NASA: Brown dwarf stars discovered near Solar System by citizen scientists, agency announces

There are millions of celestial phenomena that have yet to be explored or even discovered, and NASA has given budding scientists and astronomers a way to make discoveries of their own. The agency, with the help of citizen scientists, recently discovered quite a number of brown dwarf stars near our own Solar System.

Express reports the space agency has announced the discovery made by citizen scientists of brown dwarf stars. Their discovery comes as part of NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, allowing aspiring astronomers and professional scientists to collaborate on their discoveries using NASA data. Brown dwarf stars are described as somewhere in between a star and a planet. Some of these dwarf stars, as the scientists have found, are of the same size as gas giant Jupiter and Saturn, and are cooler than the boiling point of water.

These brown dwarf stars are also hard to find because of their cooler temperatures and because they do not produce a lot of light. This makes it easy for the brown dwarf stars to hide in plain sight in space.

“Discovering and characterizing astronomical objects near the Sun is fundamental to our understanding of our place in, and the history of, the universe. With their relatively cold temperatures, these newly discovered brown dwarfs represent a long-sought missing link within the brown dwarf population,” said NASA.

The coldest-known brown dwarf star ever documented was known as WISE 0855, and was discovered back in 2014 through NASA’s WISE mission. The temperature of WISE 0855 was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 23 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, scientists have long theorized what may happen in an event where the world was to end and what it might mean for humanity. According to MIT professor, Asegun Henry of the Mechanical Engineering Department, humanity is running out of time to save the planet as the problem of climate change continues to be present.

Professor Henry explained that because energy consumption revolves around generating or transferring of heat, when paired with greenhouse gases, would exacerbate the rising temperatures that the world is already experiencing.

As to how this could be solved, Professor Henry detailed a “mission” for scientists to develop a system of storing energy that does not lose heat when creating energy.