Burning gas giants

[Exploro]

On 3/22/2016 at 5:48 AM, peadar1987 said:

A lot depends on the definition of "burning". Jupiter is mostly hydrogen, with nothing to react it with, so you'd have to add a lot of oxygen.

Of course, oxygen is 16 times as massive as hydrogen, so to add enough oxygen to burn all the hydrogen, you'd increase the mass of Jupiter to a level which could possibly sustain some level of deuterium fusion in its core. Supposing the resulting detonation didn't blow the entire mass of the planet out of its own gravity well, you'd probably get a planet with all sorts of weird allotropes of hydrogen, oxygen and water.

By burning the hypothetical gas giant would be capable of fusing hydrogen isotopes like a brown dwarf as other have described. We are not talking about a planetary conflagration.

[peadar1987]

10 hours ago, Exploro said:

By burning the hypothetical gas giant would be capable of fusing hydrogen isotopes like a brown dwarf as other have described. We are not talking about a planetary conflagration.

Well in that case I wouldn't even count it as a gas giant. If it's fusing hydrogen, it's a star in my book (although I have no idea what the IAU has to say on the matter.)

[fredinno]

9 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

Well in that case I wouldn't even count it as a gas giant. If it's fusing hydrogen, it's a star in my book (although I have no idea what the IAU has to say on the matter.)

It's a star if it is fuzing protons.