From the
way the object bent the
light, Andrew Gould of Ohio State University
in Columbus and colleagues have now found that it is a brown dwarf — a «failed star» with too little mass to
sustain the nuclear reactions that power stars.
This situation is what leads a growing call for a much broader energy quest, from the laboratory to the
light socket, that starts with the «no brainers» delineated by many studies, particularly a McKinsey analysis of
ways to cut energy waste, but also includes a direct, increased and
sustained American investment
in pushing the frontiers of knowledge on energy — and boosting efforts, from the classroom to the boardroom, to build the community of technological, financial and social innovators necessary to drive the needed change.
It's not clear boreal feedbacks are even necessary to
lighting off tropical biomass (fire once again), but they'll certainly speed the process
way up; if that does happen
in turn we're on our
way to a hyperthermal (with some lag since the oceans have to warm enough to trigger a self -
sustaining loss of shallow methane hydrates).