STINKY GREEN DWARF FROM SPACE - sensation at NASA
NASA boffins have left followers of the space news reeling today, saying they have discovered an intriguing extra-solar object described as being both "big, fat" and "a dwarf". The big dwarf - again varyingly described as "brown" or alternatively "green" - also "stinks pretty badly". The brown dwarf WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9, …
This topic is closed for new posts.
"it is apparently a huge gaseous ball on the same general lines as Jupiter"
Well, a gaseous ball at least 13 times the mass of Jupiter, in order to reach Brown Dwarf status.
And for comparison, it's around 80 Jupiter masses to form a proper star - and our Sun is 1000 Jupiter masses, so 80 Jupiter masses would be a fairly piddly little star.
Misleading headline
I was expecting a story about some NASA boffin getting hit by a chunk of toilet leakage from an over-flying airliner
@VeganVegan
Well, I was hoping for some science journalism, so I guess we're both disappointed.
Though the Reg article is only about 2/3 of the length of the NASA one, that does seem to have been done at the expense of more than a third of the information, and despite the NASA article seemingly having been written with a young audience in mind, it's arguably more adult overall.
they drew their plans against us...
"And that how it was for the next ten nights
a flair spurting out from Mars
Bright green drawing a green mist behind it
A beautiful but somehow disturbing sight
Ogilvy the astronomer assured me we were in no danger
He was convinced there could be no live
on that remote forbidding planet."
War of the Worlds
Stock up on Yakult... good bacteria
Dead pixel?
I have a digital camera that produces photos just like that :-)
Careful What You Say
"Such failed stars ...."
That's a bit judgmental. It could be a successful and popular independent gas giant; well known and admired in the society of gas giants. Not every celestial body want to be a star.
Cool dwarfs
Well said, and they did say it is the coolest brown dwarf known. I bet it gets invited to all the best parties.
Can it be true?
That I behold here, in my mortal eye, a nugget of purest Green? Methinks I shall cunningly fashion a brooch from it...
Looks like she's related to Grignr.
'Eye of Argon', the MST3K version to save your sanity.
http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/books/Eye_of_Argon.html
Grignr believes emeralds are scarlet, so this is not OT...
Re: Looks like she's related to Grignr.
She is apparently the world's "hottest astrophysicist".
http://www.zimbio.com/Celebrity+Portal/articles/9h4Sngi0mem/Dr+Amy+Mainzer
Love
"The brown dwarfs jump out at you like big, fat, green emeralds," she is quoted as saying, excellently.
Size
While brown dwarfs are more massive than Jupiter, they are about the same size. Once gas giants reach about the size of Saturn, they stop growing significantly -- they just become denser. Only when fusion starts, does the size increase again. For example, Jupiter is 3.3 times as massive as Saturn, but its volume is only 1.6 times larger.
May I say that
I, for one, welcome our big fat green/brown dwarf smelly emerald space overlords
NASA making big fuss about very little
So what's special about another brown dwarf? This is scientific peanuts 'bigged-up' for children, journalists and politicians.
The important results in the infra-red at the moment are coming out of Herschel - an ESA spacecraft. Too much American focus, and you miss the real action.
Stinky
Did they borrow Professor Farnsworth's Smell-o-scope?
This topic is closed for new posts.
