Brown dwarfs, which answer very well to the ‘jump points’, points of ‘dark’ mass which serve as spatial tethers, have been known to exist for some little while—sometimes when you predict something has to exist, and they find it, you can be so smug for at least a week—but they are discovering classes of these objects.
Curiously they are all the dimensions of Jupiter—regardless of mass. What sets them apart as classes is their temperature. The brightest, L class, do radiate, do have atomic process, and are 2600 Fahrenheit. The L Class are 1700 degrees. The dimmest, the Y class, do not emit, but reflect light like a planet, and they are also the coolest, at about 80 degrees. The fact that the L’s have a huge mass difference despite their size is really quite a thought problem. Why do they work out that way? Is our solar system going to lose another planet as they reclassify Jupiter?
It seems to me that matter, given a chance, will coalesce into lumps, and if enough lumps get together they become larger lumps, and if they get really big, they ignite and become stars. But that leaves a bunch that are too small, having absorbed everything they can, and possibly having an iron core (not good for stars) and that never will make it to star status, and have no anchoring star near enough to grab them and make their existence more exciting. It takes, imho, physics to make classes—in the sense that nature is full of gradations so many and so smooth in transition that they have to kick a physical law to distinguish themselves into a class, eg, reach the magical limit of mass and internal collapse from their own ‘weight’ that they start fusing atoms in their core, ie, ignite—at which point the pressure of their internal cookery inflates them somewhat, and they keep that star-size and their fusion until they flat run out of material and go catastrophic.
Brown dwarfs don’t have the mass. Ergo they just—sit—probably until the heat-death of the universe.
The NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/pia14722.html
I note the change in your Scribometer, from 57 pages to 40,000 words. I don’t know how they compare, but I trust it means progress!
I just did a 52 card pickup in the current book: ie, I kept the elements but did some timeline shifting. My brain hurts. 😉
Depending on the gas quantity, one wonders if folks in the AU universe might not consider “lighting” some of these brown dwarves, especially if it means 1k years of solar life and a lucrative way-point.
So Jupiter could be a brown dwarf instead of a planet, maybe? Interesting.
As a jump point…. So, what’s the likelihood that a jump point is a companion to some other star, instead of a solitary, dim quasi-star with possibly (rarely) a small retinue of planets / moons?
I’d think that the wherewithal to spark a brown dwarf to higher temperatures would be more advanced than nearly any of the A/U and Compact species we’ve seen. And given that knnn, t’ca, and chi are methaners, they may or may not prefer the not-quite-brown-dwarves like Saturn or the maybe-brown-dwarves like Jupiter as home-sea/ocean. — Unless all you’d really need to stoke a brown dwarf is to throw a few planetoids into the embers. …So a big planetoid or a small almost-planet (sorry, Pluto) …they’re…*kindling*? Wow.
So the stars really are the distant hearth-fires of the “gods” and the planets are wood, charcoal, kindling. I suppose that makes us lifeforms sawdust. Rather more humbling than one might wish.
Then again, kindling, Kindles, we could be the library books in the cosmic library. Not such a bad idea, that one. Just as long as our subscription doesn’t lapse.
Yes, very tired. Free associating like nobody’s business, and getting spiritual on top of that. But sometimes that free association is handy.
So Jupiter could be a brown dwarf instead of a planet, maybe?
The official definition of a brown dwarf requires that it have a mass at least 12 or 13 times that of Jupiter, so Jupiter doesn’t really qualify. The logic behind this (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) distinction is that an object more massive than that limit will, for a brief period early in its life, have a core hot enough for nuclear fusion of deuterium, and possibly also lithium (in more massive brown dwarfs). There isn’t enough deuterium (or lithium) to make this a meaningful source of energy, which is why a brown dwarf never becomes a proper (nuclear-fusion-supported) star.
And that’s MASS rather than dimension, which is an important point.
Dunno- could a fusion reactor work for that sort of thing? Could that be a possibility? Just throwing out thoughts there. Maybe a fusion/photon emitter?
I think what they need is more hydrogen. But flinging a gas giant at them takes some big muscle. 😉
True. I guess I was just thinking if the Hope Project they’d talked about in Cyteen. Will we ever learn more about that? Was ir maybe something along that line? Or mining one of these for gas to fuel the fusion reaction?
If I were a brown dwarf, would I want a blue star to capture me, or a Snow White star to capture me?
One wonders if flinging a gas giant at a brown dwarf to increase its mass would be a negative gain of energy. As you say, it takes considerable energy to get the gas giant moving in the vector needed to collide with the brown dwarf, and if it does combine to enable fusion to occur, how long before that fusion becomes evident at the surface? How much fusible matter will the new star have to consume and for how long will it be active? Given a comparison of sizes of Sol and Jupiter, you’d need more than one Jupiter to add to the mass of a brown dwarf in order to start fusion. Also, not all of the composition is pure hydrogen, there is ammonia, methane, and other “impurities” in the atmosphere, and I don’t believe nitrogen lends itself to fusion. I suppose if the temperature were high enough, the nitrogen could be broken down into smaller atoms, say, lithium and beryllium, or two lithium and one hydrogen, or any combination of 7 you would like to consider.
I was thinking something like the obelisk, inducing fusion, even though it wouldn’t self sustain.
My God, it’s full of stars!
I could’ve sworn it was full of a giant alien baby’s head. Or those hairy hominids.
Seven? A dwarf a day keeps the black hole away?
Get some sleep, BCS!
“It seems to me that matter, given a chance, will coalesce into lumps, and if enough lumps get together they become larger lumps, and if they get really big, they ignite and become stars.”
Stop talking about my thighs that way!
Lol!
Heheh, smartcat. 🙂
Thanks, Peter Erwin. (Obviously, I hadn’t looked it up.) That definition’s sensible. With enough mass for fusion, and with fusion required, so it’s actually a star instead of a planet, that fits better.
Looking at what I just typed, how circular and not too well thought out…. I just had lunch, didn’t get much sleep the last two nights, and have had a heck of a couple of weeks. I hope I’m making better sense in general. Also hope I’ll get some rest this weekend.
I found myself developing a short scenario where some starfaring culture tries to fire up a big gas giant into a brown dwarf. But I found myself asking *why*? If there’s already a primary (but solitary) star in a system, why go to the tremendous amount of work needed to fling enough mass (planetary sized masses) into a big gas giant to fan its furnace into a star? What would make them do that? Is the primary at risk? Firing up the gas giant into a star won’t undo that risk. They need more energy for operations around that gas giant, maybe? What’s the reason that would merit going to all that trouble? — But it might make a heckuva story. (I have enough unfinished story ideas as is. Somebody else will have to figure that one out.)
So I discovered a few years ago that, well, “EVERYTHING IS WRONG!” with Cosmology… when you look at the Electric Sun/Cosmos/Universe model, then the electrical activity, the “glow” of a body in space, is mostly determined by it’s cross-sectional AREA as it flows across the background sea of free electrons in space, generating electrical currents. Jupiter is big enough to participate in this, which is why it radiates more heat and EM than it receives from the sun.
These brown dwarfs are simply bodies with a large enough diameter to carry a current, but not large enough for the current to go into “glow” mode (like a neon light) or arc mode (like an arc welder, or more specifically the surface of the Sun itself).
Yes, a side effect of the Electric Sun theory is that stars aren’t lit internally by fusion, but externally by arc-mode electrical currents. These currents are the source and explanation for the oft-mentioned but poorly explained magenetic “re-connection lines” observed on the sun. (otherwise, where in science can you have big magnetic fields without big electrical currents???)
I know these comments are radical, I’m prepared to be dismissed as a wacko… but I wouldn’t ever dream of saying such things unless it was good science.
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm is a decent place to start. But the clincher that gave me the temerity to make these comments is from http://thunderbolts.info, where they PREDICTED, several months before arrival, the unusual results produced by the Deep Impact comet mission, proving among other things that a comet is an ionized rock, and not a “dirty snowball.”
(If I’ve whetted your appetite, I’ll be happy to explain anything you like, but at the very least I hope I’ve given food for thought).
Looking at things from different angles often causes you to think why you think how you do, which is a useful exercise.