CNN Indonesia
Monday, 18 Dec 2023 14:51 IWST
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) managed to discover the smallest brown dwarf object. (Photo: NASA)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
Space Telescope James Webb (JWST) managed to find dwarf object the smallest is brown. This finding broke the record for the smallest size in the celestial object category.
This brown dwarf object is said to be only three to four times the size of the planet Jupiter.
“Three times the mass of Jupiter is less than the mass of the Sun. So, we have to ask, how does the process of star formation occur in objects with very, very small masses?” said astronomer Catarina Alves de Oliveira from the European Space Agency (ESA), quoted from Science Alert.
Brown dwarf objects are commonly known as “failed stars.” However, this term is not completely inaccurate.
Stars are objects born from dense clumps in clouds of gas and dust in space that collapse due to gravity. Stars grow and expand until they are massive enough to generate pressure and heat in their cores that trigger hydrogen fusion.
The minimum mass for this is about 80 to 85 times the mass of Jupiter.
Brown dwarfs are objects that form in a similar way, but do not have enough mass to create the conditions for hydrogen fusion.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered the smallest brown dwarf. (Photo: NASA)
However, this object is also not a planet. The brown color in the name brown dwarfs refers to their size being smaller than white dwarf stars and larger than non-luminous ‘dark’ planets.
At a certain critical mass, or about 13 Jupiter masses, brown dwarfs can fuse atoms, not hydrogen, but the heavier deuterium isotope, whose fusion pressure and temperature are lower than hydrogen.
Meanwhile, planets are formed through a different process, namely from the accumulation of material remaining after the star has finished forming.
So, planets that form from gravitational collapse but whose mass is too low to allow fusion can technically still be called brown dwarfs.
Astronomers sometimes refer to objects that have planetary routes like this as submass brown dwarfs, planetary-mass brown dwarfs, or rogue planets.
(lom/dmi)
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2023-12-18 07:51:17
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