December 8, 2017 8-10PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: Brown Dwarfs: Too Small a Star; Too Massive a Planet
Lecturer: Kaew Tinyanont
Position: Graduate Student
Institution: Caltech
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.