So what does our default understanding of the Universe say? If a space object is revolving around a star, it will be a planet and relatively a cool body, right? This logic is in keeping with things in our Solar System as planets revolving around the Sun are cooler while the Sun blazes with temperatures upwards of 5000 degrees Celsius.
But a recently discovered space object may change your understanding of things. The object is revolving around its star like any other planet would do. But temperature of this object exceeds that of our Sun!
Meet the brown-dwarf located 1400 light-years away from us. Brown dwarf is an interesting category of space objects. Brown dwarfs straddle the conceptual gap between planets and stars.
This particular brown dwarf is revolving around its star in such a close orbit that its surface temperature exceeds 7000 degrees Celsius. For comparison, the temperature on the surface of Sun is around 5500 degrees Celsius.
The brown-dwarf is in fact a record breaker. It is the hottest object in its category. Brown dwarfs are hotter than planets. But they are cooler than coolest of red dwarf stars.
The particular brown dwarf in question was discovered by an international team led by astrophysicist Na’ama Hallakoun from Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The team has named the object WD0032-317B. The details about the discovery have been mentioned in a paper accepted in Nature Astronomy, as per ScienceAlert.
Significance of the discovery
The team has reportedly said that study of the brown dwarf will help us understand situations where gas-giants like Jupiter are revolving around massive, hot stars.
A brown dwarf is neither a planet nor a star. And if a brown dwarf has 13 times the mass of Jupiter, it can have enough pressure and temperature to kickstart a deuterium fusion.
The deuterium, isotope of hydrogen requires less temperature and pressure than fusion of regular hydrogen.
