PUH Theorem 371 — If a Jupiter Falls Into the Sun, Its Planck Core Does Not Merge at Once: Slowed by Its Own Gravitational Wake, It Loops for Weeks to Centuries, Orbits the Sun's Core and Spirals In

Photonic Universe Hypothesis (PUH) — Worked Scenario. THE QUESTION (the author, 25 September 2026): if a Jupiter-size body slammed into the Sun, would its Planck cores and the Sun's orbit each other for a time before merging, or merge at once — given that, to a core, the Sun's gas is like smoke? MODEL. The Sun as an n = 3 polytrope with its own core (1.6 × 10²⁷ kg, T291) at the centre. The incoming core's mass is open (T241, T341.3), so two cases: light, 1.6 × 10²⁴ kg (Earth's core fraction applied to Jupiter), and heavy, 1.6 × 10²⁷ kg (seed scale; 84 per cent of Jupiter's mass, so unlikely for a real Jupiter). Contact drag and gravitational drag (Ostriker 1999); gravitational waves (Peters 1964) for the last stage; a head-on plunge averaged pass by pass; falls from Jupiter's distance or from far away; every stage repeated with the drag three times weaker. RESULT 371.1. The planet hits at 617 km/s (3.6 × 10³⁸ J, about 30,000 years of sunlight), is inside its tidal break-up distance (1.29 solar radii) before it reaches the surface, and sweeps up its own mass of gas by 0.48 of the Sun's radius: it is torn apart and mixed in. Its core, permanent (T206), carries on. RESULT 371.2. Smoke to the touch, held by gravity: contact drag would take 25 million (heavy) to 25 billion (light) years to stop the core, but its gravity gathers a wake that pulls back about 10¹⁰ times harder (reach 127 km / 127 m). Heavier cores slow faster, as T318 found. RESULT 371.3. A first-pass hit on the Sun's core needs aim within about 1 km of the centre, so the core misses and loops back through the Sun again and again: light, about 8,800 passes over 71 years (from Jupiter's distance) to 295 years (from far away), then 7 years settling; heavy, 18 passes in about a week, then under 3 days. Near the centre every small orbit takes about 23 minutes. RESULT 371.4. The cores DO orbit each other before they merge: the pair forms within 17,154 km (light) or 21,642 km (heavy) and spirals in over 5.2 years or 9 days; gravitational waves take over inside about 4 or 10 km and finish the last kilometre in 11 hours or 19 seconds. Whole journey: about 84 years (light, from Jupiter's distance; 308 from far away) or 19 days (heavy); with the drag three times weaker, three to five times longer. A heavy core passing 1,000 km from the Sun's core kicks it to 164 km/s. RESULT 371.5. Heat deposited: light, about 0.1 per cent of the thermal energy of the Sun's inner tenth; heavy, about 44 per cent within three weeks. The gas a core holds around itself is under 0.2 per cent of its mass (T210: the Shell cannot take it in quickly). RESULT 371.6. The merger itself is T309's fork: topological (instantaneous) or throughput-limited (smallest slowest, about two years at Earth mass). T371 supplies the approach. RESULT 371.7 (for T161). The same drag sinks cores orbiting inside Jupiter: from 3,500 km to the centre in 0.3 years (1.6 × 10²⁴ kg), 49 years (10²² kg), 4,900 years (10²⁰ kg), 4.9 billion years (10¹⁴ kg). Cores still orbiting must be lighter than about 10¹⁴ kg or recent arrivals. In an n = 1 Jupiter the period is 1.58 hours near the centre, not 2.87 (the surface value). KILL-CONDITIONS: a detailed simulation finding the gravitational drag far weaker; a core–matter coupling the archive has not described that rivals the wake; a long-lived heavy orbiting core inside Jupiter. NOT CLAIMED: that Jupiter will fall into the Sun; Jupiter's core mass; the Sun's destruction; what happens at contact (T309). OPEN: glancing entries (slower); the Sun's response to the heavy case; whether a core below 10¹⁴ kg can drive T161's radio signal.