The WISE ( Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ) and Spitzer space telescopes have made possible the discovery of what is undoubtedly now the coldest in the universe , a brown dwarf located by astronomer Kevin Luhman of Penn State University (USA) .
The newly discovered star is only 7.2 light years away , making it the fourth closest to the Sun. One of its peculiarities is its temperature: it is even colder than that of the North Pole of the Earth, since according to the calculations carried out, it could oscillate between 48 and 13 degrees below zero .
“It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor to our Solar System so close. Furthermore, its extreme temperature can tell us a lot about the atmospheres of other planets, which are often also very cold, ”Luhman concludes.
The WISE data has also revealed that the brown dwarf, named WISE J085510.83-071442.5 , moves really fast ; it has a mass between 3 and 10 times that of Jupiter , which is why it is hypothesized that this low mass would respond to a giant gaseous planet, very similar to our neighbor Jupiter. If not, the second thesis would make this star the least massive brown dwarf discovered so far.
