Caltech Astronomy Public Lecture Series - Brown Dwarfs: Too Small a Star; Too Massive a Planet - Kaew Tinyanont - 12/08/2017

Brown dwarfs are weird objects: too light to be stars, too heavy to be planets--so then what are they and how do we detect them?Lecture: 03:01; Lecture Q&A: 31:10; Panel Q&A: 36:30 Date: December 8, 2017 Lecturer: Kaew Tinyanont Title: Brown Dwarfs: Too Small a Star; Too Massive a Planet Abstract: Our Solar System contains two very distinct types of large gas clouds: a star and gas planets. The major difference between these two types of objects is their mass, the amount of material in each of them. Our star, the Sun, is one thousand times more massive than Jupiter, the biggest gas planet in our Solar System. When we look out of our neighborhood, however, we spot some objects that have masses in between stars and planets, and they carry some very interesting properties. These "brown dwarfs" behave a little bit like stars and a little bit like planets. I will discuss the physics behind brown dwarfs, how difficult they are to find, and how they act as a "missing link" to teach us about how both stars and planets form and evolve. Event Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143414768@N07/sets/72157696777459382 Echo360 Two-Pane Video Stream: https://echo360.org/section/df8345ec-7d0c-4dc3-b450-65a423c24650/public Thumbnail Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/image/114