If the exoplanet HD 100-546 is larger than some stars, how come it hasn’t collapsed into a low-mass star?
In: Physics
So when you pile on some more gas to something like Jupiter, it’ll get bigger… at first. Keep on piling on gas and it’ll start compressing those lower layers.
Imagine you have a stack of pillows and you keep adding a pillow on top. The pillow on bottom gets more and more squished as you add more on top.
Anyway, the point is that you could have something more massive than Jupiter that’s actually a little bit smaller than it; or, in other words, you can have planets larger than stars because the gas wasn’t squished down enough. Once you compress the gas enough, and it gets hot enough, then it’ll start fusion and become a star.
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