Quote Originally Posted by CJC View Post
Hmm, second planet in the system's orbit. I wonder if it's gearing up to form a binary system. As the satellites create bigger and bigger gaps in the ring pattern they might lose orbit due to the size of the rotation and the mass they would collect from such motion. Moon crashing into the planet would increase the core mass which would increase its core's nuclear reactions; do we have any records of gas giants converting to stars? I know Jupiter was close because of its mass (well, close in a relative sense)...

Certainly neat, that's for sure.
Nah, a red dwarf star has greater than 100 times Jupiter's mass.
Below that, say down to 50-ish Jupiter masses, you get what's called a "brown dwarf", which doesn't have enough mass to generate a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Some of those are theorized to have very small (and very cold) planetary systems, and the low-mass ones resemble hot gas giants more than they do stars.