Could you destroy a brown dwarf by putting a h-bomb on it?

Question

could because would the hydrogen on the dwarf start fuseing as if it were part of the bomb and run out really fast?

Answer 1

That would be like trying to cause a volcano to explode by placing a firecracker on it.  

Answer 2

No, the hydrogen is not dense enough to start a chain reaction.  Intestingly, however, there was some speculation that crashing the Galileo probe into Jupiter would cause fusion ignition in its core.  Galileo carried 3 plutonium-powered radioisotope thermionic generators, which might survive reentry and descend to Jupiter's core.  Might survive, because plutonium is hard and heavy enough to withstand reentry.  The fear was that the pressure at the core would be enough to set the plutonium off in a fission explosion, the same way it's set off in atom bombs (by implosion).   This could also result in a thermonuclear reaction in the denser parts of Jupiter, similar to how a fission explosion is used to trigger a more powerful thermonuclear explosion.  Forturnatly, that didn't happen, as NASA predicted.  I suppose a large enough mass of plutonium dropped into Jupiter might, however.

Answer 3

An interesting fact about stars that will probably clear this up... stars only have an ongoing fusion reaction in their core because of the tremendous pressure. H-bombs have to put the same amount of pressure on its deuterium using a fission reaction first. Detonating an h-bomb wouldn't created the amounts of pressure needed to set the whole brown dwarf ablaze... you might get better results if you detonated a few billion all around its surface... I'll fund it =)

Answer 4

Jupiter, in all actuality, is a very, very small brown dwarf.  It's a failed star, essentially.  The largest H-bomb (heck, the whole arsenal on Earth), detonated on or within Jupiter's atmosphere will make no difference in it's status - and the same for a fully classified brown dwarf.  

It's gravity that feeds the fusion process;  it isn't just waiting for a jump-start.  

Answer 5

It would take more than a few of anything humanity could come up with.  

Answer 6

well... no... because a bomb could not out-play the gravity the brown dwarf uses to keep itself together and intact... why exactly do you want to blow up brown dwarfs... what did they ever do to you... ROFLOL...

Answer 7

You'd fuse some hydrogen just around the explosion, and then the  temperature and required density would drop fast enough the reaction would halt a few meter from ground zero.

Any impacting asteroid or comet releases as much energy in about the same volume as a nuclear bomb, so if a themonuclear bomb could start the reaction, then no brown dwarf would be left in the universe, they would have all been destroyed by asteroids and comets.