A third set of these brown dwarfs can be spotted orbiting
their companion stars at a great distance. You take a close look at one
pair; a mainstream star forming alongside a more faint, red companion.
Each is enveloped by a cloud of circulating dust. But the distance between
them is far, far greater than the size of the larger star's proto-planetary
disk.
As you study the pair over time, it becomes clear that there
is an orbital relationship between the star and its companion brown dwarf.
They form a wide binary, with the brown dwarf slowly swinging around the
mainstream star at a distance which is hundreds of times that of the star's more
regular planets.
Science
fiction? Not at all. New data provided by Professor Kevin Luhman
shows cases where brown dwarfs are seen forming binary systems with their larger
mainstream star companions at immense distances. One such dwarf is about
500 Astronomical Units away, and this brown dwarf is forming its own planetary
system as it orbits its mainstream Sun. We know that brown dwarfs
outnumber stars, and that they are to be found floating freely in interstellar
space, as well as appearing in star systems in a variety of ways. Thanks
to Dr Luhman's work it is clear that brown dwarfs may proliferate as binary
companions.
Brown dwarfs shine brightly for only a short while
however. Dependent upon their mass, which can vary from about 12 times
that of Jupiter to about 80 times, they will burn up their available fuels in a
rash of youthful intensity. But they are not big enough to trigger the
nuclear chain-reactions which make 'real' stars shine for billions of years.
After a period of just millions of years, these brown dwarfs burn out, and
darken. That has made them very difficult to spot. Only the very
young brown dwarfs in the stellar nurseries have been bright enough to image
directly. The older brown dwarfs, which form the vast majority of these
objects, are effectively invisible to our telescopes. Despite being
commonplace, the overwhelming majority of them have evaded detection, even in
our quiet galactic neighbourhood.
The implication of this is that there are a great many of
these objects orbiting stars which we have assumed to be singular. In
these cases, the companion brown dwarfs make them invisible wide binary systems.
This adds a whole new layer of complexity to our understanding of star systems,
and their planetary systems. It means that not only might there be planets
circulating the star, but there might be more planets which are orbiting around
the dark companion. Perhaps the majority of the stars in our skies are
configured in this way. Perhaps the majority of them have dark companions
whose presence has yet to be detected.
Such a state of affairs would possibly double the number of
planets in the Milky Way.
Your spaceship has just been fitted with a brand new engine, allowing
time-travel. You chose to set the dial to a era some 4.6 billion years
ago. You are keen to gaze upon the Sun's birth, and you expect to see a
great proto-planetary disc forming out of the whirling gases of the Sun's
stellar nursery. Because of the potential dangers you set the coordinates
to a light year distant, so that you can train your ship's instruments on the
Sun's entire fledgling system from afar. You expect to see something like
the image above. After all, the Sun is a single star, its planets arranged
in an orderly manner. Everyone knows that.
With a great
flash of light and a shudder, your spaceship leaps through time and finds itself
a light-year from the Sun. Immediately you realise that you have
underestimated the situation. Your ship is inside a colossal star forming
region. All around you are new stars, and new brown dwarfs. The
intensity of the light outside your ship's windows is incredible, and
spectacular. So, the Sun formed in a cluster, you realise, and you train
your telescope towards the Sun's own location. Amazed, you stagger back
from the ship's instruments.
This is what you just saw:
Science fiction? Not at all.
We know that brown dwarfs can form as a companion 'star' in a
wide binary orbit. One has been seen some 500 Astronomical Units from its
companion star. That's five hundred times the distance from the Earth to
the Sun. Our current knowledge about the contents of our solar system
extend to only a fifth that distance. Beyond about 50 Astronomical Units
the collective body of orbiting dwarf planets, or which Pluto is one, seems to
stop. We know that the shape of this outer belt, known as the
Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is irregular, that it has been affected in the past by a
massive body. That could take the shape of a companion brown dwarf, just
as much as it might have been caused by a passing star. Something has
'swept out' this zone, like a massive cosmic vacuum cleaner.
There are a great many solar system anomalies which remain unsolved. We know
that the distribution of comet influx is non-random. We know that several
of the most distant objects ever seen in the solar system have bizarre orbits,
perhaps caused by a more remote, and massive force.
We
know that some considerable time after the solar system settled down, it was
barraged by a host of objects over the course of a hundred million years. Where
did these objects come from? Many solar system bodies show the signs of
massive catastrophic impacts.
Most importantly of all, we know
that brown dwarfs can form far beyond the normal planetary zone, when star
systems crystallise into existence. Presumably, even though these brown
dwarf companions go dark with time, they maintain their presence around the
stars they once formed alongside.
We just can't see them anymore.
Who is to
say that a similar state of affairs isn't the case around our own Sun? Our
Dark Star companion could have evaded detection; there has not been a proper sky
search for such objects for 23 years! The Dark Star's movement around the
Sun at that distance would be slow; it could have been misidentified as a
galactic field star. Detection of its heat signature could have been
dismissed as an impossible anomaly at a time when brown dwarfs were less well
understood.
I put to you the exciting possibility that we are in a binary system, but one
where the companion remains hidden. It might have its own system of planets, and
the heat it generates might be enough to provide life on these orbiting worlds.
The possibilities are very exciting indeed.My proposal is built upon hard
evidence, and logical argument. The remarkable evidence supporting this
theory is detailed in my book
'Dark Star'. The evidence supporting such a theory
appears to be building at an exponential rate. Perhaps this would be a
good time to acquaint yourself with a new reality?
© Andy Lloyd 20th September 2006
References:
"Located within the
constellation Pisces, the newly spotted object is called
HD 3651 B. It is 50 times the mass of
Jupiter
and thus considered a T brown dwarf-the coolest of the
two brown-dwarf categories. This slow smouldering
releases infrared light, which was detected by
NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope [image]
.
"One
reason the dwarf stayed out of view until now, Lunham
said, is its lengthy distance from its planet partner,
which the researchers spotted using the Doppler method.
This technique measures the wobbles of a
star
caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting object
that otherwise can't be detected. However, the method is
limited: Whereas the planet orbits at a snug 0.3
astronomical units (AU) from the
Sun-like star
called HD 3651, the brown dwarf resides at a distance of
500 AU. One AU is the distance between the Sun and
Earth."
Jeanna Bryner "Distorted Solar System Discovered", 19th
September 2006
With thanks to Pat Thomas, David Pearson et al
Wide Binary Brown Dwarf
Precedent
The discovery of a brown dwarf just 12 times the mass of Jupiter has excited
astronomers studying extra-solar planetary systems. This object is on the
edge of planetary status, and is barely large enough to be included in the
category of brown dwarf. But what is even more exciting about this
discovery, made by Dr Kevin Luhman's team, is that the CHRX-73 system is a wide,
low-mass stellar binary.
This brown dwarf/massive planet travels around its larger stellar companion at a whopping 200
Astronomical Units. (This is the kind of distance mooted for Nibiru, a
planet with an orbital period of some 3600 years.)
This is puzzling astronomers because such a wide orbit is beyond the scope of
planetary formation for the parent star in question. Simply put, this
object could not have accreted at such a great distance. So how did it get
there? It seems likely that it formed as a 'star', albeit a failed one, in
its own right. This is exactly the kind of scenario presented in my book 'Dark
Star', and the discovery sets an excellent precedent.
It is surely now
impossible for sceptics to argue against small brown dwarfs existing beyond
200AU in our own solar system. Let me explain:
The Only Game in Town
It is thought that planets form by accreting together the dense material of a
fledgling star's proto-planetary disk. This enormous disk is a spinning
cloud of gaseous matter whose centre condenses into a star. Over time the
remainder of the disk clumps into planets. The sizes of disks vary, but a
reasonable assumption is that our own Sun had a proto-planetary disc whose
substantive radius was about 30-40 Astronomical Units; just over the distance to
the planet Neptune. Much bigger than this and one would have to explain
where all the planets are beyond Neptune. Given that astronomers can rule
out substantial planetary bodies out to about 50AU, it seems reasonable
from their point of view to argue that no massive Planet X body could have
accreted beyond that point, because the Sun's proto-planetary disk simply wasn't
large enough to provide the necessary building blocks for planet formation
that far out.
In other words, without large Earth-sized planets turning up just beyond
Neptune it seems unlikely to the scientists that massive planets would have
formed even further out. The ability to form planets in the disk should
tail off beyond Neptune.
But...That
assumes that the Sun formed as a singular star with a uniform proto-planetary
disk. In fact, evidence from the outer solar system suggests the picture
is far more complicated than this, as I have outlined in my book
'Dark Star'. Additionally,
there is a completely different scenario to consider; that the Sun formed as
part of a wide binary system, the smaller partner of which is a sub-brown dwarf.
Picture the early solar system under these conditions; two spinning clumps of
gaseous matter orbit around each other at, say 200 Astronomical Units distance.
The larger one forms the Sun and its 'classical' proto-planetary disk, the
second forms a sub-brown dwarf with its own independent proto-planetary disk.
Such a scenario would explain the anomalies of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, where
there is an inexplicable gap of objects beyond 50AU. It also provides a
very sensible mechanism whereby a brown dwarf could form beyond the classical
proto-planetary disk, and be found located in a wide binary orbit with its
parent star. This seems to be what's going on with the CHRX-73 wide
binary.
I suggest this is what's going on in our solar system.
There is a small and rather dark binary companion orbiting the Sun at a great
distance, which has been there since the very beginning of the solar system.
It has its own independent system of planets, capable of supporting life.
To my mind the Dark Star Theory is the only way to fit all the pieces of the
puzzle together. Ufologists puzzle over where aliens come from; how they
manage to travel the incredibly immense distances between stars without having
the impossible capability of being able to travel faster than the speed of
light. The answer is clear as day; they have come from our own cosmic
backyard! The distance to a wide binary sub-brown dwarf is no distance at
all compared to even the closest star. In a stroke it is possible to lay
to one side this chronic enigma.
Written by Andy
Lloyd, author of 'The Dark Star'
(2005), 'Ezekiel One'
(2009) and 'The Followers of
Horus' (2010)
© 13th September 2006
Reference:
1)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14718836/from/ET/ With thanks to Phil
Whitley
2) Donna Weaver / Ray Villard / B K K "Planet or a Failed Star? . . .
Discovery Reveals One of the Smallest Stellar Companions Ever Seen" Penn State
University 7th September 2006
http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/Luhman9-2006.htm
