Brown dwarfs

Table of Contents☰

About Brown dwarf:

Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars because they’re lighter than stars, but heavier than gas giant planets.
Features
- These objects have a size between that of a giant planet like Jupiter and that of a small star.
- Brown dwarfs accumulate material like a star, not like a planet.
- They can also have clouds made out of precipitates in their atmospheres. However, while we have water clouds on Earth, the clouds on brown dwarfs are much hotter and likely made up of hot silicate particles.
- Thus, they hold onto their lighter elements (hydrogen and helium) more effectively than planets and have a relatively low metal content.
- They do not have enough mass for their cores to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight. This is why they are sometimes referred to as “failed stars.”
- The difference between brown dwarfs and stars is that, unlike stars, brown dwarfs do not reach stable luminosities by thermonuclear fusion of normal hydrogen.
- Both stars and brown dwarfs produce energy by fusion of deuterium (a rare isotope of hydrogen) in their first few million years.

Q1: What is deuterium?

It is an isotope of hydrogen with a nucleus consisting of one proton and one neutron, which is double the mass of the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen (one proton). Deuterium has an atomic weight of 2.014.

Source: A brown dwarf discovered 30 years ago is actually twins circling each other