Brown Dwarf in Milky Way : A team of scientists has discovered an extremely rare quadruple star system in the Milky Way, according to a new study.The system known as UPM J1040−3551 AabBab consists of a pair of cold brown dwarfs orbiting a pair of young red dwarf stars, a configuration never seen before.
What are brown dwarf ?
- Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies that share some similarities with stars and others with planets.
- These objects form like stars from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. However, they do not have enough mass to consistently fuse hydrogen, a process that heats a star and makes it shine. That is why they are often known as “failed stars”.
- They have atmospheres similar to gas giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn.
- Their atmospheres can consist of clouds and molecules like H2O.
- Brown dwarfs can also be up to 70 times more massive than Jupiter.
Significance of Brown Dwarf in Milkyway :
- They help astronomers better understand the conditions that are necessary for the formation of stars and planets.
- Determining the abundance and distribution of brown dwarfs gives key information on the distribution of mass in the universe to astronomers
- Brown dwarfs are key to understanding how stars and planets form. Studying them helps astronomers figure out how objects develop when they lack the mass to support sustained nuclear fusion.
- These objects give us information about the initial mass function (IMF) of stars, which connects star formation, galaxy evolution, and the amount of baryonic matter in the universe.
- Brown dwarfs are essential for exploring the variety of celestial bodies and how their atmospheres and chemistry change under different mass and temperature conditions.
- They primarily emit infrared light because of their lower temperatures ranging from 400 to 2,000 K. This makes them difficult to detect, but they are crucial for examining cool atmospheres and clouds, sharing characteristics with gas giant planets. visit here
“Brown dwarf in milkyway are significant astronomical objects that occupy a unique intermediate position between stars and planets. They have masses greater than the largest gas giant planets but less than the smallest stars, typically between 13 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter. Unlike stars, brown dwarfs do not sustain stable hydrogen fusion in their cores, but they may briefly fuse deuterium early in their lives” link yourself here for more space & technology
