Scientists have discovered a brown dwarf hotter than our Sun.

A new paper published in the preprint journal arXiv and accepted into the scientific journal Nature Astronomy describes the discovery of a brown dwarf star about 1,400 light-years from Earth, but with one major difference: It’s hotter than our Sun. Temperatures on the sun’s surface reach 5504 °C, The dwarf star recorded an average of 7,727 °C.

The discovery was made by an international team led by astrophysicist Na’ama Hallakoun from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). The brown dwarf WD0032-317B orbits a very hot white dwarf called WD0032-317 and is so close to its host that the temperature of the brown star exceeds 8,000 Kelvin (5504 °C).

“The night-side temperature range covers T to M dwarfs. The ‘equilibrium’ temperature of the irradiated companion blackbody (ignoring its intrinsic luminosity and albedo and assuming it is in thermal equilibrium with external irradiation) is about 5,100 Kelvin, hotter than any known giant. defined as “planet” in the study.

hotter than the sun

As the study explains, dwarf WD0032-317B’s temperature is high enough to induce a process known as thermal decompositionIt is responsible for splitting the molecules in its atmosphere into compound atoms. The process is rarely observed in celestial bodies, so scientists have a unique opportunity to study the subject further.

What is a brown star?

Brown stars are heavier objects than planets, but not large enough to support a nuclear-fused core, as with stars — so even though they’re called that, they’re not exactly stars. Brown dwarfs can be up to 80 times the mass of Jupiter and tend to be cooler and dimmer than red dwarfs, but they do emit infrared signals.

Scientists are comparing the discovery to exoplanet KELT-9b, another space object that is also undergoing a thermal decomposition process; It also reaches high temperatures due to its proximity to a blue supergiant star – it is not as hot as our Sun. In the case of KELT-9b, the climate can exceed 4600 Kelvin (4326.85°C).

Even researchers believe that Data from WD0032-317B could help better understand rare objects like exoplanet KELT-9b.

The article describes one part of the brown dwarf that always faces the white dwarf, that is, one side of the star is always night and the other side is always day. Even during the day, the temperature can reach 9,800 Kelvin (9526.85), while on the night side temperatures of up to 3,000 Kelvin (2726.85) have been recorded.