A massive, mysterious object, half-star and half-planet, has been discovered just 29 light-years away from Earth and is estimated to be 10 billion years old.
According to Sci-News, this is an ancient brown dwarf that astronomers have long hoped to find. Brown dwarfs are a type of astronomical object that defies clear definition; they are often many times larger than gas giants like Jupiter, despite their similar appearance, but are too small to be classified as stars.
With this “intermediate” size, they are too small to sustain hydrogen fusion in their cores, which is essential for becoming a star, even though they possess some stellar characteristics. Thus, brown dwarfs are often referred to as “superior planets” or “failed stars.”
Image of the mysterious brown dwarf appearing in telescopes – (Photo: Astronomy & Astrophysics)
A specific object of this type, named WISE 1810, has been recorded in a study led by Dr. Nicolas Lodieu from the Canary Astrophysics Institute and the Department of Astrophysics at the University of La Laguna, Spain.
Utilizing a range of advanced equipment such as OSIRIS, EMIR, and HiPERCAM on the Gran Telescopio Canarias, ALFOSC on the Nordic Optical Telescope, and Omega2000 at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, they observed in detail and identified several fundamental characteristics of WISE 1810, which exhibits very unique spectral properties.
“No existing atmospheric models can reproduce the light emitted by this peculiar object,” Dr. Lodieu stated.
According to Dr. María Rosa Zapatero Osorio from the Astrobiology Center (CSIC-INTA) in Spain, another member of the research team, this is the first time the presence of such faint, metal-deficient objects has been recorded in our galaxy. Although theoretical models suggest they exist in abundance around us, their faintness makes them difficult to observe.
WISE 1810 is also notable for its age. Studying such an ancient brown dwarf will provide essential pieces of the puzzle regarding brown dwarfs, helping scientists gain further insight into the still-mysterious processes of formation and evolution of these “sub-planets.”
This enigmatic object, which is neither clearly a star nor a planet, raises questions about its origins. The leading hypothesis is that they formed almost from nothing—self-aggregating within a cloud of gas and dust, similar to how stars form. Brown dwarfs are solitary entities without a parent star, so they cannot originate from the protoplanetary disk of a parent star like our Earth.
The research has just been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
