If the exoplanet HD 100-546 is larger than some stars, how come it hasn’t collapsed into a low-mass star?
In: Physics
This is a gross oversimplification, but I’m only patching this together after a couple minutes of research.
That’s because it *isn’t* more massive than some stars. It’s much less.
I saw an estimate somewhere that this planet has, give or take, around the mass of 20 Jupiters. This is, and I’m being very optimistic here, barely enough to form an extremely “cold” (still pretty hot compared to a summer day) brown dwarf. It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of Jupiter masses to form even the smallest Red Dwarf star.
Further, depending on who you ask, brown dwarves aren’t stars at all: they’re just huge gas giants with **some** stellar properties.
Again, this is a MASSIVE oversimplification, but hope that clears something up.
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