Brown Dwarfs Shoot Jets of Material While Still Growing

First Posted: Jul 24, 2015 12:35 PM EDT
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Astronomers have discovered jets of material ejected by still-forming young brown dwarfs. This new discovery is the first direct evidence that brown dwarfs, intermediate in mass between stars and planets, are produced by a scaled-down version of the same process that produce stars.

In this latest study, the scientists examined a group of still-forming brown dwarfs in a star-forming region about 450 light-years from Earth. In this case, the researchers detected jets with radio observations conducted by the VLA.

"This is the first time that such jets have been found coming from brown dwarfs at such an early stage of their formation, and shows that they form in a way similar to that of stars," said Oscar Morata, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These are the lowest-mass objects that seem to form the same way as stars."

Brown dwarfs are actually less massive that stars, but more massive than giant planets. They have insufficient mass to produce the temperatures and pressures at their cores that are necessary to trigger the thermonuclear reactions that power normal stars.

In this latest study, the researchers have solved a longstanding question: Do brown dwarfs form like planets or like stars? In this case, the researchers found that, like stars, the brown dwarfs have jets of material that are propelled outward from poles of the discs. No such jets mark planet formation.

"We conclude that the formation of brown dwarfs is a scaled-down version of the process that forms larger stars," said Morata.

The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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