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In the distant future, humanity may be able to ‘stellify’ Jupiter – to turn it into a star – with miniature black holes.

Astrophysicist Martyn Fogg first proposed the sensational idea and states that when technology and knowledge is sufficient, scientists could use black holes to seed the gas giant and begin

the process of turning it into a star.

As there is a lot of hydrogen on Jupiter, the King of the Solar System, as it has been dubbed for its immense size, would burn slowly releasing enough energy.

But as the gas giant relatively small, compared to a star like the sun for example, it would not be hot enough to destroy everything that surrounds it.

The end goal would be to terraform the likes of Europa and Ganymede – two moons of Jupiter – so that they one day become habitable.

According to the astrophysicist, this process would produce "energy sufficient to create effective temperatures on Europa and Ganymede that would be similar to the values on Earth and Mars,

respectively.”

He writes in his research paper ‘Stellifying Jupiter: A First Step To Terraforming the Galilean Satellites: “The aim would be for the hole to be captured by Jupiter so that it would orbit

the centre of mass of the planet intemally, as close to the core as possible.”

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However, he adds that “the feasibility of this scenario depends on the prevalence of primordial black holes and the efficiency of conversion of rest mass to energy for black hole accretion

from a dense medium.”

There is a very real danger that the black hole could grow to an uncontrollable size and completely consume Jupiter.

This would release an immense burst of radiation that could wipe out all life in the solar system in an instant.

Physicist and astrobiologist Milan M. Ćirković from the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade told Gizmodo: “In the latter phases of stellification, after about 100 million years or so, the

stellified Jupiter will be extremely bright and might become quite unstable.

"This could jeopardize the rest of the Solar System, or an analogous planetary system for extraterrestrial stellifications."

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