Hatchlings: fantasy and sci fi tales

Nascent: science fiction

"Now that's odd," Jorj muttered.

"I thought we were already at 'odd'." Slest slowed her cycling, swiveled to upright, and began her cooling-down stretches. "What's up with Jupiter?"

Jorj's fingers flickered, dancing over virtual controls.

"Well? Have the bands started reforming?" Slest asked.

Jorj leaned forward, back stiff, arms trembling. "I think it's going to—" He cut off, panting as if he'd been the one exercising.

Slest donned her own seeing-hood and glovelets, traced commands in the air. The twilight sky blazed brilliant with stars in all directions. Sun-glow lingered on the western horizon.

Just above that sharp demarcation between Earth and the heavens hung a pinprick brighter than any star. Slest zoomed in on Jupiter, which had hidden behind the sun for more than a month.

The view shifted, picking up visuals from multiple orbital telescopes. The gas giant swelled to 90 degrees field of vision.

Several centuries ago, Jupiter's fractal bands began disintegrating, its atmosphere more turbulent than ever, churning into a globe-spanning maelstrom. For the last few decades, the planet's cloud surface roiled in a bland, homogenized stew, and it had blasted the solar system with high-energy particle radiation. Now emerging from its latest pass beyond the sun—

Something odd about the giant's data all up and down the spectrum. Slest tweaked filters, found the difference. Jupiter was emitting infrared waves far beyond its earlier fingerprint of thermal radiation, and the high-energy particle blast had subsided.

"It can't be!" Slest blurted. "Not nearly enough mass to do this!"

"According to earlier scientific theories," Jorj said. "Obviously there's some process we don't understand yet."

"But it's impossible! Can't happen with a solid core like Jupiter's!"

"They've never made a definitive determination that it's solid. No probe has survived long enough to impact. Perhaps it's gaseous through and through."

Notifications pinged around the edges of Slest's enhanced view. Planet-gazers from all over Earth and Luna confirmed the conclusion dawning on Slest and Jorj.

Jupiter's core, not solid after all, had reached a pressurized temperature high enough to ignite thermonuclear reaction. The gas giant had birthed itself from planet to star.

***

Note: Scientific theories indicate that Jupiter would need to be 40 times larger in mass to follow this path. Even if it had such mass, it would take millions of years, not centuries, to ignite.

Or so go the theories. Which, by the way, come from a well-thumbed book of mine that is 43 years old. How well do we really understand the astronomical realities?

The all-wise guru of knowledge, YouTube, says that even if Jupiter followed this sequence, it would have little to no effect on life on Earth. A red dwarf, it would give little light. No difference in mass would mean no difference in gravitational pull, especially since it's further from Earth than the Sun.

Fun to fantasize, though!