DARK, frozen and lifeless—that’s the prospect for a planet forming
around a brown dwarf star. Yet these inhospitable planets could be very common,
the AAS heard.
Brown dwarfs are tens of times heavier than Jupiter but not massive enough to
ignite nuclear fusion, the energy source of stars. Astronomers can’t decide
whether these mysterious objects are failed stars or super-planets that have
escaped the planetary system of their birth. Now observations reported at
Pasadena suggest that they have more in common with stars than planets.
An international team of astronomers used the 3.5-metre New Technology
Telescope (NTT) of the…
