Arnold and DeVito in "Twins"?

[Brian37]

No,  the sun and Jupiter are not thought to have formed at the same time nor by the same means.  The sun formed first by gravitational collapse of large molecular clouds.  When the sun has formed sufficiently for its own gravity to pull material from the nearby parts of molecular into a dense spinning debris disk around itself, Jupiter and Saturn then started to form inside the disk by accretion of the solids in that disk, before it grew enough for its own gravity to start pulling in gas from the disk.

So sun first, then Jupiter.    They were never in a race to become stars.  The sun has to have accreted most of its mass and locked irreversibly on course to be a star before condition is present for Jupiter to even start forming.   The formation of Jupiter was always subordinate to the sun.

This may help put this in perspective, the sun is a thousand times more massive than all other objects in the solar system, combined, including the 8 planets, all the moons, all the asteroids and comets.  All of them.

Jupiter is enormous as a planet, and also the dominant reservoir of angular momentum in the solar system, but it is embody a significant fraction of the total mass and gravitational potential energy of the solar system.

Holy crap, YES, that is exactly what the show was saying.  Gravity and material favored the sun FIRST.  Jupiter formed after, but could not gain the same amount of gravity and material and heat to become a star. 

Everyone keeps missing the point the show was conveying understanding why other solar systems end up with binary stars where we did not, MIGHT explain why Jupiter did not end up a binary star and did not ignite. OF COURSE THE SUN IS BIGGER.

The show was NOT claiming Jupiter was as big as the sun, it ways saying it never got to the point of becoming a star. 


https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...ople-call/