Brown dwarfs have sand clouds

The clouds and their composition they are very different depending on their location. On Jupiter, they are made of ammonia and ammonium hydrosulfide. On Mars, they are carbon dioxide. If you stray from the Solar system then everything will be different. An example is the upper atmosphere of the brown dwarfs that have a mass between that of stars and gas giant planets. Immediately Spitzer telescope experts have seen that clouds of silicates. They are minerals containing sand and rocks, accounting for more than 90% of the Earth’s surface.

Analyzing the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planets where silicate clouds may form can help us understand what it would mean to see in the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet in size and temperature.

Stanimir Metchev, professor at Western University Ontario, Canada

In order to form such clouds, the silicates must cool and produce the condensation. In front of vaporize the rock the temperature is warmer compared to water. This is the reason for warmer celestial bodies such as brown dwarfs. An experiment by the scientists on 113 spectra of as many brown dwarfs observed with the Spitzer provided the answer.

The data were grouped according to temperatures relative to the spectrum of the observed brown dwarf. Here, all the brown dwarfs were connected to the appropriate temperature (between 1,000 and 1,700 degrees) for the formation of silicate clouds. If this temperature range is exceeded, the silicates remain vapor, otherwise they turn into precipitation under the clouds.

We dug into Spitzer’s archival data to find brown dwarfs where there was any indication of the presence of silicate clouds, and we didn’t really know what we would find.

Genaro Suárez, scientist at Western University Ontario and lead author of the study