Brown Dwarf - Planets Around Brown Dwarfs

Planets Around Brown Dwarfs

The planetary-mass objects 2M1207b, GQ Lupi b and 2MASS J044144 that are orbiting brown-dwarfs may have formed by cloud collapse rather than accretion and so may be sub-brown dwarfs rather than planets.

Disks around brown dwarfs have been found to have many of the same features as disks around stars; therefore, it is expected that there will be accretion-formed planets around brown dwarfs. Given the small mass of brown dwarf disks, most planets will be terrestrial planets rather than gas giants. If a giant planet orbits a brown dwarf across our line of sight then since they have approximately the same diameter this would give a large signal for detection by transit. The accretion zone for planets around a brown dwarf is very close to the brown dwarf itself, so tidal forces would have a strong effect.

Read more about this topic:  Brown Dwarf

Famous quotes containing the words planets, brown and/or dwarfs:

    Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
    Iris Murdoch (b. 1919)

    The more we learn of science, the more we see that its wonderful mysteries are all explained by a few simple laws so connected together and so dependent upon each other, that we see the same mind animating them all.
    —Olympia Brown (1835–1900)

    Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)