NASA's gone crazy, becauseSTARS
AREN'T
FROZEN.
Well, not normally anyway. The star in the picture to the right doesn't really look like one, does it? It's named
WISE J085510.83-071442.5 and is a brown dwarf star. Yeah, I know, it's quite a mouthful. the "WISE" part of the name comes from the telescope that was used to find it, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. Stars start out as big balls of gas floating in space. Gravity gradually condenses stars into tight masses. In stars like the sun, the condensed gas causes fusion - which provides us with energy and light. Brown dwarf stars don't have enough gas to have a lot of fusion, so they stay dim. This new one is the coldest and dimmest yet - it doesn't give off any visible light, only infrared light, and is between -54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature.
Well, that's all I've got for this week. Bye!
Links:
Society for Science - "Failed Star"
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