The galaxy's ancient brown dwarf population revealed
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - 08:30
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) —A team of astronomers led by Dr David Pinfield at the University of Hertfordshire have discovered two of the oldest brown dwarfs in the Galaxy. These ancient objects are moving at speeds of 100-200 kilometres per second, much faster than normal stars and other brown dwarfs and are thought to have formed when the Galaxy was very young, more than 10 billion years ago. Intriguingly the scientists believe they could be part of a vast and previously unseen population of objects. The researchers publish their results in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.