• Question: are stars bigger than earth?

    Asked by keithw to Arlene, Colin, David, Eugene, Paul on 16 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Colin Johnston

      Colin Johnston answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      Yes, always. Stars need to be at least 75 times as large as the planet Jupiter (which is 300 times as heavy as Earth) to shine. Any smaller than that and the temperatures and pressures in their cores aren’t great enough to allow nuclear energy to be generated.

      Astronomers have found objects nicknamed “Brown dwarfs” which have sizes greater than Jupiter but too small to be stars.

    • Photo: Paul Higgins

      Paul Higgins answered on 18 Nov 2012:

      If you count neutron stars and white dwarfs as stars, they are generally smaller than the earth. If you compacted the sun into the size of the earth you get a white dwarf, and if you compact the sun into dublin, you get a neutron star. But, neutron stars and white dwarfs start out as normal stars that are always bigger than the earth, as Colin says.

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