Slashdot Mirror
Star Smaller Than Some Planets Found
Abhishek writes "Astronomers have found the tiniest full-fledged star known, an object just 16 percent bigger than Jupiter. It is smaller than some known planets that orbit other stars.
The star is a companion to a Sun-like star toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. It was found and measured by observing changes in the light output of the system when the smaller star passes in front of the larger star from our vantagepoint. This would give a better idea of brown dwarfs or failed stars. The star has been named OGLE-TR-122b. This discovery also marks the possibility of stars that look strikingly like planets."
I've read in other places that there needs to be a critical mass for a big cloud of hydrogen to begin fusion, otherwise it ends up as something like Jupiter. What might be the reason for this star burning when other similarly sized objects do not? Gravitational effects from the companion star imparting extra energy? Any physicists care to speculate?
Aren't neutron stars "stars"? And aren't they smaller than planets?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
That's no star... That's a space station!
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
until the Oscar awards.
Thank you, I'm here all week.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Was it found in the underdog constellation? Now, what is the latin name for that?...
...and some shrinkage is going on. Do the galaxies know about shrinkage? Those stars sure hope so.
If a star is smaller than the conditions necessary for supernovae, and is struck with a star of the same size, you will end up with quadrupoles flying off in different directions. Needless to say this is rare, which makes this quite an exciting find!
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
It's probably just in the final phases of extinction
Wow! Go, OGLE!
:-/
I'm gonna register a website for that...
No, wait...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I think it should be noted that the way we look at stars and planets could never really lead to that mistake. Radiation emitted by a stellar body is analyzed and it is then determined "what" the stellar body is. It is impossible to misinterpret an extremely hot stellar body with a relatively cool planet.
Before anyone starts panicing about Juptier collapsing into a companion star to the sun, and screwing over our whole solar system pretty royally - please note that while this star is only 16% larger than Jupiter in volume, it contains 95 times as much mass.
Been a long time since I was I was into nuclear phys, but how can it maintain that density with such (relatively) small mass? The process of fusion, which tends to expand a star, equally balances gravity which tends to contract a star. Seems to me a normal star would expand due to fusion.
Basically, it doesn't make sense that it can maintain being 1/10 the mass of the sun and 50x as dense. This means its fusion output must be tiny (little to balance gravity), but why? Is it mainly made of non-hydrogen mass? They should be able to tell the elemental composition from the spectrum. And how could it have such little fusion and not be a brown dwarf?
Wish this press release had some science in it.
Mickey Rooney appeared slightly irritated at a press conference held in his Beverly Hills Mansion earlier today. "I was discovered over 70 years ago, and these astronomers claim they've got a smaller full-fledged star? Well I've got news for 'em."
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Are we out of names now. They names this little baby : OGLE-TR-122b. May be I should change my address to 127.0.0.1 too. -a
does it produce a brown dwarf? That stinks!
We should go get it. It's always good to have a backup...
What's wong with www.go-ogle.com?
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086837/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD 0yMHxsbT01MDB8dHQ9b258ZmI9dXxwbj0wfHE9MjAxMHxodG1s PTF8bm09b24_;fc=1;ft=21;fm=1/
Planet X is also said to be a small non-ignited brown dwarf circling our sun every 3600 years. What the article describes is quite similar to that. Let the speculation begin! prepare your tinfoil hats!
C'mon now, you can't tell me the star was actually smaller than Uranus?
There is an important point to clarify here regarding nomenclature.
.08 solar masses or greater.
Stars shine by nuclear fusion of hydrogen. That can only be sustained in stars of about
However, smaller mass objects are formed alongside stars with lower mass still. Astronomers call objects with insufficient mass to burn lithium (but enough to burn deuterium) "brown dwarfs".
At still lower masses, objects which cannot even burn deuterium are labelled (somewhat arbitrarily) according to their environment. If they are orbiting around another star, they are called planets. If they are free-floating, they are given another name -- free-floating objects or planets, depending on the author.
In the end, this is all a rather arbitrary scheme imposed by humans. For instance, if an object not burning deuturium is ejected from a protostellar disk, it gets changed from a planet to a free-floater in the process!
This article deals not with mass but with radius. There are in fact many objects which are known to exist with far less mass than the star reported here. They are not called "stars," but in fact the distinction is just one of nomenclature.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
This should make building a Dyson sphere really, really easy! Right? No?
All you need is the ability to trap all the energy from both stars. Some kind of container whose inside is it's outside. I predict this will give rise to a whole new industry in Dyson-Klein Bottles.
Could this "star" be an iron core the size of Jupiter? Maybe an iron core with enough fissile matter to trigger fusion in an outer layer of hydrogen. I thought that Jupiter's core was about as dense as Earth's. Are there more active regions of the Milky Way that should be rich in metals, where large iron rich objects are relatively more common?
This discovery also marks the possibility of stars that look strikingly like planets.
Not only that, but it also suggests the possibilities of miniturizing these amazing power sources to such a size as to be portable. Perhaps someday we'll each have our own pocket-sun that we can use to supply juice to our laptop computers. Think it's unlikely? These are the same computers that exponentially out-perform computers that took up an entire room some thirty years ago.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
are you suggesting she's a ipod?
"Sure all life would die off and everything would freeze."
Not if you live in France or Japan, two countries with reasonable nuclear energy production. Plants could still be grown, lights would still work and it'd be like a really long night time.
well, now we know where these tiny grey alians come from - a tiny star with tiny planets...
Oh well, what the hell...
All you'd have to do is figure out how to breath liquid oxygen and you'd be fine!
Technically, we would fall in, but because of the such increased gravitational force, relavitivity would pop in and we wouldn't see us falling in.
"Love is like a trampoline, first it's like "SWEET!!" then it's like *BLAMM!*"
that solar system is actually the home system of the Aschen (ref: Stargate) - they have converted one of their gas giants into a second sun so that their crops would have higher yield
XD
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Clear it's evidence of those pesky monoliths at work again.
...98% of the Universe isn't explored yet. I guess, we'll have to "look" for answers for a long while.
;)
At least, 600 years ago people believed the World is a Disc.. 100 years ago, people believed that atoms can't be splitted and 10 minutes ago, I didn't know that there is a "star" of almost Jupiter's size... how fascinating!
Poor Roseann Barr. Will people never stop teasing her?
...is, how hot does it burn? If it is indeed a star, how hot are its surface and its core?
-- haaz.
> This discovery also marks the possibility of
> stars that look strikingly like planets.
We already have those.. examples include John Goodman and Roseanne Barr.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I'm going to love it, hug it, and call it OGLE-TR-122b!
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
"stars that look strikingly like planets."
Launching Orson Welles jokes in five, four, three...
if jupiter had ignited into a star, what would it look like from earth? would it be brighter than the light that bounces off the moon?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Now for a long and pointless debate over whether it should be called a star or a moon.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
16% of Jupiter isn't bigger, it's smaller.
Among other things, I just can't see an object made of mostly hydrogen and helium being almost 100 times the density of Jupiter.
In any case, getting on to the name: It's tiny like a dwarf should be; It's probably got a configuration vaguely reminiscent of a white dwarf (heavy central core with non-core fusion); and I'm guessing that it's radiating mostly in the red spectrum (because it's generating so little heat).
Voila! A bonafide Red Dwarf star (and it's not (just) a cheap pun).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
OK can a real physicist shoot me down?
This thing is near the galactic core where things are older and funkier. Does this it have to be necessarily fusing hydrogen in there?
Could the parent star be buggering up any spectrum analysis?
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
This post goes to all you scientist out there. First question, what's to keep Jupiter from being a star it self?
And second, (this is a serious question so please don't mod me) but what would happen if some one blew up a nuclear bomb in Jupiter's atmosphere? Would it turn into a star or would it just burn out? And how would doing so affect Earth?
I would think if Jupiter where to turn into a star that it's gravity would increase and effect the entire solar system on a gravitational level.
What would happen to it's moons? Would the increase gravity suck the moons into the planet or would they stay in there old orbit? And what about Titan, the extra heat from the new lit star would heat up the moon and turn all those liquids into gases.
This would be an interesting scientific experiment to try. I just want to know what would be the potential risk for us.