What if the sun became a brown dwarf?

If we simply replaced the Sun with a brown dwarf, we would very rapidly freeze, as the sudden drop in light from our replacement Sun wouldn’t be enough to keep water at a liquid temperature on our planet.

What is a brown dwarf and how does it compare to our sun?

Stars with less mass than the sun are smaller and cooler, and hence much fainter in visible light. Brown dwarfs are the smallest and coolest of stars. They have less than eight percent of the mass of the sun, which is not enough to sustain the fusion reaction that keeps the sun hot.

What will happen to Earth if the sun turns into a white dwarf?

Earth will become a scorched, lifeless rock — stripped of its atmosphere, its oceans boiled off. Astronomers aren’t sure exactly how close the Sun’s outer atmosphere will come to Earth. If Earth manages to survive the Sun’s giant phase, it will find itself orbiting a hot white dwarf barely larger than our planet.

What if the sun doubled in size?

If you mean that it expands to twice its size, the drop in density would cause the fusion reaction that powers the sun to stop. The sun would then begin to collapse under its own weight, until it reached its former density, at which point it would re-ignite.

What would happen if the Sun suddenly turned into a brown dwarf?

If you’re asking what would happen if the sun suddenly turned into a brown dwarf, then the sudden change of mass would cause severe disruption in the orbits of everything in the solar system. Everything is moving too quickly for a brown dwarf to hold on to gravitationally and most things would leave orbit, I suspect.

What is the difference between a planet and a brown dwarf?

Currently, the International Astronomical Union considers an object above 13 MJ (the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium) to be a brown dwarf, whereas an object under that mass (and orbiting a star or stellar remnant) is considered a planet.

Is the Sun a white dwarf star?

The Sun as a White Dwarf Star. This tiny remnant will have a mass of around half that of our present Sun, but will be the size of the Earth. Needless to say, white dwarfs are very dense, intense gravitational pull countered not by fusion in the core (like all Main Sequence stars), but by electron degeneracy pressure.

What will happen to the Earth when the Sun is gone?

Once things calm down, a small sparkling jewel of a white dwarf star will remain. This tiny remnant will have a mass of around half that of our present Sun, but will be the size of the Earth.