Brown Dwarf With Water Clouds Tentatively Detected Just 7 Light-Years From Earth

sciencehabit (1205606) writes Astronomers have found signs of water ice clouds on an object just 7.3 light-years from Earth — less than twice the distance of Alpha Centauri. If confirmed, the discovery is the first sighting of water clouds beyond our solar system. The clouds shroud a Jupiter-sized object known as a brown dwarf and should yield insight into the nature of cool giant planets orbiting other suns.

Comments

Re:Is this the missing "dark matter"?

[TapeCutter]

Exactly, we think of Jupiter as being huge but the Sun holds 98% of all the matter in our solar system. If the "missing mass" were normal cold matter, such a great quantity would effectively block the light of the stars we can see, astronomy would not exists because we wouldn't see anything except our own sun and moon.

Similar inane arguments were aimed at Newton, plenty of 15th century scholars thought that the fact a bird can fly disproved the theory of gravity. We still don't know what the hell gravity is (other than a property of matter) but we no longer question it's existence and have developed a very good understanding of how it behaves. Dark matter is harder to wrap one's head around because it's effects can not be observed in everyday human experience. However the effects are real and the tag scientists have given them is "dark matter".