A FAILED star is floating alone in space 30 light years away. The object, one
of a handful of confirmed brown dwarfs, is the first that does not have a
companion star obscuring observations.
鈥淭his brown dwarf gives us the first really good-quality data,鈥� says Maria
Ruiz of the University of Chile in Santiago, one of the team that identified it
using a telescope at La Silla.
When a cloud of hydrogen collapses under its own gravity, it gets hotter. If
there is enough gas, nuclear reactions start and the cloud becomes a star. If
not, the cloud becomes a brown dwarf.
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Until now, convincing brown dwarf candidates have always appeared with
companion stars, leading to speculation about whether they can form alone. The
new dwarf, says Ruiz, 鈥渢ells us that they can be formed in the same way stars
are鈥�. The results will appear in the 20 December issue of Astrophysical
Journal Letters.