The 'goth' worlds between stars and planets are far stranger than we thought

Zafar Rustamkulov, a scientist at Caltech's IPAC center in Pasadena, calls brown dwarfs 'kind of goth' — they drift alone in the dark, never orbiting a star, glowing only from their own internal heat. Using NASA's SPHEREx infrared space telescope, his team studied 37 of these worlds that blur the line between stars and giant planets, reading their light in 102 colors. They found chemically rich atmospheres holding water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane — signatures like those of Jupiter and Saturn. No two brown dwarfs look alike: even at the same temperature, each has its own distinct spectrum, making these drifting worlds accidental weather laboratories.