back to article STINKY GREEN DWARF FROM SPACE - sensation at NASA

NASA boffins have left followers of the space news reeling today, saying they have discovered an intriguing extra-solar object described as being both "big, fat" and "a dwarf". The big dwarf - again varyingly described as "brown" or alternatively "green" - also "stinks pretty badly". The brown dwarf WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9 …

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  1. MikeyD85

    Looks like

    A dead pixel to me...

    1. Anonymous Coward 3
      Thumb Up

      Re: Looks like

      You owe me a new keyboard!

  2. Daniel Evans

    "it is apparently a huge gaseous ball on the same general lines as Jupiter"

    Well, a gaseous ball at least 13 times the mass of Jupiter, in order to reach Brown Dwarf status.

    And for comparison, it's around 80 Jupiter masses to form a proper star - and our Sun is 1000 Jupiter masses, so 80 Jupiter masses would be a fairly piddly little star.

  3. VeganVegan
    Alien

    Misleading headline

    I was expecting a story about some NASA boffin getting hit by a chunk of toilet leakage from an over-flying airliner

    1. david wilson

      @VeganVegan

      Well, I was hoping for some science journalism, so I guess we're both disappointed.

      Though the Reg article is only about 2/3 of the length of the NASA one, that does seem to have been done at the expense of more than a third of the information, and despite the NASA article seemingly having been written with a young audience in mind, it's arguably more adult overall.

  4. Seanie Ryan
    Alien

    they drew their plans against us...

    "And that how it was for the next ten nights

    a flair spurting out from Mars

    Bright green drawing a green mist behind it

    A beautiful but somehow disturbing sight

    Ogilvy the astronomer assured me we were in no danger

    He was convinced there could be no live

    on that remote forbidding planet."

    War of the Worlds

    Stock up on Yakult... good bacteria

  5. Harry Sheppard
    FAIL

    Dead pixel?

    I have a digital camera that produces photos just like that :-)

  6. frank ly

    Careful What You Say

    "Such failed stars ...."

    That's a bit judgmental. It could be a successful and popular independent gas giant; well known and admired in the society of gas giants. Not every celestial body want to be a star.

    1. Robert Brockway
      Linux

      Cool dwarfs

      Well said, and they did say it is the coolest brown dwarf known. I bet it gets invited to all the best parties.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can it be true?

    That I behold here, in my mortal eye, a nugget of purest Green? Methinks I shall cunningly fashion a brooch from it...

  8. perlcat
    Joke

    Looks like she's related to Grignr.

    'Eye of Argon', the MST3K version to save your sanity.

    http://www.bmsc.washington.edu/people/merritt/books/Eye_of_Argon.html

    Grignr believes emeralds are scarlet, so this is not OT...

    1. alwarming

      Re: Looks like she's related to Grignr.

      She is apparently the world's "hottest astrophysicist".

      http://www.zimbio.com/Celebrity+Portal/articles/9h4Sngi0mem/Dr+Amy+Mainzer

  9. Goat Jam
    Heart

    Love

    "The brown dwarfs jump out at you like big, fat, green emeralds," she is quoted as saying, excellently.

  10. Torben Mogensen

    Size

    While brown dwarfs are more massive than Jupiter, they are about the same size. Once gas giants reach about the size of Saturn, they stop growing significantly -- they just become denser. Only when fusion starts, does the size increase again. For example, Jupiter is 3.3 times as massive as Saturn, but its volume is only 1.6 times larger.

  11. ShaggyDoggy

    May I say that

    I, for one, welcome our big fat green/brown dwarf smelly emerald space overlords

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NASA making big fuss about very little

    So what's special about another brown dwarf? This is scientific peanuts 'bigged-up' for children, journalists and politicians.

    The important results in the infra-red at the moment are coming out of Herschel - an ESA spacecraft. Too much American focus, and you miss the real action.

  13. Wize

    Stinky

    Did they borrow Professor Farnsworth's Smell-o-scope?

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