Brown dwarfs may grow rocky planets

[Craig]

http://www.sen.com/news/brown-dwarfs-may-grow-rocky-planets.html

Astronomers have discovered that the outer region of a brown dwarf - a star-like object, but one too small to shine brightly like a star - contains millimetre sized solid grains. Known as cosmic dust and similar to soot or sand, it is normally found around new stars. The findings were made by a team using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA). The discovery challenges current theories of how rocky, Earth like planets form and could mean that rocky planets are even more common in the universe than previously thought.