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Miscellaneous
This section is devoted to cosmic X-ray sources or topics that do not fit in any
of the other categories in "X-Ray Sources".
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Brown Dwarfs - Clouds of collapsing gas
and dust that did not contain enough mass to initiate core nuclear fusion.
Such objects are then frozen somewhere along their pre- main sequence
contraction phase, continuously cooling into compact dark objects. Because
of their small size and low temperature, they are extremely difficult to
detect observationally.
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Gamma Ray Bursts - An outburst that radiates
tremendous amounts of energy in a few minutes equal to or greater than a
supernova, in the form of gamma rays. Such objects were discovered by
accident in the late 1960's by satellites designed to detect gamma rays
produced by atomic bomb tests on Earth.
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