• sebinspace@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    White dwarf

    Red dwarves are failed stars that never attained the mass necessary to become a full-on star. Jupiter actually isn’t far off from this status.

    On a related note, red dwarves will probably be some of the last sources of light in the universe, and live for trillions of years due to how slowly they burn fuel, so… suck it, Shapiro?

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      8 months ago

      You might be thinking of brown dwarfs. Red dwarfs are fully qualified stars which sustain nuclear fusion in their cores. Brown dwarfs do not, though still emit radiation by other various means.

      Jupiter is also somewhat close, in astronomical terms, to being a brown dwarf. It is not even remotely near being a red dwarf.

      Your last point is correct though. Red dwarfs last much, much longer than all other stars due to being fully convective which allows them to consume all their fuel uniformly.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      “Small improvements cannot instantly solve the whole problem. Therefore, improvements are meaningless.”

      - The condensed ideology of conservatives

      • mack7400@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        I mean, I’ve had braces for a whole day and my teeth are still crooked, so dentistry is a sham!!1 /s

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Jupiter’s quite a long way off from being a red dwarf it would need to be in any 10 times the mass be a red dwarf.

      Jupiter is somewhat close to being a brown dwarf which is a star that failed to even become a failed star and is merely hot and glowy but not plasma. Jupiter’s atmosphere is just gaseous though perhaps really deep down at the core it achieves brown dwarf level status but we don’t consider it to count because it’s not the whole planet.

      • vorbixol@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        8 months ago

        Red dwarfs are not failed stars. They are the lowest mass objects capable of nuclear fusion. Brown dwarfs are failed stars. Brown dwarfs officially start at 13 Jupiter masses, & have a maximum mass of 75 Jupiter’s. Beyond that mass, fusion starts & the object is officially a star.

        • Affine Connection@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Red dwarfs are not failed stars. They are the lowest mass objects capable of nuclear fusion.

          Brown dwarfs are capable of fusion of deuterium at an extremely low power output. Their inability to conduct more substantial fusion involving hydrogen-1 is what sets them apart from red dwarfs.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          Well failed star is an erroneous term it just means any star that is not bright enough and hot enough that any world around it could sustain life (at least carbon-based as we know it to be).

          Any world close enough to have liquid water would be so close as to be irradiated beyond anything we consider to be survivable and probably tidily locked to boot.

          It’s still a star in the real sense of the term just quite dim and cool.

          • Affine Connection@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            No, it means that it failed to become a star by initiating stellar fusion reactions. This isn’t some science fiction term. Red dwarfs are stars, and brown dwarfs are not.

      • sebinspace@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        It’s fine, he’s the kind of person that goes “yeah, you might’ve won $500m in the lottery, but it’s only $300m after taxes” because that’s fucken chump change or smth