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Old 11-February-2006, 02:33 PM
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Question Weather On A Brown Dwarf-Iron Rain Thunderstorms?

I remember reading somewhere that weather on a brown dwarf can be incredibly extreme-the heat is so intense that clouds of liquid iron form, and that it's quite possible to have thunderstorms of iron rain.

Can such a thing actually happen?
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Old 11-February-2006, 03:44 PM
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I don't see why not, especialy if it is some later generation star with higher amounts of heavy elements (if the Iron percentage is too low, it probably wouldn't be able to seem like rain so much as a very rarified fine mist).

Even on Jupiter, there is the potential for this to happen at some layer where the ambient temperature is near the boiling point of Iron (which is only a few hundred miles down or so).
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Old 11-February-2006, 05:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by antoniseb
I don't see why not, especialy if it is some later generation star with higher amounts of heavy elements (if the Iron percentage is too low, it probably wouldn't be able to seem like rain so much as a very rarified fine mist).

Even on Jupiter, there is the potential for this to happen at some layer where the ambient temperature is near the boiling point of Iron (which is only a few hundred miles down or so).
This is true. The hull of the Galileo probe was made of titanium, which I understand melts at 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit. It most likely vaporized. Isn't this melting point higher than iron?

Now, if enough condensation occurs and the conditions are right, maybe there are metallic thunderclouds far below the water thunderstorms in the higher parts of the atmosphere?

That's an intriguing thought.
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Old 11-February-2006, 09:13 PM
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In early 2003, a Jupiter-sized planet was discovered VERY close to its parent star (orbital period of only 29 hours). This object is strongly suspected to have iron rain storms in its upper atmosphere. See this article and excerpt:

http://www.astrobio.net/news/article352.html

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Intriguingly, the temperature of OGLE-TR-56b's upper atmosphere is theoretically just right to form clouds, not of water vapor, but of iron atoms. Earlier this year, astronomers reported evidence for iron rain on brown dwarfs. However, such storms only occur over a short portion of a brown dwarf's lifetime, while the newly discovered 4 billion year-old OGLE-TR-56b should still be experiencing this exotic weather, thanks to strong heating from the nearby star.
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