Failed stars and super-Jupiters FAILED STARS & SUPER- JUPITERS
THE STRANGE CELESTIAL OBJECTS THAT DON’T MAKE THE CUT AS EITHER PLANETS OR STARS The brown dwarf is seen as a stellar failure, a dropout from the school of star formation. These gigantic objects, with their puffy, gaseous outer layers, are the universe’s students that didn’t quite make the grade. In brown dwarfs, nuclear fusion - the process that gives stars their power - has given up the ghost, leaving them relatively cold, with some no hotter than the human body. Neither planet nor star, brown dwarfs fall into the grey area between the most massive gas giant planets like Jupiter - hence why they’re known as ‘super-Jupiters’, because of their massive, gaseous nature - and the smallest stars. Their existence…
