You don't need exotic fusion processes to explain the energy output of
Saturn and Jupiter. Earth has the same heat sources as Saturn and
Jupiter. It is just that Earth gets more energy from the Sun than the
gas giants and produces less energy internally than them.
The heat inside Earth, Saturn and Jupiter comes from three sources.
1. When a meteor collides with a planet, the collision produces heat.
Today those collisions are too rare to be very significant. But early in
the solar system, collisions where much more frequent and generated lots
of heat. Earth has had time to radiate away most of that heat. Jupiter
and Saturn being so much bigger they take much more time to radiate away
their heat. Also because the are so much more massive things that
collide with those planets go down a much deeper gravity well, so they
tend to hit at much higher velocities, therefore produce more heat.
2. There is some uranium and other fissile material in planets. When
those elements decay, they produce heat. Jupiter and Saturn being so
much bigger than Earth, they have more fissile material, therefore
generate much more heat that way.
3. External energy radiated on the planet, almost entirely energy from
the Sun. Earth being closer to the Sun, it receives more energy per area
unit than Jupiter and Saturn.
Alain Fournier
On 2025-07-03 2:11 p.m., x wrote:
Quoting from Wikipedia:
'Saturn has a hot interior, reaching 11,700 °C (21,100 °F) at its core,
and radiates 2.5 times more energy into space than it receives from the
Sun.'
Once upon a time Arthur C Clarke wrote 'The Sentinel', and then '2001: A Space Odyssey'. Then later he wrote '2010: Odyssey Two' where Jupiter
was converted into a star. It is difficult to say to what extent the
words 'brown dwarf' were in common usage when it was written.
So Wikipedia talks about diamonds settling or something like that to
radiate 2.5 times more energy but.
There is geologic time. This is enough for billions of years?
The Earth it is generally accepted has something called a 'mantle'
and something called a 'core'. Nonetheless if you have ultra-compressed hydrogen, or even ultra-compressed something like carbon, nitrogen, or
oxygen (compressed so much that is it even obvious that the molecular
bonds would still be something like, 'methane', 'ammonia', or 'water'),
is it really so obvious that something like an exotic form of 'fusion'
is impossible at a very slow rate? If it were possible, then would
it be impossible that there could be a rethinking of the term 'brown dwarf'? The Earth is supposed to have a 'mantle' and a 'core' -
something like semi-'liquid' 'rock' and then hot 'metal', but mostly compressed 'hydrogen'? What does it mean? Is it wrong to call than
an 'ocean' rather than a 'mantle' if it is something like a compressed
'gas'?
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