Researchers Discover a Star's Minimum Possible Mass

paulmac84 writes "Stars that don't have enough mass never shine, dying billions of years before their bigger counterparts. But astronomers have never been able to measure the exact mass limit, because the lightest stars that do shine can be simply too faint to detect. Now, new images show for the first time how big a star must be to avoid impending doom. The long-awaited new images finally lay this question to rest, say the authors. The dimmest stars were measured as being 8.3% of the Sun's mass. All protostars that are smaller than this are headed for life as a brown dwarf."

Comments

Re:Um... yay?

[ZorbaTHut]

Many years ago people believed that heavy things fell faster than light things. They didn't bother testing this theory because they knew it to be true. Then, one day, someone tested that theory and found it was false.

Perhaps it is a simple problem to answer mathematically. And now we've tested it. We have actual data. Does the data match up with the mathematical answer? Maybe, maybe not, I don't pretend to know. But I imagine people out there do - so either we've got another point of verification that our models are good, or it's time to figure out what's wrong with them.

Either way, this is what's called Science.