For the first time, scientists have detected trace amounts of phosphine—a molecule that, on Earth, is produced only by living beings—in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf. Wolf 1130C is an ancient brown ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected phosphine gas in the ancient brown dwarf Wolf 1130C, a discovery that contradicts years of predictions about how phosphorus behaves in ...

Astronomers were astonished to find an abundance of phosphine, a molecule produced by microbes on Earth, in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf, an unusual type of object that lives in the grey zone ...

The detection of the molecule phosphine in a brown dwarf’s atmosphere may help astronomers in their search for life elsewhere in the Milky Way. By Katrina Miller On a brown dwarf dozens of light years ...

"We therefore caution against the use of phosphine as a biosignature until these discrepancies are resolved." The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered phosphine in the atmosphere of a ...

The finding suggests phosphine—a potential biosignature—shouldn’t be viewed as evidence of alien life until natural, non-biological sources are ruled out. Reading time 5 minutes For scientists, the ...

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - In 1995, astronomers confirmed the discovery for the first time of a brown dwarf, a body too small to be a star and too big to be a planet - sort of a celestial tweener.

This illustration provided by Caltech depicts the orbits of brown dwarf twins, Gliese 229Ba and Gliese 229Bb, with a separation only 16 times larger than the distance between Earth and the Moon. The ...

An odd star that has confused researchers for decades now makes sense – it turns out not to be a single star but two companions. “It used to be that this brown dwarf didn’t make any sense. We worried ...

An illustration of the Wolf 1130ABC triple system, which is composed of a red dwarf star (left), a white dwarf (center) and the brown dwarf where phosphine was detected (right). Adam Burgasser For the ...