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Can nuclear fusion occur in the atmosphere of hot jupiters?
I have been told by the hosts of Astronomycast that, in very small amounts, the combinations of forces in a stars photosphere and/or corona sphere nulcear fusion occurs. I was wondering if a jupiter type planet with a lot of hydrogen was close enough to their parent star would this process occur here.
6 Answers
- ?Lv 55 years ago
I know Jupiter would crush us to an oblivion the further you go in to The planet as they found out with a satellite. But whether it would be enough to cause nuclear fusion I wouldn't of thought so no. The mass of star is so much more than Jupiter
- ?Lv 75 years ago
Nope. A "hot" Jupiter is a gas giant that is hot because it is very close to its star. That heat from the proximity to the star could never be enough to result in fusion if that's what you're asking. Large brown dwarfs though, yes they can have limited fusion. Due to the same reasons as stars, not due to being close to a star....
- PaulLv 75 years ago
Hot Jupiters? No, not massive enough. However there seems to be a continuum of sizes ranging from gas giants to stars. In the middle of the two extremes are the brown dwarves which look superficially like gas giant planets but they are large enough for deuterium fusion to occur but not full blown hydrogen fusion.
In full blown hydrogen fusion such as you would get in a star hydrogen is fused into deuterium then deuterium is fused into helium. In brown dwarf stars the process only goes half way hydrogen can be converted to deuterium but not to helium.
- poornakumar bLv 75 years ago
Hot Jupiters lack the requisite pressure at their cores (a million atmospheres is good enough), for which each needs to be at least 13 times (our) Jupiter's mass.
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- 5 years ago
Not in the atmosphere...
You need a threshold amount of heat and pressure - which would only occur in the core of a mass by natural means.