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Lithium Depletion Boundary in Brown Dwarfs (2D)

Interactive 2D simulation of the lithium depletion boundary: pick a substellar object's mass, compute its core temperature from a Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction law, integrate a real Arrhenius-style lithium-burn ODE over cosmic age, and sweep mass to trace the mass-vs-depletion-age boundary curve astronomers use as the 'lithium test'.

Space & Astronomy2DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D counterpart replaces the population view with a single-object, first-principles integration: pick a substellar mass, and the engine computes its core temperature from a Kelvin–Helmholtz contraction law, then integrates a real Arrhenius-style lithium-burn ODE forward in age to track exactly how much primordial lithium-7 survives. Sweeping the mass slider and re-running the same integration for ~70 masses traces the mass-vs-depletion-age boundary curve, which diverges toward "never" below a critical mass computed directly from the ignition-temperature parameter — reproducing the real observed lithium depletion boundary near 0.065 solar masses without it being hard-coded anywhere.

⚙ Under the hood

Watch a coeval population of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars contract and heat over time, and see the sharp lithium depletion boundary mass sweep to lower mass as the cluster ages — the same effect astronomers use to date young star clusters.

brown dwarfsstellar astrophysicslithium teststar clusterssubstellar objects

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install