Note / Planet X Could Be Closer To Earth Than Proxima Centauri

By Alton Parrish (Editor)
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Brown Dwarf Could Be Closer To Earth Than Proxima Centauri Say First Astronomers To See A Brown Dwarf Birth
Tue Jul 17 12:45
An international team led by the laboratory AIM (1) (CEA-CNRS-Universite Paris Diderot) just saw the very first step in the formation of a brown dwarf, one of those very low-mass stars, that fall between star and planet. Astronomers know how to detect brown dwarfs, despite their low radiation, however their formation and birth had remained a mystery until now.
Image of the cloud Oph B-11, obtained by the interferometer IRAM to the wavelength of 3.2 mm. The contours are the intensity and size of the source. The blue ellipse, top left, shows the resolution of the instrument and the cross marks the coincidence with a source already detected in sub-millimeter waves.
© Ph.Andre / CEA-SAP
It is thanks to the great IRAM interferometer (CNRS) (2), on the Plateau de Bure, that the astrophysicists were able to locate a condensing gas and dust, indicating the formation of a brown dwarf. This discovery and its interpretation are presented in the journal Science on July 6, 2012.
Stars of all masses can form in the Universe. Some are stars, other planets. The border is a function of their mass. The "in-between" is a mass range between 13 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, weighing less than 8% of the Sun.
Neither really star or a planet, the brown dwarf is warm enough for the fusion of deuterium, but that does not trigger the fusion reaction of hydrogen, a reaction which is the energy source of stars.
The big dark cloud Rho Ophiuchi, observed here in the mid-infrared spectrum, was where the brown dwarf is located, in the region (red circle) of Oph pre-B-11, at an average distance of 450 light years from Earth.
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