an ancient brown dwarf with intact lithium

[notFritzArgelander]

creates problems for our understanding of brown dwarfs.

https://phys.org/news/2021-11-astronome ... thium.html

[ThinkerX]

stupid thought, but maybe it's more 'planet' than 'star'

[notFritzArgelander]

stupid thought, but maybe it's more 'planet' than 'star'

on the side of it being more like a star, some brown dwarfs are warm enough to be of stellar spectral type M. also some undergo fusion of deuterium "a little bit" just not long term. also on the side of being stars, they are generally fully convective throughout so no chemical differentiation or geophysics.

on the planetary side, they have weather and cloud layers like the giant planets.

i just love how Nature confounds cheap and easy categories.

[GCoyote]

stupid thought, but maybe it's more 'planet' than 'star'

on the side of it being more like a star, some brown dwarfs are warm enough to be of stellar spectral type M. also some undergo fusion of deuterium "a little bit" just not long term. also on the side of being stars, they are generally fully convective throughout so no chemical differentiation or geophysics.

on the planetary side, they have weather and cloud layers like the giant planets.

i just love how Nature confounds cheap and easy categories.

Heh, "cheap and easy" is turning out to be problematic in many of our endeavors.

[notFritzArgelander]

stupid thought, but maybe it's more 'planet' than 'star'

on the side of it being more like a star, some brown dwarfs are warm enough to be of stellar spectral type M. also some undergo fusion of deuterium "a little bit" just not long term. also on the side of being stars, they are generally fully convective throughout so no chemical differentiation or geophysics.

on the planetary side, they have weather and cloud layers like the giant planets.

i just love how Nature confounds cheap and easy categories.

Heh, "cheap and easy" is turning out to be problematic in many of our endeavors.

Which is no end of joy for me.