posted on Jul, 15 2012 @ 07:40 AM
Originally posted by coyote66
Originally posted by Char-Lee
No it would be a planet...if it meets all the criteria.
“In terms of gaseous planets, once they reach 15 Jupiter masses or so there is enough pressure in the core to ignite deuterium fusion, so those are
considered “brown dwarfs” rather than planets.”
Read more: www.universetoday.com...
15 jupiter masses are way too much! at that rate, it would be a red dwarf already. jupiters mass is almost at its critical mass limit, a celestial
body exceeding a litle bit more than that the mass of jupiter, will start to perform fusion reactions!
you can also call a brown dwarf, a semi star. since the fusion reactor is yet in its stabil state, to create a sustained fusion reaction in the center
of the star. the brown dwarf is a "sometimes i do fusion reactions, and sometimes i dont" sort of star.
I'm afraid you are mistaken about Jupiter.
The sun's mass is 1.9891×10^30 kg and we refere to it as "1 solar mass"
Jupiter's mass is 1.8986×10^27 kg or 1/1047 of the sun's mass (a lot smaller)
A remarkable property of brown dwarfs is that they are all roughly the same radius as Jupiter. At the high end of their mass range (60–90
Jupiter masses), the volume of a brown dwarf is governed primarily by electron-degeneracy pressure, as it is in white dwarfs; at the low end of the
range (10 Jupiter masses), their volume is governed primarily by Coulomb pressure, as it is in planets. The net result is that the radii of brown
dwarfs vary by only 10–15% over the range of possible masses. This can make distinguishing them from planets difficult.
are condisdered to be as small as a star can be and sustain main reaction fustion of
A red dwarf is a small and relatively cool star on the main sequence, either late K or M spectral type. They have a mass of less than half that of
the Sun (down to about 0.075 solar masses, below which stellar objects are brown dwarfs) and a surface temperature of less than 4,000 K. Red dwarfs
are by far the most common type of star in the Galaxy, at least in the neighborhood of the Sun. Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, is a
red dwarf (Type M5, apparent magnitude 11.05), as are twenty of the next thirty nearest. However, due to their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs
cannot easily be observed. From Earth, none is visible to the naked eye.
So Red Dwarfs can be as small as 7.5% of the sun's mass.
Brown Dwarfs can get as small as 10 Jupiter masses,
Jupiter is only 0.09% of the sun's mass. So to get sustained fusion at it's core, you would need 75 more Jupiters.
So I'm afraid, 15 Jupiter masses is not "way too much", it would place it in the brown dwarf catagory just fine, and even 15 Jupiter masses is
still too small to have sustained fusion reaction at it's core.