BocaDavie

Corrected entry: For aerobraking to work, the ship must enter the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. At no time does the ship come close enough to Jupiter to cause the friction needed to portray the flaming ball shown in the movie. (00:35:22)

Corrected entry: The alien intelligence behind the monoliths may be good at sending trite little messages of peace love and happiness, but they have just condemned the human race to extinction, along with every living thing on our planet. They change the solar system to a binary star system, which will inevitably alter the Earth's orbit. This will cause earthquakes that would make the planet uninhabitable, and the climate changes will finish off the few survivors. Turning Jupiter into a star capable of sustaining life will involve somewhow increasing its mass by approximately two hundred and fifty times. Jupiter simply isn't massive enough to become even a small, cold star (known as a brown dwarf) by itself. Using super-dense netron matter won't work: super dense matter is super heavy, that's the whole point. If you don't hugely increase Jupiter's mass it cannot become a sun.