Planet or brown dwarf? Constraints on the formation of H-type objects in IC 348

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ID: 315468
2026
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Abstract
Abstract The formation mechanism(s) of substellar objects, such as brown dwarfs and free-floating planets, remains an ongoing puzzle in stellar and planetary physics. Recent observational and theoretical work points towards a star-like origin for brown dwarfs, though several authors posit that they could form like planets in a circumstellar disc, and then subsequently be ejected into a star-forming region or the Galactic field. Recently, JWST observations have discovered nine substellar objects in the IC 348 star-forming region with a spectral absorption feature at 3.4μm from an unidentified aliphatic hydrocarbon, detected for the first time in planetary atmospheres outside of the Solar System. It is unclear whether these hydrocarbon absorption features in these ‘H-type’ objects indicate a different formation mechanism compared to more massive brown dwarfs. We quantify the spatial distribution of these objects and find they are indistinguishable from the spatial distribution of stars and other brown dwarfs in IC 348. We use N-body simulations to test whether the H-type objects could have formed as planets in circumstellar discs and then been dynamically ejected by stellar fly-bys. We show that a similar number of free-floating planets could be produced if those planets initially resided at ∼ 5 au from their host stars. However, these free-floating planets have a much more dispersed spatial distribution than the stars and brown dwarfs, inconsistent with the spatial distribution of the H-type objects in IC 348. We therefore conclude that the H-type objects are unlikely to have a planetary-like origin.
Reference Key
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Authors Richard J Parker, Catarina Alves de Oliveira
Journal monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/mnras/stag1014
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1014
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