The solar system is alive!

I know this thread probably belongs to the ASB section, given that it's probably impossible. But still, I can't help but wonder, what if Jupiter had become a second sun? And because of the heat generated, this allowed for the prerequisites of a habitable Europa or Ganymede (those were one of the moons of Jupiter).

http://starryskies.com/articles/dln/1-02/jupiter.star.html Yeah, this website explained that even had Jupiter gained sufficient mass to become a sun, the resulting heat would probably have been too much and the planet (or sun) would have expanded and swallowed up its moons.
But let's assume that somehow, had Jupiter became a second sun; the heat it emitted would have been just enough to lead to a habitable Europa.

And while we're at it, what if Venus did not experience the runaway greenhouse effect that caused it to become the sulphuric hell-hole it is today? What if; instead, it was a tropical world with a breathable atmosphere with sufficient bodies of water for life? (Much like in that novel Stirling wrote)

What if Mars was habitable too? Just like in "A world of difference"?

What if the moons of Uranus or even Neptune also became habitable?

I'm not sure if such a thread has already been done (Been checking the forums and this idea seems novel enough). But, what would the implications be on humanity for a solar system that is "alive"? Now, this need not necessarily mean intelligent life but at the very least; flora and fauna.
I'd imagine a space race that would have been WAY hotter than the one in OTL of the 1950s to 70s between the USA and USSR. Possibly even colonies.

So, what do you guys think?
 
Yeh. this probably belongs in ASB...

If there was a sun the size of a football on the earth, it would consume more than 50% the entire planet in heat (though not gravity). Jupiter is a LOT bigger than a football, it would probably destroy life on earth whilst simultaneously absorbing its moons...
 
There's no reason this should be in ASB! Another planet in our solar system with a functioning ecosystem is perfectly logical, and perfectly possible as well. All that's needed is for Mars to have a bit more mass; then, it would be able to retain its oceans, opening the door to life.

Venus, on the other hand, could actually have life in OTL. Just as Europa might. But Uranus and Neptune are too far out from the sun to have life, at least as far as we know. But I think the best thing you could get is Mars having flora and fauna, prompting more of a focus on space, rather than Earth's problems. Which would be kickass.
 
There's no reason this should be in ASB! Another planet in our solar system with a functioning ecosystem is perfectly logical, and perfectly possible as well. All that's needed is for Mars to have a bit more mass; then, it would be able to retain its oceans, opening the door to life.

Venus, on the other hand, could actually have life in OTL. Just as Europa might. But Uranus and Neptune are too far out from the sun to have life, at least as far as we know. But I think the best thing you could get is Mars having flora and fauna, prompting more of a focus on space, rather than Earth's problems. Which would be kickass.
The ASB bit is Jupiter becoming a sun.

I personally do believe that we will find life in the next century or two (bacteria and microbes, not fully formed organisms like on our planet), the best bet in my opinion is Europa in our solar system. Under 15 miles of ice, water is liquid and warm enough to support life. Of course, whether we'd manage to get there to see it (through the ice) is pretty debatable. But I believe the equivalent of deep sea creatures could exist beneath the ice sheet.

It is my opinion that life evolved and died dozens of times before it found stability on earth, if it came to earth on an asteroid, the universe could be teeming with life. If it was simply a random combination of particles fitting together to create life? I can see it being a fairly common occurence.
 
There's no reason this should be in ASB! Another planet in our solar system with a functioning ecosystem is perfectly logical, and perfectly possible as well. All that's needed is for Mars to have a bit more mass; then, it would be able to retain its oceans, opening the door to life.

Venus, on the other hand, could actually have life in OTL. Just as Europa might. But Uranus and Neptune are too far out from the sun to have life, at least as far as we know. But I think the best thing you could get is Mars having flora and fauna, prompting more of a focus on space, rather than Earth's problems. Which would be kickass.

I agree with the kickass-ness part :) Even a habitable Mars would open up many interesting possibilities.

But a habitable Venus in OTL might mean that it would be the first planet to have man to land on; not Mars. At its closest point to Earth, it's about 38 million km away. That's a lot closer than the 55 million km between Mars and Earth at the nearest point.
 
That's true. But a habitable Venus (at least a Venus habitable by the kind of life we know) is hard to get, what with it being so close to the sun. So I think your best bet would still be Mars. But if you can get Venus to be habitable, so be it.
 
actually .. one of the few things that makes Venus such a hell whole is the lack of plate tectonics that recycles the carbon back into the crust and mantel .. It would be a vastly different planet if it had similar thermo dynamics to earth.

Since the surface is reformed by massive mantel upwhellings, this produces the sulfuric hell hole effect.
 
A Red Dwarf where Jupiter is would be totally plausible. It would affect the orbits of Mars and Saturn, not to mention the Asteroid belt, but Earth itself should be fine. But could it have a life-bearing planet.

Let's use this calculator to find a habitable zone. I'm using the red dwarf Teegarden's star, one of the smallest known, at roughly 80 Jupiter Masses (it's around 12 light years away). The habitable zone for this star would be between 368,016 and 538,560 KM. This is sufficient to have Io in the habitable zone - Europa wll be too chilly however.

Most other nearby red dwarfs are too luminous however. Something the mass of Proxima Centauri or Bearnard's Star would roast all of the Jovian moons, with the "habitable zone" not beginning until the first tier of captured asteroid moons. Still, the moons themselves would remain - oddly brown dwarves and small red dwarves essentially have the same mass as Jupiter, just much higher gravity because they are much more compressed.

Still, it's theoretically possible. Of course, it's ASB anyway, as there's no way an early Jupiter would get that much mass without significantly altering formation of all of the other planets in the solar system.
 
If you can get Venus to rotate much faster, and give it a decent sized moon, it would probably be relatively habitable, if only in the same way as To'ul'h Prime from Orion's Arm.

If you can give Mars a decent-sized moon, you could at least maintain a molten core through tidal friction, and render it habitable.

Maybe making Jupiter a brown dwarf would be better- it would still radiate heat, and you wouldn't have to increase its mass too much.
 
If you can get Venus to rotate much faster, and give it a decent sized moon, it would probably be relatively habitable, if only in the same way as To'ul'h Prime from Orion's Arm.

If you can give Mars a decent-sized moon, you could at least maintain a molten core through tidal friction, and render it habitable.

Maybe making Jupiter a brown dwarf would be better- it would still radiate heat, and you wouldn't have to increase its mass too much.

The heat from a Mars moon shouldn't be that relevent - you need serious tidal forces to create those sort of energy levels, and a moon that big will just end up tidally locking Mars as a double planet.

Far more important would be a moderately serious moons distortions causing outgassings and keeping the Martian atmosphere a going concern for far longer.
 
Yeh. this probably belongs in ASB...

If there was a sun the size of a football on the earth, it would consume more than 50% the entire planet in heat (though not gravity). Jupiter is a LOT bigger than a football, it would probably destroy life on earth whilst simultaneously absorbing its moons...


The sun is a LOT bigger than Jupiter, and a LOT closer to Earth than Jupiter, and Earth life has not been destroyed...not yet, anyway. Just saying.

Arthur C Clarke's book "2010" probably had it closer to what Jupiter would be like if it were a star...just a very bright star in the sky.
 
If you can get Venus to rotate much faster, and give it a decent sized moon, it would probably be relatively habitable, if only in the same way as To'ul'h Prime from Orion's Arm.

If you can give Mars a decent-sized moon, you could at least maintain a molten core through tidal friction, and render it habitable.

Maybe making Jupiter a brown dwarf would be better- it would still radiate heat, and you wouldn't have to increase its mass too much.

Better to just switch the position of Venus and Mars from the beginning. Venus out were Mars is would be habitable.
 
Aw man, somebody beat me to it.

There's no way for proto-jupiter to gain enough mass to become a star. And if it did, I'd assume it'd render all terrestrial planets uninhabitable. I could figure it out for sure if I had the motivation to do the maths...but I don't.

But as was said, we could put a red dwarf star where Jupiter is without too much fuss.
 
I agree with the kickass-ness part :) Even a habitable Mars would open up many interesting possibilities.

But a habitable Venus in OTL might mean that it would be the first planet to have man to land on; not Mars. At its closest point to Earth, it's about 38 million km away. That's a lot closer than the 55 million km between Mars and Earth at the nearest point.

Ah, but distance doesn't matter in space; okay, well it does, but it's not very good for indicating the difficulty of a mission. The key factor there is delta-V--that is, the change in velocity (or, as a rough proxy, the change in energy) you need to make from your current position (say, low Earth orbit) to get to your destination. And the delta-V you need to travel between LEO and Venus orbit is actually greater than the amount you need to travel between LEO and Mars orbit, especially when you take into account things like aerobraking, at least as long as you are talking about impulsive trajectories (ie., ones physically realizable with known engine designs and reasonable amounts of fuel).

Which doesn't argue against your main point, that people would go there first, and in fact probably a lot sooner than people will go to either Venus or Mars IOTL.
 
The sun is a LOT bigger than Jupiter, and a LOT closer to Earth than Jupiter, and Earth life has not been destroyed...not yet, anyway. Just saying.
Except that... we orbit the sun, so maintain a constant irradiation (close enough, anyway). An actual sun in Jupiter's position would a) massively increase the amount of insolation, and b) make it highly variable.

It MIGHT not make the earth uninhabitable, but it would make it much nastier.

Also, anything massive enough to ignite that close would totally mess up planets' orbits and the earth wouldn't be in a stable orbit, so life wouldn't have a chance.

Arthur C Clarke's book "2010" probably had it closer to what Jupiter would be like if it were a star...just a very bright star in the sky.
Except that this is literally ASB (except for the B). Aliens igniting Jupiter (which is WAY too small to self ignite), and somehow keeping the process going. Without changing the mass.

So, no. A real star that close would prevent life on earth (if only because earth would never have formed)
 
Here are some dumb questions from someone ignorant on the subject but still interested.

If one could give Venus a moon the same size as our own, would the tidal forces cause the tectonic activity that we have? Would it be beneficial to the planet from a human-habitation point of view?

Would there be a way to scrub the atmosphere of Venus to make it breathable?

And what about Naomi?
 
Yeh. this probably belongs in ASB...

If there was a sun the size of a football on the earth, it would consume more than 50% the entire planet in heat (though not gravity). Jupiter is a LOT bigger than a football, it would probably destroy life on earth whilst simultaneously absorbing its moons...

That is utter crap. The sun has a density of 1400kg/m^3 and produces an output of roughly 0,2mW/kg. Its temperature at the surface is 5800K, and it radiates something like 65MW/m^2 of surface. A ball of such plasma wouldn't "consume more than 50% of the planet" (?)

IF you replace Jupiter with something far heavier, the Jovian moons would probably be inside their roche limit and be torn asunder by tidal forces.

Venus predicament is said to be caused by a lack of water due to forming closer to the sun, the lack of water makes the mantle harder, hence instead of having plate tectonics the surface completely reforms in a massive outburst of geothermal energy every few hundred million years. Add a large moon AND water and it might tick, though personally I believe it is too close to the sun to be habitable without a sun-blocker of some kind.


Making the sun a double star wouldn't necessarily change history much, provided the other star is reasonably dim and distant.
 
Last edited:
That is utter crap. The sun has a density of 1400kg/m^3 and produces an output of roughly 0,2mW/kg. Its temperature at the surface is 5800K, and it radiates something like 65MW/m^2 of surface. A ball of such plasma wouldn't "consume more than 50% of the planet" (?)

Just to put those numbers in perspective--water has a density of 1000 kg/m^3, the first microwave oven required about 10 kW/kg, the temperature of a wood fire is about 1100 K, and the power/m^2 of the most powerful lasers ever fired was (probably) in excess of 1 PW/m^2 (that is, about 100 million times more intense than the Sun's radiation at the surface).
 
Top