Our planet has a huge flaming ball of fire as a neighbor, we call it our Sun, but in reality it is the closest star we have. On a cool day you can probably go outside and get sun burned after 3 hours by the pool. So it goes without saying, the closer you get to the star, the hotter it gets. But thanks to NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Satellite, they have actually found a star that is cooler than the human body. Unlike our sun, this star is cold enough to let you stand on it’s surface without getting burned. The star belongs to the brown Y dwarf star family, sometimes referred to it as the “Failed Stars” family, because of their low mass levels that keep them from being able to fuse atoms. This new star is believed to be at a comfortable 80 degrees fahrenheit and it’s located about 40 light years away.
Before this star was discovered, the previous “cool” record wouldn’t instantly burn you to a crisp either, but you would be sweating left and right until you eventually pass the comfort zone and then you passed the living zone. According to NASA, finding the star was not an easy task, because of how little infrared light these dwarfs put out and their lack of actual visible light they blend into their environment. WISE also spotted about 100 other brown Y dwarfs that are closer than NASA had though.
So yesterday we had a planet made out of Diamonds, now we have cold suns… Gotta love our universe.
