------------------------------------------------------------- Featured press release entry: Astronomy: Surviving in a giant's furnace (pp 543-545; N&V) When stars grow old and expand into immense, dim objects known as red giants, it can spell doom for any inner planets they might have - the Earth is expected one far-off day to be fried by such an event. But some planet-like objects orbiting Sun-like stars might survive this phase of fiery engulfment. Pierre Maxted and colleagues think they have found such a hardy survivor. This object is not exactly a planet, but a so-called brown dwarf: a body somewhere between the size of a very large planet and a Sun-like star. Brown dwarfs have gaseous compositions similar to stars, but aren't massive enough to ignite the nuclear fusion reactions that cause stars to shine. They do, however, undergo a brief phase of less energetic fusion processes, leaving them glowing dimly - hence the designation 'brown'. In Nature this week the team describe how they found a brown dwarf associated with the white dwarf star WD 0137-349. White dwarfs are compact stars formed after the red giant phase, when the star shrinks and heats up again. This companion to WD 0137-349 has a mass about one-twentieth that of our Sun, and is very close to the white dwarf, at a distance of about two-thirds the Sun's radius. This means that it would certainly have been engulfed during WD 0137-349's red-giant phase. The researchers think, however, that the brown dwarf was already formed before this phase, rather than being the result of a transfer of mass from the star onto a planet when the two bodies were enclosed by the swollen atmosphere of the red giant. In other words, brown dwarfs can withstand this immersion in the stellar furnace. CONTACT Pierre Maxted (Keele University, Staffordshire, UK) Tel: +44 1782 583 457; E-mail: pflm@astro.keele.ac.uk James Liebert (University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ, USA) Tel: +1 520 621 4513; E-mail: liebert@as.arizona.edu