1: from the Sun will increase, the heat from the Sun
Speaker 1: will increase, and so that will increase the amount of
Speaker 1: solar radiation that lands on Jupiter. So it might get
Speaker 1: like more violent storms on its surface, it might affect
Speaker 1: that red spot, might heat it up a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to be a big change for Jupiter.
Speaker 1: So Jupiter is in a pretty good spot. It's happy
Speaker 1: to sit there forever and not really do anything. It
Speaker 1: sounds like we're going to have to move to Jupiter
Speaker 1: in a few billion years. I wouldn't recommend it. Jupiter
Speaker 1: is not that great a place to land, as the
Speaker 1: Galileo probe discovered. But maybe one of the moons of Jupiter, right,
Speaker 1: they're saying we could potentially live in one of them.
Speaker 1: There's water maybe in some of them. Yeah, there's lots
Speaker 1: of moons of Jupiter. That we think might already have life.
Speaker 1: We did some fun podcast episodes about what's happening in
Speaker 1: the potential underground oceans on some of those frozen moons.
Speaker 1: Some of them have like a thick layer of ice
Speaker 1: with water underneath, and so that could be a nice
Speaker 1: place to live. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a big ball of
Speaker 1: ice and water out there just waiting for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: assuming the aliens don't come and turn Jupiter into a star.
Speaker 1: But but they can't. They would have to grow it
Speaker 1: by a hundred. They would have to grow by a hundred, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So they have to steal all that mass from our Sun.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what the aliens were thinking in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten. Well, I wonder if the future Jupiter
Speaker 1: juve and astronomers are then gonna be laughing at our astronomers,
Speaker 1: just like we were just laughing at the dinosaur astronomers saying, man,
Speaker 1: that should have seen the sun, should have known that
Speaker 1: the Sun was going to turn the red giant and
Speaker 1: gone it out of the way. Yeah, well that's gonna
Speaker 1: be in like a billion years, and so I hope
Speaker 1: that we're still doing astronomy in a billion years, and
Speaker 1: then we have those kind of things to think about
Speaker 1: and to worry about. But I also hope that in
Speaker 1: a billion years, we've gotten off the planet and we
Speaker 1: have our Jovian Moon calling ease and astronomy happening in
Speaker 1: the outer reaches the Solar system, and maybe even developed
Speaker 1: warp drive to go do other solar systems. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess that's what you could do it you can build
Speaker 1: a wormhole that connects Jupiter in the Sun to sort
Speaker 1: of shunt material from the Sun directly into Jupiter. Oh no, now,
Speaker 1: now we sparked imagination of a physicist. What's the worst
Speaker 1: that can happen if we create a wormhole like a
Speaker 1: nice Jupiter and the Sun? Yeah, exactly. Well, Fortunately I
Speaker 1: don't know any engineers willing to actually build this thing
Speaker 1: for me, so I'm free to speculate wildly. Oh good, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll all make a pack. All of us engineers will
Speaker 1: make a pack. Not to help any physicists do any
Speaker 1: kind of crazy stuff. Don't answer emails from Daniel, even
Speaker 1: if it seems like a good idea, yeah, even if
Speaker 1: he has money. Don't did reply? All right, Well, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of the people who maybe we're
Speaker 1: worried that Jupiter was going to turn into a star.
Speaker 1: Can rest easy because it doesn't sound like Jupiter is
Speaker 1: going to be a star anytime soon, or and even
Speaker 1: become a star anytime soon. Or maybe that's right. Even
Speaker 1: though Jupiter totally dwarfs us, it's really small compared to
Speaker 1: the thresholds necessary to become even the dimmest, lamest kind
Speaker 1: of star. And it's much much smaller than those cosmic
Speaker 1: giants that are out there fusing and illuminating the cosmos.
Speaker 1: And so while there is a lot of drama out
Speaker 1: there in the universe, stars collapsing and forming and all
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy things happening, it seems like Jupiter it's
Speaker 1: pretty solid. So rest easy and relaxed because Jupiter is
Speaker 1: just gonna keep on floating out there, keeping its big
Speaker 1: red eye on. That's right, and we recommend you invest
Speaker 1: in Jovian moon real estate. Can you is that? Listen
Speaker 1: on redfin Send me a check and I will send
Speaker 1: you a title to your new property. It sounds like
Speaker 1: you could get arrested for that, Daniel, But all right, well,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed Dad. Thanks for joining us, and
Speaker 1: thanks for sending in your Questions. If you like a
Speaker 1: question answered on the podcast, please send it to us
Speaker 1: to question at Daniel and Jorge dot com. See you
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcast For my heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.