To me, the most interesting fact about Wolf 359 is its low surface temperature. Wikipedia shows its surface temperature as 2800 Kelvin. Tungsten melts at 3700 K, and graphite sublimates above 4000 K. What this means is that you could make solid objects which could be in direct contact with the star and remain intact despite the temperature.<p>Because Wolf 359 has a surface gravity of about 320 g's, if you made a buoyant object (like a balloon), it would have a very strong restoring force. The photosphere has a very low density, so this would be basically a vacuum balloon. A vacuum balloon is much easier to make in a near vacuum than in a thick atmosphere like Earth's. If it were large enough and floated high enough, you would have the heat of the star on one side and the cold of space on the other - a perfect location for a heat engine.<p>I started writing a sci-fi novel a few years ago, where the conversion of Wolf 359 into an energy source powering a future human civilization was a major plot point. I chose Wolf 359 as the red dwarf because it is relatively close to Earth and has a relatively low temperature. Unfortunately, I got stuck on the dialogue for the love story plot, so I've never finished it.
“In combination with a lower rate of hydrogen consumption due to its low mass, the convection will allow Wolf 359 to remain a main-sequence star for about eight trillion years.”
I rendered the relative size of Wolf 359 a long time ago:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg</a><p>It's not much larger than Jupiter (in comparison to other stars).
Is this in relation to the arXiv article "Frequency of planets orbiting M dwarfs in the Solar neighbourhood" published in June of 2019?<p>The quote from wikipedia.<p>"In June 2019 two candidate planets were reported in orbit around Wolf 359. They were detected using the radial velocity method from observations with HARPS in Chile and HIRES in Hawaii"