What's Really Out There?

By | January 27, 2005
4 Comments

Looks like we’re
not as certain as we thought we were:

The first precise measurement of a failed star known as a brown dwarf finds
the object is much more massive than theorists expected. The result challenges
what astronomers assumed about these strange things, which straddle the mass
range between huge planets and normal stars.

If the masses of similar objects have been generally underestimated, then
some presumed planets outside our solar system may not be planets after all,
astronomers said Wednesday.

Complicating the matter, several objects that appear to be in the acceptable
mass range for planets — up to about 15 Jupiter masses — were discovered
about five years ago floating freely in space, not bound to any star. Astronomers
have been arguing ever since whether these objects are planets or brown dwarfs.

So our galaxy may be home to fewer planets, and more star wannabes, than we
thought. In fact, these brown dwarves may turn out to be the most abundant objects
in the universe. If so, maybe we should start thinking about what practical
use could be made of them.

Thoughts? Anyone?

  • Engineer-Poet

    It’s hard to speculate about what we could do with them, because it’s hard to think about what we might actually need most.

    Merge a few to get a red dwarf star?  (Plenty of those hanging around, why would we run low anytime soon?)

    Take one apart for the hydrogen, or for the rocks and ices to make structures or even Earth-like planets?  (Mighty deep gravity well to pull stuff out of.  Comets are much more convenient.)

    Co-orbiting pairs near convenient star systems, to accelerate and brake interstellar slow-boats?  (Hard to think that we wouldn’t have better transport technology before we got the ability to create co-orbiting brown dwarves.)

    I offer this projection:  the first non-trivial human use of brown dwarves will be something that would be considered wild speculation today.  Which probably makes it good fodder for this site…

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    I offer this projection: the first non-trivial human use of brown dwarves will be something that would be considered wild speculation today. Which probably makes it good fodder for this site…

    Why, thank you.

    As my old Grandpappy used to say, “Why make red dwarves when you can make black holes?” But they may be pretty abundant, too, and (sadly) I don’t have an immediate practical use for black holes outside the obvious wormhole-generation or time-machine stuff. :-)

    In one of my science-fiction universes, brown dwarves are the eventual habitat for the human race. It’s a slightly different version of humanity, one that passes through several developmental stages at the species level in a single liftime. So you go from being a fish to an otter to a living balloon to a winged jungle cat to a six-limbed ape to a human being to an enormous walking stick to tree to a crystalline structure, and finally to a plasma being living on a brown dwarf. But I guess that’s a different story.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    This is not a suggestion for a practical use, but could brown dwarves, if abundant enough, answer the dark matter mystery?

  • Engineer-Poet

    They would certainly fit the description of MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects).

    I flashed on an image of a society capable of stellar engineering, which builds Dyson spheres using the material from entire planetary systems and pulls apart brown dwarves when the gas giants start getting skinny.  Calculating the gravitational self-energy of a .05 solar mass dwarf requires more calculus than I’m willing to do at the moment, unfortunately; it would be interesting to be able to quantify the time required to perform such a disassembly given a star to power it.

    (BTW, the preview function is broken.  It neglects to do the translation of line breaks to <br> tags which is performed by the actual post operation.)