Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have peeked over the Milky Way's back fence and found that there's something strange about the stellar infants playing next door.
While zooming in on the young star cluster NGC 602 in the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the researchers spotted what may be the first evidence of brown dwarfs ever seen outside the Milky Way. Brown dwarfs, or "failed stars," are peculiar objects that are bigger than the largest planets but not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion like stars.
