Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have investigated a “failed star,” or brown dwarf, nicknamed “The Accident.” Their results may help solve a long-standing mystery surrounding the solar system’s gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn.
Brown dwarfs get their unfortunate label of “failed stars” due to the fact that they form from collapsing clouds of gas and dust like stars, but they fail to gather enough matter to achieve the mass needed to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores, the process that defines what a star is. Brown dwarfs have masses between 13 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter, or 0.013 and 0.08 times the mass of the sun.
Yet even among these strange, hard-to-classify celestial objects, The Accident, located 50 light-years from Earth and believed to be between 10 billion and 12 billion years old, stands out. It is one of the oldest brown dwarfs ever seen, and has some features that have previously only been seen in young brown dwarfs. It also exhibits characteristics that have only previously been associated with ancient failed stars. These paradoxical features led to The Accident escaping detection until it was discovered by chance in 2020 by NASA’s now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).
The fact that The Accident is faint and unusual has led scientists to prioritize its study with the most powerful space telescope available, the James Webb Space Telescope. This led to the discovery of an unexpected molecule that initially defied identification, but was eventually determined to be a simple one called silane, formed when silicon and hydrogen bond.
Here’s where Jupiter and Saturn come in.
For years, astronomers have expected to find silane in the solar system’s gas giants. This molecule has also been missing around extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” gas giants around other stars, and from other brown dwarfs.
Scientists are fairly certain silicon does exist in Jupiter and Saturn, but that it “hides” by binding with oxygen to create oxides like quartz. These oxides then seed clouds on hot gas giants that resemble dust storms on Earth, while on cooler gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, they sink below the lighter upper atmospheric layers of water vapor and ammonia clouds. That results in silicon sinking deep into the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn and thus avoiding detection by spacecraft that have studied those planets up close.
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