Brown dwarf refers to a celestial body that is not big enough to be a star, and not small enough to be a gas giant planet. So about the size of 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter.
They are formed just as stars do, due to the gravitational collapse of dust and gas. However their cores are not hot enough at any point to sustain the nuclear fission of hydrogen.
Nuclear fission basically means breaking down of a larger atom into smaller nuclei to release a lot of energy. However, they can fuse deuterium, which is an heavier isotope of hydrogen.
They don't radiate much glow and have lower temperatures compared to 'normal' stars.
The interesting thing is that they can also be orbited by planets. and besides they could also exist as binary systems.
If you want to know what binary systems are, I also have a post about them which you can find here. And more interestingly, they could even exist as binary systems with white dwarfs.
Brown dwarfs can also sustain life. but don't take this as good news as this is not sustainable because once the brown dwarfs start to cool down, that habitability would shrink.
And more importantly, they also have planet-like complex atmospheres.
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