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At the end of the film, 2010, Jupiter is seen to collapse on itself, becoming a low-luminosity star. Its icy moon Europa, warmed by the heat of its new Jupiter-Sun, surface melts, providing plenty of liquid water. Europa now becomes fertile ground for new life to form.
Could Jupiter ever become a Star?
Sadly, no. Jupiter is a mere 1/1000 the mass of
the Sun. It's more than 80x too low in mass to
drive hydrogen fusion reactions in its central core.
However, Jupiter's interior is very warm. At near-infrared
wavelengths Jupiter glows with about
twice the temperature expected if just heated by the
Sun. This is due to heat energy still contained from
its original collapse and radioactive decay of heavy
element in its core (like on Earth!).
Composition of Jupiter
About the same as the Sun: Mostly Hydrogen (~76%), Helium
(~24%) and other trace elements (mostly C, N, O and Fe and
most everything else in very low quantities). There is no
real surface to Jupiter, instead its outer atmosphere just
gets increasingly dense as we descend down into Jupiter,
until it thickens into a dense liquid. Deep inside Jupiter
the hydrogen is extremely hot (about 25,000 C), but is
compressed to immense pressure, making it liquidy. At
the very, very center, all of the heaviest elements
(Fe, C, etc) have settled, giving it a small rocky central
core, about the size of Earth.
Jupiter's Magnetosphere
Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, about 10x stronger
than Earth's. It is maintained by Jupiter's liquidy hydrogen
core and fast rotation.
This creates an enormous
magnetosphere, the region of space surrounding the
planet in which the magnetic-field structure is strongly
influenced by the intrinsic magnetic field of the planet.
The strong magnetosphere traps charged particles coming from the Sun's solar wind in a large torus (fat ring) around the planet. Some of the charged particles are funneled down into the polar regions, exciting an aurora like seen on Earth, when they hit the dense outer atmosphere of Jupiter.