James Webb detects brown dwarf star so small it ‘cannot be explained’

In a new observation made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Scientists managed to detect three brown dwarfs; One of these is so small it ‘cannot be explained’ — They are in a star cluster a thousand years away from Earth. It’s not actually unexplainable, but its small size challenges what astronomers know about dwarf stars.

The larger brown dwarf is located in a star cluster, but its orbit is not associated with a parent star, according to a study published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal. Its mass is about eight times that of Jupiter, with the smallest being three to four times the mass of Jupiter. Scientists point out that this is the cosmic object with the lowest mass ever discovered.

As a relatively young star cluster, brown dwarfs still had high temperatures due to their recent formation; They also emit infrared light. The stars were discovered using James Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

“For current models it is easy enough to form giant planets in a disk around a star. But in this cluster such an object is unlikely to form in a disk, but instead is likely to form as a star, three times the mass of Jupiter. European Space Agency ( ESA astronomer Catarina Alves de Oliveira said in a statement: “It is smaller than our Sun. So, we need to ask, “How does the star formation process work in such small, much smaller masses?”

Little brown dwarf star

Since a brown star does not have enough mass for the hydrogen nuclear fusion process, cannot produce the energy and light emitted by an ordinary star. Despite this, scientists believe that these ‘failed stars’ are large enough for the deuterium fusion process. But the new observation questions what scientists understand about brown dwarfs.

For an ordinary star to develop, it requires a gas cloud with a lot of mass and therefore a lot of gravity. However, the little brown dwarf was born from a very small cloud of gas. This means it would have a weaker gravity, making it harder for such a small ‘failed star’ to form.

“It is theoretically difficult to explain how such a small brown dwarf could form. A dense, heavy cloud of gas has enough gravity to collapse and form a star. However, because gravity is weaker, it is unlikely that a small cloud will collapse to form a brown dwarf, especially one comparable to giant planets.” “It should be more difficult for brown dwarfs with larger masses.”

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