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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🔥 Fire⇄ 3D version
2d-brown-dwarf-lithium-burning-boundary ↗ Open standalone

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

Adjust the mass and age of brown dwarfs to observe when lithium depletion occurs, marking the boundary between those that do and don't ignite.

brown dwarfsstellar astrophysicslithium teststar clusterssubstellar objects

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

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