A Brown Dwarf in the Desert
Today’s authors found a unique occupant of the “brown dwarf desert,” on an extremely close orbit around its M dwarf host.
Today’s authors found a unique occupant of the “brown dwarf desert,” on an extremely close orbit around its M dwarf host.
In mid August 600 astronomers met in Reykjavik, Iceland Extreme Solar Systems IV.
Planets orbiting close to type-M dwarf stars are in the habitable zone, but if their orbits are in a 3:2 spin resonance, do their long, strange days and nights have a chance of supporting photosynthetic life?
Our Solar System is pretty straightforward. Roughly speaking, all the planets orbit in the same plane, most spin on their axes in the same direction in that plane, and even the Sun rotates in a manner consistent with all this. The small, rocky planets are closer to the Sun, and the big, gaseous planets are farther from the Sun. Simple. Now that we are finding planets orbiting other stars, many are turning out to be multiplanet systems like our own Solar System.
This work presents an interesting new idea to explain the apparent misalignment between the rotation of stars and the orbits of their planets.