61.   Bedeviled by the ambiguity of brown dwarfs, astronomers have wavered between calling them super planets or failed stars.

62.   Brown dwarfs are cool, red objects thought to have too little matter to have condensed into a star.

63.   Brown dwarfs are usually defined as stellar objects that did not collect enough mass to ignite the nuclear fires that causes a star to shine.

64.   But in brown dwarfs, which lack the nuclear fires of a star, lithium is not destroyed.

65.   Finding a brown dwarf in close orbit of a sun-like star is a rare event.

66.   Finding brown dwarfs aids astronomers in the search for the so-called missing matter in the universe.

67.   Finding the brown dwarf so close to the star suggests that solar systems formed around sun-like stars could come in many different shapes and planetary distributions.

68.   Liu said the orbiting brown dwarf was found using a new telescope technique called adaptive optics.

69.   Liu said it is possible that there are planets similar to Earth circling the star inside the orbit of the brown dwarf.

70.   Najita said a brown dwarf study by her team at the NOAO had suggested there could be small, drifting objects in distant star fields.