Located about 50 light-years from Earth , the strange object known as “The Accident” has long puzzled astronomers. Nobody gets what exactly it is. It is not a star (scientists can tell by its dim glow that there is no nuclear fusion fueling the object), and it is not a planet … What is it?
Now this mystery has received a new update thanks to recent observations from The Accident. According to research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, it ‘s something in between: a rare class of object known as a brown dwarf or failed star.
But it is unlike any brown dwarf seen before.
Brown dwarfs can be up to 80 times larger than the planet Jupiter , but they typically contain only a small fraction of the mass of Earth’s sun. They arise when the star formation process ends before the object gains enough mass to ignite hydrogen fusion in the nucleus. However, they are massive enough to fuse something together, and that something is deuterium, also known as ‘heavy’ hydrogen. This condition makes them smaller, cooler, and dimmer than most stars.
Brown dwarfs slowly cool and darken over millions or billions of years until they are nothing more than red or purple embers. While brown dwarfs are too faint to see with the naked eye, scientists have detected around 2,000 such objects in the Milky Way using infrared telescopes like NASA’s NEOWISE. With him they accidentally discovered this object (hence its name), but “this object defied all our expectations,” said Davy Kirkpatrick, an astrophysicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California. For what reason? Because the cosmic object did not resemble any other brown dwarf found in the galaxy to date, according to a NASA statement.
It is a peculiar object
The brown dwarf, formally known as WISEA J153429.75-104303.3 , is located about 50 light years from Earth and rotates at about 800,000 kph, faster than all other brown dwarfs discovered at a similar distance from Earth . according to the study. Scientists estimate that it is between 10,000-13,000 million years old, that is, that it formed shortly after our galaxy, the Milky Way, and is therefore at least twice the average age of other known brown dwarfs.
It is probably the coldest known brown dwarf , cold enough to freeze water. That explains why it is so faint at some wavelengths, but the reason for its brightness elsewhere is a more complex problem. The fact that we have found it and, so close, just 50 light years away, indicates that they could be more common than we think. Or maybe it’s an indiscreet coincidence …
“This discovery tells us that there is more variety in the compositions of brown dwarfs than we have seen so far,” clarifies Kirkpatrick. “There are likely to be more and we need to think about how to look for them.”
Referencia: The Enigmatic Brown Dwarf WISEA J153429.75-104303.3 (a.k.a. “The Accident”)
J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Federico Marocco, Dan Caselden, Aaron M. Meisner, Jacqueline K. Faherty, Adam C. Schneider, Marc J. Kuchner, S. L. Casewell, Christopher R. Gelino, Michael C. Cushing
Published 2021 June 30 • © 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 915, Number 1 Citation J. Davy Kirkpatrick et al 2021 ApJL 915 L6
