Failed Star Brighter Than Sun, Emits Stronger Flares

First Posted: Jun 15, 2016 04:40 AM EDT
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Researchers from the University of Delaware (UD) detected a few brown dwarf stars, also known as failed stars, located 63 light years away that can still emit light and flares that are stronger and hotter than our Sun. The researching team of scientists studied a brown dwarf, now referred to as 2MASS 0335+23, which was estimated to be a relatively young failed star at 23 million years of age, with a temperature of 2,427 degrees Celsius.

The new discovery was presented at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in San Diego on June 13, as per a report. "This shows that the warmer brown dwarfs can generate flares from magnetic field energy just like stars," said John Gizis, professor at UD's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "Our work shows, however, that colder brown dwarfs cannot generate flares even though they also have magnetic fields".

The scientists took the help of NASA's Kepler space telescope to observe the failed star, which was first detected in 1999. The star was observed every minute for a period of three months, during which its brightness was noticed to increase twice over for a dozen times, lasting for two to four minutes each.  Additional studies revealed that the star was a component of the Beta Pictoris stars or moving group that simultaneously take birth and move, and such star groups got scattered when their originating interstellar cloud collapsed.

Incidentally, brown dwarfs are produced in the same way as other normal stars, however unlike the bright 2MASS 0335+23, they do not usually shine so bright nor are they so hot and large so their hydrogen and helium combine at their center. In fact, the failed stars can be compared to planets, in particular Jupiter, and they get cooler with time. The scientists are now searching for planets and clouds around the bright brown dwarf star, and believe if there are planets they would have been long fried up due to the high scale of solar flares.

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

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