Astronomers have potentially discovered the smallest star in the Universe
MOSCOW, 12 APR — RIA Novosti. Scientists discovered in the constellation of Sculptor is potentially the smallest star in the Universe, whose radius is only slightly more saturnine, and weighs just 85 times bigger than Jupiter, according to a paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
All the stars of the milky Way and other galaxies are born inside a particularly dense clouds of gas, some of which at a certain point in time thickens and begins to harden. With time, temperature and pressure inside these growing clumps rise to such high values that their center start to occur fusion reaction between individual hydrogen atoms.
Such a reaction, according to the calculations of astrophysicists, can occur only within a fairly large object, whose mass is approximately 7% of the sun, which is about 130 times the mass of Jupiter. Smaller celestial bodies become brown dwarfs — “failed stars” glow weakly in the infrared range and gradually fading.
Botticher, and his colleagues discovered the first example of a star located on the border between brown dwarfs and the dim and small red dwarfs, observing close pairs of stars, one of which is noticeably smaller than its companion.