The astronomical world is buzzing with news about a brown dwarf discovery thats not quite what it seemed. Scientists have found that Gliese 229B‚ first spotted almost 30 years ago isnt just one object but two brown dwarfs dancing around each other.
These cosmic partners‚ now called Gliese 229Ba and Gliese 229Bb are pretty hefty – weighing in at 38 and 34 times Jupiterʼs mass. Theyre hanging out just 19 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lepus which is pretty close in space terms.
Sam Whitebook‚ a grad student at Caltech‚ explains that brown dwarfs are kinda like failed stars. Theyʼre too big to be planets but too small to spark the hydrogen burning that powers stars. Instead‚ they just glow faintly as they cool down over time.
We still donʼt really know how different brown dwarfs form‚ and what the transition between a giant planet and a brown dwarf is. The boundary is fuzzy
This duo is special because they orbit super close to each other – completing a loop every 12 days. Thats only 16 times the distance between Earth and the moon. Theyʼre also circling a red dwarf star thats about six-tenths the size of our sun.
The discovery shows how messy star formation can be and reminds us to keep our minds open to surprises in space. It also highlights how our understanding of these cosmic in-betweeners is still evolving‚ even decades after we first spotted them