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Astronomers may have identified what may be the smallest known star

21 points by givan 12y ago

mtdewcmu 12y ago
Nice. If grand scale and unimaginable heat are what make stars impressive, then this must be the least impressive star. In fact, we might never find a star less impressive than this one, because this is close to the least impressive star that's physically possible. At least we got it out of the way.
- bnegreve 12y ago
  > J0523 has the lowest possible mass for fusion, so it’s taking its sweet time using up its hydrogen fuel. [...] It could literally still be fusing merrily (though feebly) away even a trillion years from now! The good thing about astronomy is that there's always something impressive.
  - mtdewcmu 12y ago
    Absolutely. This star has an impressive feature. But it is the least observable of all such impressive features. Thus fitting the least impressive star. :)
leorocky 12y ago
I wonder how hot such a small star gets and how long it lasts. The big blue stars burn out relatively quickly, this thing must keep on trucking for a long time. Maybe before the heat death, all whatever's out there will have are these things.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  The 'heat death' being something asymptotic we will never arrive there. And the period between when the last stars wink out and the time when all the energy is spread out so evenly that it is indistinguishable from being in that 'heat death' state will likely be dominated by chunks of matter that slowly des-integrate as the protons in the nuclei of the various molecules decay. This will take 'a while' for rather large values of 'a while'. (10^33 years according to the latest info...) So stars will not go after ordinary matter has gone but the other way around, just like ordinary matter (just hydrogen and helium, actually everything else we have came out of other stars) preceded star formation. The embers of the universe will take a long time to stop glowing.
mrfusion 12y ago
So how is this different than Jupiter that it fuses and Jupiter doesn't?

21 points by givan 12y ago

Nice. If grand scale and unimaginable heat are what make stars impressive, then this must be the least impressive star. In fact, we might never find a star less impressive than this one, because this is close to the least impressive star that's physically possible. At least we got it out of the way.

bnegreve 12y ago
> J0523 has the lowest possible mass for fusion, so it’s taking its sweet time using up its hydrogen fuel. [...] It could literally still be fusing merrily (though feebly) away even a trillion years from now! The good thing about astronomy is that there's always something impressive.
- mtdewcmu 12y ago
  Absolutely. This star has an impressive feature. But it is the least observable of all such impressive features. Thus fitting the least impressive star. :)

leorocky 12y ago

I wonder how hot such a small star gets and how long it lasts. The big blue stars burn out relatively quickly, this thing must keep on trucking for a long time. Maybe before the heat death, all whatever's out there will have are these things.

jacquesm 12y ago
The 'heat death' being something asymptotic we will never arrive there. And the period between when the last stars wink out and the time when all the energy is spread out so evenly that it is indistinguishable from being in that 'heat death' state will likely be dominated by chunks of matter that slowly des-integrate as the protons in the nuclei of the various molecules decay. This will take 'a while' for rather large values of 'a while'. (10^33 years according to the latest info...) So stars will not go after ordinary matter has gone but the other way around, just like ordinary matter (just hydrogen and helium, actually everything else we have came out of other stars) preceded star formation. The embers of the universe will take a long time to stop glowing.

mrfusion 12y ago

So how is this different than Jupiter that it fuses and Jupiter doesn't?