New images of Jupiter

It's so scary! All those swirls are like planet size hurricanes. Had Jupiter been bigger, it would have been a star, and life on earth would not have existed. Gives me chills.

Jupiter will forever regret the path it did not take.

Jupiter would need to weigh 13 times its current mass to become a brown dwarf, and about 83 to 85 times its mass to become a low-mass star [1]

[1]: https://www.astronomy.com/science/ask-astro-could-jupiter-ev...

Also interesting to note that the combined mass of all planets in the solar system is only about 1.4 Jupiter masses (or 0.0014 Solar masses). The Sun did not leave us much to work with if we’re hoping to build a second star!

Just like me /s

> Had Jupiter been bigger, it would have been a star, and life on earth would not have existed.

Not sure a small star (e.g red-dwarf size) in Jupiter’s orbit would make much difference to Earth, other than it being brighter at night when it’s in the sky.

Anything that reminds me that we are living in an environment thin as an eggshell on a grain of sand surrounded by an infinite cold and deadly vacuum, punctuated by hellfires that would evaporate our hole planet if we got to close.

There are so preciously few places like Earth. How I wish more of us cared about it.

It doesn't care about us, and we don't need to "care" for it, it's going to be fine without us. What we don't do is care for ourselves, which is what you're really saying, self-preservation. The earth doesn't give two shits if it's 50 degrees warmer. You can't even say it's to protect life, because some forms of life will do way better in a warmer planet too. The universe / nature is gnarly already, much more than we can ever be, and plus, whatever we do, we're nature too. So in a way you're saying nature doesn't care for itself.

Earth's mass is something times 10^24. Jupiter's mass is 2 x 10^27. The smallest stars are 8 x 10^28.

On an exponential scale, Jupiter is closer to being a star than it is to being Earth. So... maybe you could say that Jupiter is almost a star. With such loose definitions talking about astronomical scales, there's a lot of room for interpretation and exaggeration.

I think the point is--in the spirit of appreciating Jupiter--Jupiter resembles the largest possible planets.

I can't help find such edgy cynism nothing else than juvenile. Yeah, sure, in the end nothing matters and the universe doesn't give a fuck about you.

And life on earth is just an accident, and that intelligence and consciousness exists here for a very brief time on the universe's path to heath death doesn't matter at all. Except of us poor conscious beings who find joy in being alive and actually have the capacity to marvel, because it is marvellous that we can, and we should.

And I care that it is us who inhabits the earth, and not slugs.

In case anyone was wondering, that something is about 6kg.

> us poor conscious beings who find joy in being alive and actually have the capacity to marvel, because it is marvellous that we can, and we should.

> And I care that it is us who inhabits the earth, and not slugs.

That's not mutually exclusive with the comment you were replying to.

I agree with both of your comments except for your opinion that the first comment is "edgy cynism" and "juvenile".

I thought my point flowed nicely from yours, sorry you didn't like it. For me it's about not having these visions of grandure about us as some protectors of the universe and instead accept our tiny place in all this. For example even your concept that our consciousness is more important than slugs or rocks, is all rationalization on your part to make your place in the universe have some meaning. Anyway, I don't then use this fun thought experiments to justify not recycling or denying human impacting climate change if that was what put you off.

Jupiter's perihelion is only 5AU from the sun. I suspect that Jupiter could fall well short (mass-wise) of being a star, yet still be big enough to destabilize Earth's orbit.