Brown Dwarfs: Very small for being stars, very big to be a planet.
It was discovered only in the 1990s, these-in-cosmic objects are not enough to burn as warm and bright as a true star, instead give a warm glow instead.
In new research published in ScienceA team of Astronomers Report to detect a stunning substance in a brown dwarf known as Wolf 1130 C: A chemical called phosphine, which has focused on controversial claims for evidence of life Venus,
However, the presence of phosphine in the turbulent and inhuman environment of a brown dwarf shows our understanding of our life cycle of this small, simple molecule – and the idea suspects that it can be considered the “bioscnecher” of foreign life.
What are brown dwarfs?
Like true stars, brown dwarfs are formed by collapse of gas clouds in space. The gas falls in its inner side, but in a brown dwarf it is never warm that the fusion of hydrogen is triggered into the helium that gives strength to the stars.
But by the time the cloud of gas is at least 13 times as heavier as Jupiter, it will be hot enough that a slightly heavy type of hydrogen called deuterium will be fused. This fusion will be burnt very quickly in terms of astronomy physics after 1 to 100 million years.
However, gravity collapse and fusion produce heavy amounts of heat in the core of brown dwarfs. This makes a convection loop: the gas near the core heats up and increases, transferring heat to the upper level before cooling and falling back down.
Brown dwarfs are much colder than stars. The youngest and largest surface of the largest can reach 2,000 ° C, but the best is close to room temperature.
Once the heat from the core reaches the layers of the brown dwarf surface, it mainly radiate into space as a photon of infrared light.
Infrared wavelength is difficult to observe with a ground-based telescope, but is a better view of space telescopes such as James Web Space Telescope (JWST). This gives us a better look at brown dwarfs.
What is happening with phosphine?
Interesting chemical reactions and processes occur in brown dwarfs, in those ways they do not occur in warm stars.
About the author
Laura McMish is a senior lecturer in the school of chemistry at UNSW Sydney.
This article was first published Conversation And a creative Commons has been reinstated under the license. read the Original article,
For nearby brown dwarfs, JWST can inspect the results of these chemical processes. It looks for “barcods” of each molecule, specific patterns of dark lines in the spectrum of light emitted by the brown dwarf.
Phosphine is a simple molecule that consists of a phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms.
In 2020, some scientists thought that they discovered its spectral signature in the atmosphere VenusVenus conditions mean that phosphine should be destroyed there very quickly, so it would mean that something was making a lot of phosphine.
On Earth, phosphine exists only due to life, and therefore phosphine has been discovered extensively as a possible sign of life. Hence the potential identity on Venus was exciting goods.
But dig up under the headlines and it is more subtle. Phosphine is found in Jupiter’s atmosphere and saturnAnd no one is proposing life in the clouds of these planets.
The reason is that we understand how phosphine can be made and survive in the lower levels of the atmosphere on these planets. Then it rises on the surface where it is rapidly destroyed – but before we look at its spectral signature.
What about phosphine in brown dwarfs?
What happens to phosphine in hotter or large systems, such as brown dwarfs and hot jupiter exoplanets?
According to some models, we should see the important amount of phosphine here. But earlier JWS observation, no phosphine was found, looking at 23 brown dwarfs with temperatures between 100 ° C and 700 ° C.
Nevertheless, the recent observation of phosphine at the brown Dwarf Wolf 1130c (temperature approximately 320 ° C) matches the model very well. Why?
Researchers are not yet sure behind the new study. Their best estimate is that its fact may be that Wolf is 1130 C and has low concentrations of metals.
At this stage, they conclude with a simple statement: there is no consistent model we see on Jupiter, interpret the amount of phosphine, saturnWolf 1130c, other brown dwarfs and exoplanet gas giant atmosphere. Without better understanding, the use of phosphine as bioscnecher is doubtful.
So perhaps Venus was phosphine, but the reason was unknown chemistry or physics, not biology. Foreign life remains a hypothesis of the last measure.