Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

A binary pair of red stars, one giant one dwarf, has been discovered by a collaboration of astrophysicists from the University of Hertfordshire and The Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Ultra-cool dwarfs are star-like objects, but with surface temperatures much cooler than normal stars — less than 2000 degrees (compare this to the Sun’s temperature of about 6000 degrees). Exotic dusty clouds condense out at such ultra-cool temperatures, leading to objects that are hybrid in nature — with characteristics of both stars and giant planets like Jupiter.

Red giant stars are much bigger and more massive, and are evolving towards the end of their life (our Sun will become a red giant in about 5 billion years). But as they evolve towards their demise they can reveal information about their age and chemical composition.

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Residents of the southern United States and the Caribbean have seen it many times during the summer months — a whitish haze in the sky that seems to hang around for days. The resulting thin film of dust on their homes and cars actually is soil from the deserts of Africa, blown across the Atlantic Ocean.similar dust storms in the arctic, possibly caused by receding glaciers, may be making similar deposits in northern Europe and North America…

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