Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: neilep on 14/01/2008 16:25:40
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Dearest Scientific Personnel Whose Attributes I Admire ! [;)]
This is an artists impression of a Brown Dwarf.
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As you know , they are sometimes referred to as failed stars....just not having enough Mass to start Hydrogen Fusion....this naturally makes them very difficult to see.
But, is there a current guestimate as to how many there are ? (in the Milky way)
Depending on who you ask I hear different guesstimate/statements that in our own galaxy the number of stars range from 200-400 Billion !...does this figure include Brown Dwarfs ?..if not.....can you postulate as to how many there are ?
Thank You
Neil
xxxxx
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Small faint stars and brown dwarfs are difficult to detect and observe but the statistics of star formation suggest that the smaller the star the more frequently they are formed so there could well be a lot more brown dwarfs in the galaxy than stars but as they are relatively low mass items they may not reperesent the stellar size group with the largest mass of stars in them.
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Interesting