OBJECT HOTTER THAN THE SUN FOUND ORBITING A DISTANT STAR AT BREAKNECK SPEED

A weird celestial object that’s blurring the line between planet and star has been uncovered

- Joanna Thompson

A weird, super-hot celestial body is breaking records and challenging astronomers’ understanding of the boundary between stars and planets. The object, called WD0032-317B, is a brown dwarf – a type of bright, gaseous ‘protostar’. Brown dwarfs typically have a similar atmospheric composition to Jupiter but are around 13 to 80 times larger. At that mass, these objects begin to fuse hydrogen isotopes in their cores. However, they aren’t quite massive enough to spark the kind of full self-sustaining stellar fusion that powers stars like our Sun – think of smouldering charcoal rather than a lit wood-fired oven.