Monday, December 15, 2008

Dim Bulbs

By now everyone following astronomy has heard about the dimmest bulbs in Space, a pair of brown dwarves 17 light-years away. 2MASS J09393548-2448279 are a million times fainter than our Sun. They were discivered to be two separate objects by a team led by MIT physicist Adam Burgasser. The results appear in the December 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Brown dwarves occupy a spot in the mass spectrum between gas giant planets and small stars. They are too small to ignite nuclear fusion, yet they are warm by their own right. astronomers are not sure what keeps them warm at all. If the dim bulbs formed around a Black Hole, that would keep them dim but very stable. If Black Holes exist within stars, or even within Earth, dim bulbs will take a long time to discover them

2 Comments:

Blogger beebs said...

I come back to this blog for its findings and commentary. Thanks!

8:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ha, nice punchline Louise!
Cheers, and happy 2009!
T.

1:18 PM  

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