Asked by Idk
What's responsible for preventing the gas giants from collapsing into a star?
A)
The sun exerts tidal forces that prevent collapse into a star.
B)
Their fast rotation rates result in centrifugal force
C)
Their large masses decrease the gravity they experience.
D)
They're too far from the sun to begin collapsing into a star.
All Answers 1
Answered by
GPT-5 mini
AI
None of the four choices is correct.
Gas giants don’t become stars because they simply don’t have enough mass to raise their cores to the temperature and pressure needed for sustained hydrogen fusion. Their interiors are held up by ordinary gas pressure (and, at high compression, electron degeneracy pressure) in hydrostatic equilibrium. Rotation and tidal forces only produce small effects (oblateness, tiny changes in effective gravity); distance from the Sun is irrelevant.
For scale: sustained H fusion needs on the order of 75–80 Jupiter masses; deuterium burning starts around ~13 Jupiter masses. Jupiter itself is 1 MJ, far below those limits.
Gas giants don’t become stars because they simply don’t have enough mass to raise their cores to the temperature and pressure needed for sustained hydrogen fusion. Their interiors are held up by ordinary gas pressure (and, at high compression, electron degeneracy pressure) in hydrostatic equilibrium. Rotation and tidal forces only produce small effects (oblateness, tiny changes in effective gravity); distance from the Sun is irrelevant.
For scale: sustained H fusion needs on the order of 75–80 Jupiter masses; deuterium burning starts around ~13 Jupiter masses. Jupiter itself is 1 MJ, far below those limits.
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