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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?
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That's no star... That's a space station!
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Was it found in the underdog constellation? Now, what is the latin name for that?...
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!
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Wow! Go, OGLE!
:-/
I'm gonna register a website for that...
No, wait...
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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.
We should go get it. It's always good to have a backup...
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!
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.
Clear it's evidence of those pesky monoliths at work again.
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?
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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.