Years ago, the sun was described as the hottest star in the galaxy; but as scientists discover more about space, they've found even hotter stars and planets. As such, the hottest planet-like object has been spotted 1,400 light-years away.
Hottest Planet Ever
A planet-like star was found 1,400 light-years away breaking the record for the hottest planet ever. The brown dwarf planet's temperature exceeds 13,940 °F and is interestingly categorized between a star and a planet.
Due to the planet's distance from its host star, which acts like its sun, the planet's temperatures reach that level. Its heat is enough to break molecules within its atmosphere apart and turn them back into their composite atoms.
This planet is much hotter than the sun, which only reaches about 9,940 °F, which breaks the record for the hottest object ever found. However, brown dwarfs are generally known to be hotter than planets.
The brown dwarfs are cooler compared to red dwarf stars but aren't known to reach temperatures close to the sun based on their own internal fusion engines. Brown dwarfs are also known to have a mass between the lightest stars and largest planets.
Na'ama Hallakoun, an astrophysicist of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science led a team of international scientists and gave the object the name WD0032-317B. According to the team, the discovery helps explain the process of Jupiter-like gas giants that orbit closely to large hot stars.
Observation of these types of objects can be difficult due to the star's properties, namely their rotation rate and activity. Planets orbiting close to their star come with a strong amount of ultraviolet light capable of sparking the evaporation of the atmospheres, resulting in thermal dissociation where molecules get torn apart.
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Orbiting Bodies
Not much is known about the extreme environment except from its proximity to the brightest star and orbiting exoplanet signals, which make it hard for the object to tease out from stellar activity. Red dwarfs are often hotter than most stars and are considered the most common in the galaxy.
These red stars have a maximum temperature of 6,740 °F on their surface.
In order to study the phenomenon, one possible approach would be for scientists to observe brown dwarfs in binary systems with white dwarfs. This is because white dwarfs are considered smaller compared to KELT-9 and other blue supergients, making them dimmer in nature.
A brown dwarf isn't categorized as a planet or star but is often 13 times Jupiter's mass and displays planet-like properties. However, these types of objects can have enough pressure and heat for deuterium fusion to be ignited coming from the energy of its core alone.
Brown dwarfs are capable of reaching 80 times the mass of Jupiter with temperatures normally around 4,040 °F, which are still coller and dimmer compared to red dwarfs.
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