(ORDO NEWS) — Brown dwarfs are a kind of intermediate link between planets and stars. These objects are relatively small, dense, and cold, making them difficult to detect. But even here there are champions.
Due to their small size and mass, gravitationally bound brown dwarfs in binary systems are located close to each other. It used to be thought so, because astronomers discovered a kind of champions: two brown dwarfs in a binary system, which are very far apart.
Two photographs of a binary system of brown dwarfs
Separated pair of brown dwarfs
Due to the relatively small mass, the gravitational force between a pair of brown dwarfs is lower than between a pair of stars.
Therefore, the probability of the decay of such binary systems, which consist of two brown dwarfs, is much higher.
But in the CWISE J014611.20-050850 system. 0 AB this rule “does not work”, because the two objects are separated from each other by about 19 billion 312 million 128 thousand kilometers. This is approximately 129 astronomical units.
Note! The maximum distance from the Sun to the Earth is 1.01 astronomical units.
The maximum distance from the Sun to Pluto is 49 astronomical units. The Voyager 2 spacecraft has moved away from the Sun for more than 44 years by 129.4 astronomical units.
The Voyager 1 probe moved away from the Sun for more than 44 years by 155.5 astronomical units.
As a rule, such low-mass binary systems with large distances between objects fall apart at the initial stages of formation.
For example, binary systems of brown dwarfs, in which there is a distance of at least a few tens of astronomical units between the components, is already a rarity.
Therefore, the CWISE J014611.20-050850 system. 0 AB, which is located 130.4 light years from the Sun, and is different, because for some reason it did not fall apart into separate components.
So far, there is no clear understanding of how open brown dwarfs are kept in such gravitational equilibrium.
Further research should provide more clarity in this regard. But unequivocally, this discovery suggests that there are still many mysterious things in our Galaxy that are waiting to be discovered.
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