How does the discovery of brown dwarfs expand our understanding of stellar objects?
Answers may include… Brown dwarfs share properties of both stars and planets, having a mass that’s in between the two. For every star like our Sun, there are hundreds of brown dwarfs, and similar numbers of low mass stars. Smaller than all stars (less than 8% the mass of the Sun), brown dwarfs have enough mass to generate only limited nuclear fusion, fusing deuterium (heavy hydrogen) for a brief period of millions of years. After this fuel runs out, the brown dwarf simply cools down over billions of years. The discovery of brown dwarfs reminds scientists that the categories that we create to talk about celestial bodies is constantly changing, and that there are many more mysteries to explore in the cosmos!
