Can You Walk on a Brown Dwarf?

[DoggerDan]

Apparently, you can: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...hilled-stars-cooler-human-body-004551421.html

At least temperature-wise. Don't know about the gravity...

If the brown dwarf is that cool, though, wouldn't it still be a gassy object, too tenuous to walk?

 

[phinds]

from the article:

Prior to the discovery, the coolest Y dwarfs on record wouldn't instantly incinerate a human explorer, but that unlucky individual would be uncomfortably warm. The new cold star record holder put out just enough infrared light to be spotted by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, and is an order of magnitude cooler than any before it. WISE also spotted roughly 100 other brown dwarfs — a handful of which are considerably closer than NASA had thought.

Now I don't know about you, but to me "an order of magnitude" is at least roughly a factor of 10. That makes two of the statements in the above paragraph serious contradict each other.

 

[fructivore]

from the article:



Now I don't know about you, but to me "an order of magnitude" is at least roughly a factor of 10. That makes two of the statements in the above paragraph serious contradict each other.

Well the article cites an estimated surface temperature of 80 F, and an order of magnitude above that is 800 F which is if not instant incineration pretty close.

But in C that's only 23, which is much a smaller number so therefore an order of magnitude would be nigh-fatal but certainly not incineration. So maybe that is what the writer was thinking.

By no means should you ever land on a brown dwarf using kelvins, however.

;)

 

[phinds]

nonsense. The only possible way in which it makes any sense to "multiply" temperatures is to use absolute. Try the math on THAT for size.

 

[fructivore]

nonsense. The only possible way in which it makes any sense to "multiply" temperatures is to use absolute. Try the math on THAT for size.

Oh but that doesn't sound like any fun at all.

I like the 23 -> 230 explanation much better. And I seriously bet you that's what the article author was doing.

 

[phinds]

... I seriously bet you that's what the article author was doing.

Which was exactly my point. When someone is that ignorant of the fundamentals, why would I trust him to report on ANYTHING scientific?

 

[CosmicEye]

Instant summer and winter lol

 

[Lobezno]

Eh, as long as you ignore the details which might be wrong, you can still get the message. Star is cool enough to be on.And the gravity would certainly be a problem, I vaguely remember reading it would be about one order of magnitude less than the sun, but don't quote me on that.

 

[yenchin]

Why arguing over the news? Go directly to NASA source:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-263"

Of the 100 brown dwarfs, six are classified as cool Y's. One of the Y dwarfs, called WISE 1828+2650, is the record holder for the coldest brown dwarf, with an estimated atmospheric temperature cooler than room temperature, or less than about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius).