FAILED STARS & SUPER JUPITERS

Meet brown dwarfs, the strange celestial objects that didn't make the cut as either planets or stars

The brown dwarf is seen as a stellar failure, a dropout from the school of star formation. These gigantic objects with their puffy gaseous outer layers, are the universe’s students that didn’t quite make the grade. You see, in brown dwarfs, nuclear fusion – the process that gives stars their power – has given up the ghost, leaving them relatively cold and some no hotter than the human body. Neither planet nor star, brown dwarfs fall into the grey area between the most massive gas giant planets like Jupiter (which is why they're known as 'super Jupiters' because of their massive, gaseous nature) and the smallest stars. Their existence blurs the lines between what is a planet and what is a star and forces us to question the differences between…

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All About Space Tour of the Universe (Digital) - 1 Issue, All About Space Tour of the Universe 4th Edition

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