There ’s a lot we ca n’t see in our wandflower . Neutrinos , dark matter , black holes ; we know they are there but we ca n’t see them . And according to newfangled inquiry , we might have also missed up to 100 billion brown nanus .
An international team of researchers has been looking for brown dwarf – the extremely shadowy stellar object that failed to become stars – focalise on genius - forming neighborhood NGC 1333 , which is located 1,000 light - years away . They discover that there were one-half as many brown dwarfs as there were stars , which is actually a much higher turn than bear .
The inquiry , which is presented this calendar week at theNational Astronomy Meetingin the UK , did n’t stop there . The region was just one of the target the team had decided to explore after the unexpected finding . Another astral cluster , called RCW 38 , in the configuration of Vela , also cavort the same ratio of brown dwarfs to stars .
RCW 38 is really quite different from NGC 1333 . It has a quite a little more monumental stars and is a lot further than the other cluster observed , about 5,500 light - years away . The team used the Very Large Telescope to observe this clump and foot out the slow browned dwarfs among the burnished stars .
“ We ’ve set up a deal of brown dwarfs in these clump . And whatever the cluster case , the brown dwarfs are really plebeian , " squad penis Aleks Scholz from the University of St Andrews , said in astatement . " Brown dwarfs strain alongside stars in clusters , so our work suggests there are a vast phone number of brown gnome out there . ”
harmonise to the statistical estimate based on these two objects , there should between 25 and 100 billion brownish nanus presently in the Milky Way . And since there are many brown dwarf small than the ones detected in this study , this could be a significant underreckoning .
Brown gnome are missing link object , aan intermediate stage between stars and gas giant planets . They are mostly made of hydrogen but they are not heavy enough to accomplish atomic fusion in their core , meaning they flush it to become stars . scientist this year were finally able to put someconstraints on these object – namely , if they are lighter than 70 sentence the mass of Jupiter and cooler than 1,300 ° vitamin C ( 2,400 ° fluorine ) then they will remain a brown dwarf .
