Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets----hints of mini solar systems forming around brown dwarfs

i added this to a thread yesterday but the thread died and i don't know if anyone actually saw it...there is so much we still don't know and understand, and the more we do learn, the more questions are born.. ....

thought some of my fellow space junkies might like to read this one :-)



[link to www.scientificamerican.com]


Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets
Astronomers are finding planets where there were not supposed to be any.

By Micheal W. Werner and Michael A. Jura

Key Concepts

* Few if any astronomers expected the sheer diver­sity of planets beyond our solar system. The most extreme systems are those that orbit neutron stars, white dwarfs and brown dwarfs.
* Neutron stars are born in supernova explosions, and planets orbiting them probably congealed from the debris. The bodies orbiting white dwarfs are the hardy survivors of the demise of a sunlike star. And brown dwarfs, themselves barely more massive than planets, nonetheless appear to be sites of planet formation.

*Brown Dwarf is a star so small—some are hardly more massive than a large planet—that it never lit up. Astronomers scarcely even bothered to look for planets around such runts. Yet they have now seen hints of mini solar systems forming around brown dwarfs and similarly unlikely objects.

Last Edited by Thoughts Faux Fodder on 05/22/2009 10:48 PM