Astronomers Discover Third-Closest Star System To Earth

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have found the third-closest star system to the Earth: called WISE 1049-5319, it's a binary brown dwarf system just 6.5 light years away. Brown dwarfs are faint, low mass objects 13 — 75 times the mass of Jupiter, and are so dim they are very difficult to detect. These newly-found nearby objects were seen in observations from 1978 but went unnoticed at the time, but since that date the large apparent motion of the binary made their proximity obvious. Only two star systems are closer: Alpha Centauri (4.3 light years) and Barnard's star (6 light years)."

Comments

These are the starts that are closest to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheldon's going to have to fix his song.

Re:These are the starts that are closest to me

[Dr. Sheldon Cooper]

I most certainly shall not. I don't consider a brown dwarf to be a real star. I generally don't spend time considering topics related to astronomy at all, as it is widely known that astronomy is a field for children or H1B imports with selective mutism and a penchant for broadway musicals.

To put it in terms you would be more likely to understand, if stars were thespians, a brown dwarf would be on par with Jean Claude Van Damme.

And before you ask, a thespian is what you normies call an actor.

Re:These are the starts that are closest to me

[bkmoore]

...To put it in terms you would be more likely to understand, if stars were thespians, a brown dwarf would be on par with Jean Claude Van Damme...

I always thought a brown dwarf was the actor who played the character Tatoo in Fantasy Island. Was Jean Claude Van Damme in Fantasy Island?

Re:These are the starts that are closest to me

[sconeu]

That was my first thought.

Re:These are the starts that are closest to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I most certainly shall not. I don't consider a brown dwarf to be a real star. I generally don't spend time considering topics related to astronomy at all, as it is widely known that astronomy is a field for children or H1B imports with selective mutism and a penchant for broadway musicals.

  To put it in terms you would be more likely to understand, if stars were thespians, a brown dwarf would be on par with Jean Claude Van Damme.

And before you ask, a thespian is what you normies call an actor.

No. A thespian is what we call an actor when we're being sarcastic.

If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[mozumder]

then why are they considered stars?

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[MyLongNickName]

I'm not sure why this is modded down. A brown dwarf never achieves sustained fusion and is not considered a full-fledged star, so i am also confused to why it is considered a star system.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Waffle Iron]

then why are they considered stars?

IIRC, they can sustain fusion until all of the natural deuterium (which is not much) is used up, but then they stop because they're not big enough to fuse regular hydrogen. Its kind of like a wimpier version of a white dwarf star that stops burning because it can't fuse carbon.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[skade88]

According to the Brown Dwarf Wiki article "However, for some years now there has been debate concerning what criterion to use for defining the separation between a brown dwarf and a giant planet at very low brown dwarf masses (~13 Jupiter masses).[3] One school of thought is based on formation, and another on interior physics.[3] Dwarfs are categorized by spectral classification, with the major types being M, L, T, and Y.[3] Despite their name, most brown dwarfs would appear magenta to the human eye.[3] Another debate is whether brown dwarfs are required to have experienced fusion at some point in their history. Some planets are known to orbit brown dwarfs: 2M1207b, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, and 2MASS J044144b. Brown dwarfs may have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth.[4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[MightyYar]

It's subject to some debate. Basically, mostly the differentiation between a gas giant and a small brown dwarf comes down to how it formed and the physics going on inside.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Jhon]

I say we kick Pluto out of the solar system since it's not a REAL planet. Let it spend the rest of it's life around a fake star!

Effing dwarfs.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[skade88]

Dwarf planets and stars are sensitive and preferred it if you called them little planets and little stars.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Damn right. But the job's not finished until we kick fucking Plutonium off the Periodic Table of Elements, too.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[skade88]

and whats with the racism? Do we need to keep calling brown dwarfs brown? They don't even look brown! They look magenta! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they don't belong to any star system, so they form a system on their own, but a star system would look stupid without a star.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[OolimPhon]

Nope, Plutonium is okay. It's named after some cartoon dog.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

They are dwarf stars

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[argStyopa]

Because astronomy is still deeply wedded to a sort of archaic taxonomy that is based in the observations of Chaldeans and still has more than a few toes mired in its astrological foundations.

It's long past time that the entire discipline basically sits down and rewrites its nomenclature (giving as best possible use of the common terms for things such as stars, planets, nebulae, etc.). We've started by throwing Pluto back out into the outer darkness where it properly belongs, but it's only a beginning.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Waffle Iron]

The term "little" could be construed as demeaning.

I think the currently preferred term is "differently sized" planets.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

It's subject to some debate. Basically, mostly the differentiation between a gas giant and a small brown dwarf comes down to how it formed and the physics going on inside.

I have that problem as well. Sometimes its gas, sometime its a brown dwarf. I need new underwear when I mistake the two.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[noh8rz10]

I think if it is the center of a planetary system, then it is a star. If it is part of a planetary system that is orbiting a larger star, then it is a planet. This makes sense, no? Also, maybe if it used to be a full fledged star, then it will always be classified as a star.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

The term "little" could be construed as demeaning.

I think the currently preferred term is "differently sized" planets.

As is the slanderous term "planets". I believe the correct term is "differently sized astronomical collections of matter".

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the correct term is "mass challenged".

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[jc42]

I think if it is the center of a planetary system, then it is a star.

This is a nice example of why you need to be careful in how you define things. With the above definition, our own sun isn't a "star" (most of the time).

Isaac Newton was one of the people who pointed this out. The objects in our solar system actually orbit the barycenter of the system, the technical name for what is often called the center of mass (or more weirdly, the center of gravity). Because most of the solar system's mass outside the sun is Jupiter, and because Jupiter is far enough away from the sun, the barycenter of the solar system is usually outside the sun. Not far outside, true, but outside the visible "surface" of the sun. It's only inside the sun when most of the other big planets are on the other side from Jupiter.

So, technically speaking, Earth and the other planets don't actually orbit the sun; they orbit the barycenter, which is (usually) outside the sun. The sun itself also orbits the same barycenter, in a very close orbit. And a few humorous remarks have been made based on the fact that Newton actually demonstrated that the Earth doesn't revolve around the sun.

We probably need a better definition of the term "star" than "has planets". That also causes a different problem: It's a circular definition, since the common definition of a "planet" includes orbiting a star. So one might decide that Jupiter is a star, and at least its four major moons instantly become planets, which then is used in the definition of "star" to prove that Jupiter is indeed a star.

There's a lot of humor in the way such terms are being defined by various (mostly non-astronomical) parties. Maybe we should go back to the definition that a star is an astronomical thing that undergoes sustained nuclear fusion. Ya think that'd work?

(We do have to carefully word it so that the experimental fusion projects in Earthly labs don't qualify as stars. ;-)

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[noh8rz10]

Maybe we should go back to the definition that a star is an astronomical thing that undergoes sustained nuclear fusion. Ya think that'd work

I think you're being horribly pedantic. everybody knows the difference between a star and a planet. a kindergartner could tell you. it's only the people who have too much time on their hands to slice these fine hairs even finer.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[ls671]

I'm not sure why this is modded down.

Just click on the score, a pop-up should appear showing the post started at -1 and got +6 interesting , at the time I wrote this message.

So it was never modded down.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[sconeu]

I believe the proper term is "gravitationally challenged".

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[jmsp]

I think you're being horribly pedantic. everybody knows the difference between a star and a planet. a kindergartner could tell you. it's only the people who have too much time on their hands to slice these fine hairs even finer.

We use to call those "people who have too much time on their hands" "scientists", or "astronomers" in the case at hand.

Now, think of the possibilities of substituting those "scientists" with kindergartners... A brave new world, I say!

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

> Brown dwarfs are substellar objects too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores .... [but some] ... are thought to fuse deuterium and those above ~65 , fuse lithium as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf

So while Brown Dwarfs can't sustain hydrogen fusion, that doesn't mean they can't sustain fusion of other elements.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

If they weren't called stars all the other stars would make fun of them.

Everyone gets a medal for participation now days. Why should celestial objects be any different?

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

go to jail, do not pass go!

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[RockDoctor]

A brown dwarf never achieves sustained fusion and is not considered a full-fledged star, so i am also confused to why it is considered a star system.

Because they can temporarily achieve fusion, which no planet can do.

It's like - you have guys, fat guys and really really fat guys (they're your planets, various sizes from terrestrial planets through the Neptunian planets to gas giants like Jupiter), and continuing in increasing mass, you have small blobs, medium sized blobs and gargantuan blobs (stars, from red dwarves, though sun-size stars to Betelgeuse-size stars up to behemoths like Eta Carinae), with the dividing line being those whose legs break under the strain of supporting their whole weight (or ... sustain hydrogen fusion, for the stars). On that analogy, brown dwarfs are the ones whose legs can support them for some time, but not indefinitely.

There is an underlying continuum (of mass, in both analogies), separated into apparent classes on the basis of a measurable but not vital criterion.

If you want a geological analogy, to me two specimens might be forsteritic fayalite and fayalitic forsterite, but to my ignorant barbarian of a sedimentologist friend, they're all olivine, just of differing density. (Is it obvious that density isn't important in to the fundamental properties of the two specimens?)

I do hairdressing. Lengthwise. On each strand.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[MyLongNickName]

Question since you seem knowledgeable on the subject: Can/have all Brown Dwarfs achieved fusion? I did more reading since I posted my response, and it seemed like smaller Brown dwarfs had never achieved fusion while larger ones had, and this is one distinction that some astronomers think should lead to a reclassification. Of course, i read it on the internet, so not sure how much validity there is in what I read.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

BInaries...thats why. And Alpha Centauri is inhabited. I used to live there...but you wont find any humans..

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[RockDoctor]

Well, I wouldn't claim "expertise" ; more familiarity than 99% of people, but not "expertise". I know enough to know how little I know.

AIUI, if it gets hydrogen fusion going, then it's a main sequence star, even if it's a tiddler. That's pretty clear, and because people want to kill other people, the minimal limits for hydrogen (proton) fusion have been researched thoroughly. Objects that don't get hydrogen (proton) fusion going are brown dwarfs, planets, or dust.

Observationally, if something has been hot for a billion years or so from internal sources, then it must be burning hydrogen (protons) or something heavier ; nothing else can provide the necessary energy for that long.

A brown dwarf doesn't get hydrogen (proton) fusion going, but it might get deuterium fusion going, until it runs out of deuterium. That is, I think, an undefined point. Observationally though, a YOUNG brown dwarf may still be hot from accretion (which converts the potential energy of infalling gas into heat), so one must also look for the presence of deuterium in it's atmosphere. Which one could do spectroscopically, though it's a bitch. But lithium is considerably easier to detect spectroscopically, and it was produced in small quantities in the Big Bang (strictly, in the nucleosynthesis event some seconds after the Big Bang, as things cooled down ; I forget the exact time, but it was one of the predicted events that gave the title to Stephen Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes", while this was new science ; the detection of primordial lithium was a cornerstone of demonstrating that the Big Bang really did happen according to something very similar to 1970s "Standard Model" particle physics), and crucially, it is destroyed during the process of fusion with deuterium. So, if you measure a putative brown dwarf and it has primordial amounts of hydrogen, of helium and negligible amounts of lithium, then you've got evidence of deuterium burning. Boom - confirmed brown dwarf.

But ... what if your star-like object contains an intermediate amount of lithium? Did it form from matter depleted in lithium (from a supernova remnant, perhaps?) ; or did it go through a deuterium-burning phase as it was forming and unstable (convecting, like a pot boiling on a stove), but it has since started hydrogen fusion in it's core, and radiative heat transfer has taken over internally leaving a surface with an abnormally low lithium content, which is not mixed with the core (where lithium is being produced as a side product of normal nuclear fusion, in small quantities.

So, intrinsically, it is difficult to decide whether a particular dim star is a star or a brown dwarf. There's a lot of arguments over every case. And TBH, for more details, you're going to have to "read The Literature" ; welcome as an observer to the cutting (bleeding) edges of observational astronomy. (Oh, the spectroscopy is cutting edge too - it's not much more than 30 years since instruments started to get this good, and it needs a LOT of that scarcest of commodities - observing time on a highly-figured well mounted "light bucket" of a telescope.)

At the low edge of "brown dwarf", discrimination is difficult too. As you get to smaller masses, the amount of "metals" (anything heavier than helium, to an astrophysicist) increases, irregularly, making it very hard to predict exactly what mass a planet can "turn on" deuterium fusion and qualify as a brown dwarf. If your candidate (there's a nice neutral word) has, say, a lot of 60-Fe in it's composition (itself a likely indicator of origin in supernova debris ; 60-Fe has half-life of a couple of million years), then the radioactive heat and particle release from that can distort the "turn on" temperatures that one would expect in a pure hydrogen progenitor, or a "primordial composition" progenitor. Again, the details get messy.

Short version long ; the definition of "brown dwarf" is pretty clear. However since we're lacking "tricorders" that can operate at ranges of dozens of light years, act

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[ls671]

Mod this late post up please, I am out...

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[RockDoctor]

My karma can stand the hit.

Did you spot the deliberate error? It's cobalt that's the give-away "you've been super nova'd" nucleide.

Re:If brown dwarfs can't sustain fusion

[Anonymous Coward]

rocks, rocks orbiting other rocks, gassy balls, hot gassy balls, big balls of plasma, exploding balls of plasma

And where's the mass of the universe?

[sshambar]

Can someone explain to me how discovering the THIRD closes system to ours in 2013 doesn't suggest that all the Dark Matter(tm) that's out there just isn't a mass of brown dwarfs that we can't see, and not a whole new class of matter?

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[sshambar]

(obvious typo: that's closest)

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[ThorGod]

I think that's the common definition of dark matter. It's just whatever apparent gravitational affects can't be accounted for by the 'visible (through a telescope) matter'.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[skade88]

Interesting....The idea of dark matter is around because our models of the universe that are only based on what we can see don't measure up to the mass we figure the universe needs to actually have. My question to you is, how many extra brown dwarfs would we need to close that gap in mass?

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Waffle Iron]

As I recall, it's because the orbital velocities of regular stars in disk-shaped galaxies suggest that dark matter is distributed spherically around the galactic center rather than concentrated in the disk. That implies that unlike brown dwarfs, dark matter interacts neither with normal matter nor itself by any force other than gravity.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Baloroth]

Can someone explain to me how discovering the THIRD closes system to ours in 2013 doesn't suggest that all the Dark Matter(tm) that's out there just isn't a mass of brown dwarfs that we can't see, and not a whole new class of matter?

Because of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. We can know how much baryonic matter ("normal" matter) there is in the universe by certain cosmological observations. Other cosmological observations show there is more matter out there than that (about 5 times more) and therefore it cannot all be brown dwarfs, black holes, or other dark but non-exotic forms of matter.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that we can "see" the gravity from the dark matter. If there was enough brown stars to make the gravity visible then they would be visible too.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Kjella]

Apparently there's good reason to think it's not atoms at all:

A small proportion of dark matter may be baryonic dark matter: astronomical bodies, such as massive compact halo objects, that are composed of ordinary matter but which emit little or no electromagnetic radiation. Study of nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang produces an upper bound on the amount of baryonic matter in the universe, which indicates that the vast majority of dark matter in the universe cannot be baryons, and thus does not form atoms.

Of course they could be wrong, any models of what happened during the Big Bang are extreme extrapolations. Or it could be the single Big Bang theory that is wrong, that there's lots of old, dark matter from previous big bangs. But the most plausible theory seems to be something like massive neutrinos.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[myrikhan]

IIRC there aren't enough of them and they're too low mass to make up the dark matter. After a bit of searching I found this thesis. It looks like a good introduction to the area.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2757

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it interacts through gravity... how come it hasn't behaved like all other matter? Unless you're saying there's some force other than gravity which acts between stars....? I mean, what else influences visible matter that causes it to collapse into galactic disks -- and which doesn't affect dark matter?

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Charliemopps]

Because dark matter isn't dark because it doesn't give off light. It's dark because it doesn't even interact with normal matter in any other way than gravitation. We can see the effects of its mass, but it does not occlude stars behind it, the light and radio waves passes right through as if it didn't exist.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Hentes]

The problem with that is if gravitational anomalies indeed are caused by a form of invisible matter, then its mass would have to be far too great to consist of normal matter. There are many forms of possibly invisible matter: compact stars, neutrinos etc but their masses don't add up to even a fraction of the amount needed.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words dark matter has more do do with physics simulations attempting to match up to observed effects. Because when we simulate disk galaxy formation it doesn't work if "dark matter" isn't there in the simulation to make it work.

We think our standard model works pretty good so we assume that whatever "dark matter" is standing in for is really there. Some people have claimed to observe "formations" of dark matter in large distant galactic structures I think. But there is very little empirical evidence for it. Just speculation. IMO

In other words dark matter could be almost anything ;p but we believe somethings there.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good questions to ask, its something science does indeed want to figure out. But for right now dark matter exerts gravitational force in the models we are using to predict the universes structure.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this was one of the first hypothesis for explaining the dark matter: the MACHO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object

These MACHOs were studied statistically by methods like gravitational microlensing (e.g. OGLE).
These studies concluded that the brown dwarfs can explain 20% of the dark matter in the galaxy, no more.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[skids]

Well, the above explanations are all very educational. The computer programmer in me wants to answer using short circuit logic, however: we have always been able to see these particular stars. We just didn't know they were so close, because we were looking at still frames.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[blind biker]

As I recall, it's because the orbital velocities of regular stars in disk-shaped galaxies suggest that dark matter is distributed spherically around the galactic center rather than concentrated in the disk. That implies that unlike brown dwarfs, dark matter interacts neither with normal matter nor itself by any force other than gravity.

But isn't gravity what ultimately gives galaxies their shape? Your statement makes it sound as if there are two types of gravity, the one that forms galaxies from non-dark matter, and the gravity between dark and non-dark matter.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Waffle Iron]

No, it's the same gravity, which affects both normal matter and dark matter the same.

The difference is that if dark matter interacted by any force other than gravity (such as electromagnetism, etc.), then it would be deflected on encounters with other objects instead of passing right through them. This would eventually cause the dark matter to settle into a disk, like the rest of the stuff in the galaxy. However, it instead seems to remain in its initial spherical distribution to this day.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[idji]

look at Massive Compact Halo Object

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, gravity is primarily what gives galaxies their shape. However, the gravitational effects of the matter which we can observe does not yield the structure that we observe and no other force seems to fill the bill. This suggests that there are objects out there which exert gravitational force but do not interact with any of the other forces we currently observe in the universe (in particular, electro-magnetic force since that is the only one, besides gravity, that acts over a range long enough to be reliably observed at the distances we are talking about).

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[blind biker]

Yes, gravity is primarily what gives galaxies their shape.

Why isn't, then, the dark matter shaped like a disk, similar to a galaxy, rather than a sphere, as the OP states?

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[femtobyte]

There are non-gravitational forces that are important on the galaxy formation scale --- specifically, collisions/drag from interstellar gas (on the micro scale, due to electromagnetic intermolecular interactions) is necessary to collapse a big gob of mass into a galactic disk. If all particles were like dark matter, only weakly or non-interacting except through gravity, then galactic disks would never form (you'd just have big, amorphous volumes of particles whizzing past each other).

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[MaskedSlacker]

Protip: If you find yourself saying, "It seems so obvious that _____________," then an expert in the field probably already thought of it and examined it, and a google search would do you good.

As others have already posted, the idea of MACHOs has been explored, and is (as best as we can tell) not able to explain (most of) the missing matter.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were enough brown dwarfs to account for the dark matter in the galaxy's halo, it would have been observed by surveys designed to look for exactly such objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_microlensing#Observing_microlensing

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[drwho]

Dark matter is merely interstellar lint, the remains of many, many missing socks.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is dark matter then any different than the Oort Cloud? Seems to me that the same principle is at work here. Tonnes of small, cold matter slowly locked between the gravity and the general forces pushing it outward.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phucking phil plait won't explain it to you, that won't get him page hits. Phil's all about the dollars in his pockets. He wants his hand in your pocket too.
 
If nothing else I can rejoice in the fact that discovery finally shit that turd out. The Slate? LOLz!! He'll be writing for the Enquirer in a couple years. You wait and see.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[mrchaotica]

Black holes are made of baryonic matter?

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[able1234au]

Someone's bitter...

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now just someone explain to me where all the mass came from to start and I will be happy.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The problem with something this small is that you need billions of them to explain dark matter from the missing mass perspective (You need about 1000 of them per "sun"). You would see them if there where that many. Even if all they do is block light (hint: they do).

That leads to the other point. Dark matter is not just dark, as in hard to see. Its dark as in it only interacts via gravity. So light etc passes right through it and is not influenced by dark matter other than via gravity. The bullet cluster illustrates this well.

Don't know why so many are dead against dark matter. Sure its got issues. But it does fit the observations far better than anything else proposed.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

The relevant part of that document is the final paragraph on page 16. (The one labelled 16; it's the 32nd actual page of the document.) Brown dwarfs, as a dark matter candidate, are called MACHOs for Massive And Compact Halo Object, because we can tell from the gravitational effects of dark matter that it's distributed in a halo around each galaxy. The problems with this idea are:

  1. There's no good reason to get brown dwarfs in the halo without also getting bright stars, which we'd see.

  2. We've got a good idea of the amount of baryonic matter formed in the Big Bang, which doesn't include enough for extra brown dwarfs.

  3. When a brown dwarf drifts in front of a distant bright star, there should be a little flash because its gravity acts to focus that star's light. (This is call gravitational microlensing.) Some astronomers spent a while monitoring some distant stars: if there were lots of MACHOs, they would have seen this happening, but they didn't, so there aren't.

Reasons 1 and 2 are theoretical reasons, which aren't entirely convincing - but reason 3 is an experimental demonstration, which is pretty definitive.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

>what else influences visible matter that causes it to collapse into galactic disks -- and which doesn't affect dark matter

The electromagnetic force

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[painandgreed]

Can someone explain to me how discovering the THIRD closes system to ours in 2013 doesn't suggest that all the Dark Matter(tm) that's out there just isn't a mass of brown dwarfs that we can't see, and not a whole new class of matter?

Basically because the things they call dark matter are about six times the amount that there is for luminous matter*. While there is no doubt luminous matter we have not seen yet, it has been determined that there is not six times as much such unfound matter as there is stuff we already see. If such an amount of brown dwarves existed, then we would be able to detect them as they obscured other stars if in front of them, and detect them through gravitational lensing if they were behind them. Basically, the idea that this missing matter we are detecting through various means might be such things as brown dwarves was one of the first things scientists thought of. They came up with experiments to determine the maximum limits of such matter. From those results, they have already figured in the amount of undetected luminous matter into the ~4% of normal matter they think is in the universe. Of course, that figure is being adjusted all the time, but unless some Nobel level discovery is made (that would propose a solution even stranger than dark matter), this is just fine tuning and there is no hope of discovering six times as much luminous matter in the universe.

*And this is determined from empirical data from several different directions such as rotational speed of galaxies, extrapolating the conditions of the early universe from its current state, more gravitational lensing, etc, all of which suggest there is a lot of matter in the universe and not that our laws of gravitation need tweaking.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[painandgreed]

Interesting....The idea of dark matter is around because our models of the universe that are only based on what we can see don't measure up to the mass we figure the universe needs to actually have. My question to you is, how many extra brown dwarfs would we need to close that gap in mass?

Given similar brown dwarves would be about 1/50th of a solar mass and we have five stars (assuming one solar mass each) within 7 ly, we'd need to find 248 more brown dwarves like these within 7 ly to equal the amount of mass in the same area. To make up for the 5-6 times as much matter that dark matter is more than luminous matter, we'd have to find around 1500 such brown dwarves within 7 ly to go "oops, all dark matter is just normal matter after all". With an average density, that means there should be five such brown dwarves, averaging twenty times the size of Jupiter within a light year of our sun and ~370 closer to us than Alpha Centauri.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[Anonymous Coward]

If most of the dark matter were to be black holes, it would cause too many microlensing events.

Re:And where's the mass of the universe?

[skade88]

Very informative answer! Great work there!! Thanks!

Out of Range

[Anonymous Coward]

Still out of range of a Traveller Jump-1 drive (1 parsec or 3.26 light years)

Brown dwarf system just 6.5 light years away...

[mfnickster]

...and it's headed RIGHT FOR US!!!

Proxima Centauri

[Anonymous Coward]

Article has error. Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_centauri

Re:Proxima Centauri

[skade88]

Mod this up or edit the wiki article so Proxima Centauri is 14 light years away...

Re:Proxima Centauri

[PhotoJim]

True, but Proxima Centauri is a part of the Alpha Centauri star system, so that still makes this the third closest star system.

Re:Proxima Centauri

[mister_playboy]

Alpha Centauri itself is really two stars. We're stuck with names from the time before we could resolve individual stars in multiple star systems and it leads to misunderstanding.

Systems like ours, with just one star, are a minority in the Universe.

Re:Proxima Centauri

[PhotoJim]

Quite right. It's three stars in total: Proxima orbits the combined pair of Alpha Centauri A and B. If I recall, they orbit each other at roughly the distance of Neptune from the sun. If Earth were orbiting either, it would be a very interesting night sky for years at a time.

Re:Proxima Centauri

[jc42]

A number of astronomers have pointed out that Proxima Centauri's exact distance and vector aren't known precisely. So, while it's generally thought that the star is likely in orbit around the Alpha Cen pair, the error bars on all the number include the possibility that it's just an interloper that will eventually go its own way.

It can be hard to get precise numbers for a dim object that's not very close to any other objects. It would be easier if there were some smaller objects close to Proxima Cen, but so far none have been found.

There are also a handful of other stars that share the proper motion of Alpha Cen, and it has been proposed that they all originated in a single star cluster.

A quick check shows that all of this is mentioned in the wikipedia page for Proxima Centauri.

Re:Proxima Centauri

[PhotoJim]

True. The article also mentions that there is only about a one in one million chance that Proxima is not in orbit around Alpha Centauri A and B, based on what is known today. Astronomers treat it as being in orbit, and more data is being collected to refine the probability.

For it to have the same proper motion and not be gravitionally bound to A and B, it would have to have skirted by the Alpha Centauri system at just the right angle and speed to appear from here to be moving in the same direction and at the same speed as A and B. That is possible, but it is extremely unlikely.

Re:Proxima Centauri

[jc42]

Yeah, if required to place a bet, almost any astronomer would bet on Proxima Centauri being in orbit around Alpha Cen. But still, it's always good to put up pro forma objections pointing out that coincidences do happen, and the numbers really aren't in.

OTOH, this should be distinguished from the popular know-nothing approach, e.g. the climate-change deniers or the whole religious anti-evolution thing, that are based on willful ignorance of the data.

The Proxima Cen story is more like the ongoing scientific challenges to the Chicxulub impact being the cause of the K-T disaster that "wiped out the dinosaurs", or the challenges to the reclassification of birds as dinosaurs (so that impact didn't actually wipe out the dinosaurs, only around 99% of them ;-). Those are both real scientific inferences based on fossil and geological data that has significant error bars. In all three cases, even the most skeptical scientists tend to agree that the accepted explanation is probably correct. But still, we really could use some more detailed evidence before putting all our money (and/or belief systems) behind them.

And, as the standard joke goes, saying "Further research is needed" is useful when talking to funding agencies. We don't want people to think that our favorite scientific topics are all researched out and are fully understood. If we do that, we'll lose our livelihoods, and the fun we have refining the data, always hoping we'll turn up still more puzzles that need funding for research.

(I do like to tell people that the two people in our household are outnumbered by the three dinosaurs that live here - two cockatiels and a conure. They're really cute little flying dinosaurs, not at all like the big, scary ones that are extinct. Except that the conure does have a rather scary beak, so we warn visitors not to stick their fingers too close to her. She trusts us, but doesn't trust strangers, and she could do some serious damage to a human hand. ;-)

Unique names for nearby stars

[doconnor]

We should probably come up with unique names for the all the stars within 10 light years or so instead of calling them things like WISE 1049-5319 and Wolf 359. They are probably going to be of increasing importance in the coming decades and centuries as we are able to study them more closely.

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[skade88]

We could hold a planet wide vote on the names. :D

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[Jhon]

How about we call them "Bruce" to avoid confusion?

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[Zephyn]

Only if a certain percentage of their solar system's mass or above is made up of ethanol.

At least on the weekends....

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[Aryden]

We have to start building our fleet now if we're going to be ready in 300 years to take on the Borg at Wolf 359.

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[geekmux]

We should probably come up with unique names for the all the stars within 10 light years or so instead of calling them things like WISE 1049-5319 and Wolf 359. They are probably going to be of increasing importance in the coming decades and centuries as we are able to study them more closely.

Yes, if only we had a system that translated numbers into names that worked on a global scale that everyone would recognize(.com)...

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[mcl630]

Cue the star name squatters.

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[rubycodez]

many of the visible ones already each have multiple names. make all the names you like, it doesn't matter.

Polaris, UMi, Ursae Minoris, Alpha Ursae Minoris, North Star, Northern Star, Pole Star, Lodestar, Guiding star

Barnard's star, Barnard's Runaway Star, Greyhound of the Skies, Proxima Ophiuchi, Velox Barnardi

Alpha Centauri, Rigel Kentm, Rigil Ken, Toliman, Bermbermgle

Betelguese, Alpha Orionis, Alpha Ori

Vega, Wega, Lucida Lyrae, Alpha Lyrae

Tau Ceti, Durre Menthor, Tertia Struthionum

Spica, Azimech, Spica Virginis, Alaraph, Dana, Virgini

Re:Unique names for nearby stars

[doconnor]

Most of the stars you list are quite far away. Only 9 of the 51 closest stars are visible to the naked eye.

These are the ones with names: Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, Sirius, Epsilon Eridani, Procyon, Epsilon Indi, Tau Ceti, Luyten's Star, Teegarden's star, Kapteyn's Star, Van Maanen's star. Some of the are still technical greek letter-constellation names.

More of the same

[macraig]

I seem to recall reading that the future of star formation in this Universe will involve increasing formation of brown dwarfs and a cacophony of rocky planets, as the supply of hydrogen for new stars dwindles and the "metals" from previous stars accumulates. Kinda sad, that all those rocky planets will be circling "stars" too dim and cold to make them suitable for life.

No it isn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were, then it would not move in relation to the background stars....

Since it moves, it isn't aimed at us.

Same with a tornado - If you can see it moving, then it will miss you... If not... run as fast as you can 90 degrees to the direction between you and the tornado.

Re:No it isn't.

[skade88]

So that's what they should have done in the new Wizard of Oz movie!

Re:No it isn't.

[cusco]

Seriously? They re-made the Wizard of Oz??? What on earth for? It's not like there was any possibility at all that they would do it better, or even as well, as the original.

Hollyweird is out of ideas, all they can do any more is create crappy reiterations of someone else's original idea.

Re:No it isn't.

[skade88]

Naw! It is a prequel! 40 years before Dorthy came to visit Oz!

What about

[Anonymous Coward]

the closest and second closest star systems? Did they find those yet?

Can someone explain something to me?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I just don't understand the current astronomical obsession with nearby stars/solar systems and exoplanets. OK, I do understand that in this particular case, it's WISE data and simply fell into their laps while going through the survey data. But in the general case, from an astronomy/astrophysics interested layman's perspective, way way way too much intellectual bandwidth, funding, and future research proposals go into the search for exoplanets. I mean, here we are, postulating "dark matter" and "dark energy" to explain why the universe doesn't match our models, and yet we're spending all this time and money on looking for (mostly Jupiter-sized or bigger) planets that don't really tell us anything useful.

And don't even get me started on the Standard Model, with it's 27 Magic Constants; which I think is part and parcel of the whole dark matter/energy problem. Sure, the Standard Model has lots of predictive/descriptive power, but absolutely ZERO explanatory power.

I'm not trolling here, I really don't understand it and really want to know: what's the strange obsession with exoplanets, and what do we learn besides simply cataloging them?

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[osu-neko]

The premise behind your question is the fallacy of the convertibility of human time and resources, as if we're all interchangeable and equally qualified to participate in any task. Let me put it this way: how much further would we get into understanding the Standard Model if the millions of people playing World of Warcraft would work on that instead?

Once you already have the world's theoretical physicists working on theoretical physics problems like like, what makes you think people in other fields would make a useful contribution?

Astronomers look for objects in the sky because they're astronomers. They aren't going to crack problems of theoretical high-energy physics, and they're not in the mood to play WoW 24/7...

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I should have know the Standard Model aside would distract. My question isn't why aren't astronomers working on the Standard Model, it's why aren't astronomers working on Dark matter/energy? Why aren't astronomers working on the question of the constancy of gravity and the speed of light everywhere? Why aren't astronomers working on the topology of spacetime?

In other words why are astronomers working on exoplanets when there are so many other (IMO) more interesting astronomical questions?

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[osu-neko]

...too much intellectual bandwidth, funding, and future research proposals go into the search for exoplanets.

Sorry for the double-post, but in my haste I neglected to notice the second and more pernicious fallacy here. There's a school of thought that says if you have problems A, B, C, and D to solve, but you determine problem A is by far the most important, that you should devote all your resources into solving A and ignore B, C, and D until you've solved A. This is an incredibly bad idea for numerous reasons, but principally there's the problem of diminishing returns. The more funding you throw at A, the less you're getting per dollar. Indeed in fields like science, it's by no means certain that you're getting anything at all -- the needed breakthrough may come on the same timetable regardless of how much money you throw at it. In the meanwhile, you make no progress on B, C, and D where even a few dollars would make immense progress. If A is more important, you throw more money at it, but you don't starve all the other problems, you throw money at them too, just less. Looking for objects in the sky isn't a very expensive task relatively speaking. And just in general, the optimal approach for maximizing progress on problems (whether it's research or other kinds of problems) usually involves an "all at once" approach, giving more to the priorities but not starving the others, and particularly in cases where it's not clear spending even more money on A would be at all helpful, whereas spending money on B clearly would be. Scientific problems in particular don't necessarily advance based on amount of money thrown at them.

A third problem here is that what you're asking for is solutions to known unknowns. We tend to prioritize finding answers to questions we already know, but really the most impressive scientific advances come when we discover things we didn't even know enough to know were in question. Thus, much of science should always be devoted to looking for new things, discovering stuff, etc. Sure, all we've found today was a rather uninteresting brown dwarf, but how much would our understanding of the universe have been advanced if we'd found something that we never even had an inkling might be there? At that point, throwing money at solving known issues with theoretical physics would seem truly wasteful compared to what we got just looking at to see what's out there. We look for exoplanets and brown dwarfs and things because as much as we think we know about them, until we look, we don't really know, and we could very well be wrong, and the consequences of what we discover in the process might be far more significant than any research project you can name, indeed depending on what we find, might be more significant than anything we can even currently conceive of.

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[Daetrin]

Because they're astronomers and not astro-physicists or physicists.

If you mean why are they observing nearby stars instead of whatever observations you think would help astro-physicists and physicists with the kind of research you think is important, that would be because not everyone has your priorities.

1: It's quite possible that knowing what's immediately around us will prove of more practical value than high level physics. High level physics _might_ enable fantastic new technologies. Or it might not. Or it might, but at a much later date. We might end up launching unmanned probes and generation ships to nearby systems long before we get anything of practical benefit from high level physics.

2: If you want to base it on pure knowledge instead of practical results, why can't some people be more curious about what's around us than about esoteric forms of matter? Maybe finding out more about local systems (the ones we can observe most easily) will give us better ideas about where to look for alien intelligence, and wouldn't finding another intelligent race be just as amazing as figuring out what/where the dark matter is?

3: Return on investment. There is plenty of investment into high level physics. How do you think the Higgs Boson was (probably) found? But we've already picked a lot of the low hanging fruit in that area. Clearly the explosion in exoplanet data in recent years means technology has advanced to the point where such discoveries are fairly easy. No one knows for sure what we need to do to find the dark matter, but we know what we need to do to find more/more about exoplanets, so it's almost a guaranteed return on investment.

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[skids]

Data from seemingly unrelated surveys has been used many times in the past to prove important theries. So your question is like asking Hubbel "why do you spend so much time looking at starlight spectra?"

Oodles and oodles of methodical empirical data gathering happen all the time these days, but the only status reports the mass media is interested in carrying are those that feather the imagination of the general public. Like discovering things we might just possibly be able to send a probe to someday.
(And wondering whether there is more to be discovered even closer to us.)

Just because there are few mass media articles about data gathering in pursuit of other goals, does not mean none is occuring, and not all research critical to proving that theory is/was done with that intent.

Re:Can someone explain something to me?

[DanielRavenNest]

> I just don't understand the current astronomical obsession with nearby stars/solar systems and exoplanets.

Maybe you should read up on what astronomers are actually working on this decade, instead of what you *think* they are working on. Exoplanets are a relatively small part of the astronomical enterprise. This report is a good starting point:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12951 (there is a free pdf download option if you register).

Discovered the third-closest?

[wonkey_monkey]

Astronomers Discover Third-Closest Star System To Earth

What impresses me most is that they kept the third spot clear until they made the discovery. How dey do dat?

Re:Discovered the third-closest?

[Anonymous Coward]

Astronomers Discover Third-Closest Star System To Earth

What impresses me most is that they kept the third spot clear until they made the discovery. How dey do dat?

Mod this one up. It's an excellent, if humorous, question.

Re:Discovered the third-closest?

[tibit]

If you don't understand that the "so far" part is always implied, you don't get what science is. There are very few absolutes. Theories are subject to revision, nothing wrong with that.

Re:Discovered the third-closest?

[wonkey_monkey]

Yeah, all the scientists I know just love syntactic ambiguity.

What happens when the merge?

[Brit_in_the_USA]

What is going to happen when this binary pair of brown dwarfs ultimately merge?
Will the combined mass be enough to start fusion and a main sequence star?
Will it have a period of instability resulting in high energy particle or "solar flare" emissions that could have implications to our solar system?

From the article... Alpha Centuri B has a planet?

[Anonymous Coward]

that to me is more exciting than the brown dwarf!

new dark matter results any day now

[peter303]

That very expensive special detector on the Space Station is reputed to announce interesting results any day now. Detecting certain classes of dark matter was one of its capabilities.

Congress had to fund a special extra shuttle launch to get this into orbit. Furtmore, the physicists decided to swap in a new set of magnets last minute, postponing it over a year.

Andromeda "collision" is more scary

[peter303]

Andromeda is trillions of times more massive and will "collide" with the Milky Way in two billion years. But they will interpetrate each other like ghosts passing in the night. Odds are unlikely there wont be a single stellar collision among the trillion stars during the Big Merge. The night sky will become rather interesting with multiple stellar bands lighting the sky.

Re:Andromeda "collision" is more scary

[able1234au]

The gas will interact and that will have interesting effects including star formation. Galaxy collisions often result in the gas being stripped off the smaller galaxy. I think the Milky Way is to big to lose all its gas on the first pass.

Re:Andromeda "collision" is more scary

[rubycodez]

The current estimate is about 4 billion years. see wikipedia article on the subject. according to latest simulations, there is 50% chance the sun and its planets would be thrown three times the current distance from the galactic core, and a 12% chance the solar system would be ejected altogether. but this would have no effect on the planet's orbit around the Sun, the solar system would probably be undisturbed. long before then, expansion of the sun will cause the earth to be too hot for liquid water, in about 1.4 billion years. likely too hot for creatures like us and most animals/plants in 400 million years assuming we don't change into something else. amazing we can even study and analyze such concepts!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision

Re:Andromeda "collision" is more scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Milky Way is to big to lose all its gas on the first pass.

So is Larry the Cable Guy.

Third closest system?

[rossdee]

What makes this the third closest system to earth?

The closest solar system is our solar system (orbiting the sun whish is 1AU away
the second is the Centauri system (Proxima Centauri and Alpha Centauri a and Alpha Centauri B
the third closest system is Barnards Star which is less than 6 LY away, so it is closer than this newly discovered system

Re:Third closest system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debug your code. The index starts at zero.

Re:Third closest system?

[Bill Currie]

Which still leaves zero as the first.

Re:Third closest system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, it should have read "Astronomers Discover Third-Closest Star System To Our Own" or "Astronomers Discover Third-Closest Star System To The Sun".

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't that have been the third overall star system that they found? They can see 14 billion light years away, but they couldn't see that?

Re:Huh?

[tibit]

Distance doesn't always follow visibility. There are things that are far away but are much brighter than some of the nearby stuff, so are easier to notice. For the example of our Solar neighborhood, by number and by mass most of the stars are faint (magnitude > 14), and "all" of the light comes from the most luminous ones (from here). What you see at 14 billion l.y. away is entire galaxies, not individual stars.

Nibiru

[Anonymous Coward]

They found it! Zeta Talk Revival!

very interesting

[kilodelta]

And I still maintain if we had funded NASA like we funded them in the 1960's and early 1970's we'd be at Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star by now. But instead we'd prefer to fund military misadventure. However look at the private interest in mining asteroids - that will be cool!

Re:very interesting

[jonadab]

> if we had funded NASA like we funded them in the 1960's and
> early 1970's we'd be at Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star by now

I'm pretty sure you are underestimating how far it is to those places. Without a *major* breakthrough in propulsion techniques (or quantum physics), we could fund NASA with 10% of the entire world's budget and still not get to Alpha Centauri for another five hundred years.

Re:very interesting

[cusco]

With the assumption that NASA funding was going to continue unabated the roadmap in (IIRC) 1970 showed the opening of the first permanently manned Lunar base in 1984, with a manned mission to Mars launching by the end of the '80s. Sigh.

Re:very interesting

[kilodelta]

Well they're just now starting to figure out warp drive - and it appears Alcubiere had the wrong estimate for reaction mass. He had said you'd need something the mass of Jupiter. But recent calculations say you only need a couple of tons of reaction mass.

Re:very interesting

[kilodelta]

Yep, and that was based on no real advancement in technology.

Re:very interesting

[Kjella]

And I still maintain if we had funded NASA like we funded them in the 1960's and early 1970's we'd be at Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star by now.

Earth-Moon: 356,700 km (closest)
Earth-Mars: 54,600,000 km (closest)
Earth-Alpha Centauri: 42,479,700,000,000 km (~fixed)

Fastest spacecraft to date (escape velocity): Voyager 1 (1977), 17.145 km/s

Now assume we could launch at that speed and travel a straight line:
Moon: 6 hours
Mars: 37 days
Alpha Centauri: 75000 years, give or take a couple millenniums

To be there now, we'd have to have launched a rocket ship travelling at 0.1c (that's 30000 km/s) in the early 70s. Even the "Momentum Limited" Orion which is the closest thing to a semi-plausible design we have - if you call a rocket 140 times the size of the Saturn V loaded with 300,000 one megaton nukes plausible - was planned to take 133 years. Maintain it all you like, but don't be surprised when other people maintain that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:very interesting

[kilodelta]

I'm talking purely of FTL not chemical rockets. FTL is things like 12 light years in a single jump.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking purely of FTL not chemical rockets. FTL is things like 12 light years in a single jump.

So send your FTL design to NASA. I'm sure they'll be glad to receive it. The reason we don't have FTL yet is because no one has found a way to break the known laws of physics at any cost.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry... when FTL becomes possible, we'll visit those systems before we discovered them, along with other weird causality events.

Re:very interesting

[drwho]

This is happening, with the propellantless drive, the EMDrive, which looks impossible at first, because it seems to violate laws of inertia, but it actually is sound. It uses a very high efficiency (high Q) tuned microwave cavity. The caveat is, that it is only efficient when used at low speeds (to clarify: it is not the speed the drive is travelling at, but rather, using the eMdrive alone to attain such speeds), so it is useful as anti-gravity. Because of its high efficiency, it can provide us with flying cars and a freight train to orbit, but it's not useful for interplanetary or interstellar travel.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop voting for shitheads in the one-party system and maybe more things like that would happen. Neither side of the one-party system has any interest in doing anything but putting their hand in your pocket and their dick in your ass.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

what?

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

drwho said:

This is happening, with the propellantless drive, the EMDrive, which looks impossible at first, because it seems to violate laws of inertia, but it actually is sound. It uses a very high efficiency (high Q) tuned microwave cavity. The caveat is, that it is only efficient when used at low speeds (to clarify: it is not the speed the drive is travelling at, but rather, using the eMdrive alone to attain such speeds), so it is useful as anti-gravity. Because of its high efficiency, it can provide us with flying cars and a freight train to orbit, but it's not useful for interplanetary or interstellar travel.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to ask you to add that to the list:

The Loch Ness Monster
Frankenstein
Magnum P.I.
Non-Catholic Gods
The Phantom of the Opera
The Beast of Craggy Island
FTL Travel.

Re:very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA spending in the 60s/70s WAS military spending. Nothing breeds advancement like a little healthy competition.

Will people actully use the names?

[Anonymous Coward]

When people get out into the galaxy and start visiting these places for themselves, they're going to give the places new names that are meaningful to them. Why should they respect the names chosen hundreds of years ago by people who'd never been there? This rush to give every piece of dust in space a name seems a pointless exercise, to be quickly overturned as soon as it becomes important.

Re:Will people actully use the names?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it's not like we use the naming conventions for planets in our solar system from the naming convention of ancient civilizations.

Oh, wait..

How poetic...

[Anonymous Coward]

... as I read this article I created my own binary brown dwarf system.

Like a giant LED grow-lamp in the sky.

[Anonymous Coward]

From wikipedia's page Brown_dwarf

"Despite their name, most brown dwarfs would appear magenta to the human eye."

Almost

[einyen]

"Brown dwarfs are faint, low mass objects 13 — 75 times the mass of Jupiter" I remember learning in the first year astronomy that Jupiter is *almost* big enough to be a star, only a factor of 80 of. If that is close then I'm almost rich, almost famous and almost good looking.