It's obviously trying to start a fusion reaction...
... but is still a bit too cold and damp. A quick squirt of WD40 should result in -->
Astronomers have discovered a brown dwarf star emitting flashes of light brighter than the Sun – even though it's not supposed to be able to do that. Brown dwarves are also known as “failed stars” since they do not generate enough energy to support hydrogen fusion – a process that sustains a star’s brightness over millions of …
Yes, I read "4400...half as hot as the Sun" and simply thought "that's wrong". Then I went back...
Do American astronomers have all their instruments specially calibrated to read degrees F? Somehow I doubt it, and suspect somebody actually converted that from either C or K.
Perhaps for completeness we should have degrees Réaumur as well. And Galilean air thermometer units.
"Do American astronomers have all their instruments specially calibrated to read degrees F? Somehow I doubt it, and suspect somebody actually converted that from either C or K."
Yes, I've noticed similar oddities on El Reg recently, more so than usual, and almost invariably from the El Reg Western Colonial Office. Science is metric/SI, even in the far flung colonies, but for some weird reason the Colonial writers always convert to old fashioned UK Imperial measurements for their local target audience, assuming they can't convert if needed or just putting the original value and a conversion in brackets.
I think the oddest examples are where an estimated value is given in the original and then converted exactly by the author or editor, eg "about 3000 metres" will be converted to "about 9842 feet" instead of rounding and just saying 10,000 feet or 9,800 feet. It's madness I tell you, madness!!!
Isn't that more or less the actual explanation? Even at only around 3000K, there's still enough plasma to build up some pretty big currents. Solar coronal ejections are associated with enormous magnetic fields acting on plasma and suddenly switching direction. [yes I know this is a gross oversimplification].