NASA Discovers Stars as Cool as the Human Body

While I don't usually post anything like this, as a fan of science fiction this article from NASA really caught my eye. Plus, I've always had a thing for stars :]

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


From the data gathered on NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), scientists have discovered the coldest class of stars. They are so cool in fact, that some of the them have about the same temperature as the human body (the coolest one is 25 degrees Celsius). They are members of the brown dwarf family, and are sometimes called 'failed stars' because they are too low in mass to fuse atoms at their cores and thus don't burn with the fires. They just remain cool and eventually fade with time, until what little light they do emit is at infrared wavelengths.

For more information about these brown dwarf stars, read the full article here on NASA's website.
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