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Message Subject Rogue Failed Star Is One of Smallest Ever Seen
Poster Handle Astromut
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I'm among those who would say a 6 MJ object is not even a brown dwarf, which has a cutoff at 13 MJ; that's the minimum mass to fuse deuterium. A brown dwarf does undergo fusion, but only for a brief time early in its life until its limited deuterium supply is consumed. A 6 MJ object is just a free-floating planet. Some astronomers divide brown dwarfs from large planets like this by the method of formation, so they call it a brown dwarf because it probably formed on its own via gravitational collapse like a star, but I disagree with that method. In some cases it would be extremely hard if not impossible to correctly determine whether an object formed by accretion or gravitational collapse. A mass cutoff based on a given criteria, such as deuterium fusion, provides an unambiguous solution to the problem.

This is like saying a car is a truck because it was built in a truck factory even though it came out as a car.
 
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