Scientists find 2 ‘failed stars’ that may have a second chance to shine bright — by getting together.

Brown dwarfs may have gained the unfortunate nickname "failed stars," but new research suggests they can collide and merge for a second chance at success.

Brown dwarfs are cosmic objects with around 13 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter, making them around 0.013 to 0.08 times as massive as the sun. They are deemed as having "failed" because despite forming like normal stars — when vast, overly dense patches of matter collapse in interstellar clouds of gas and dust — they fail to gather enough mass from these clouds to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores, the process that defines a "main sequence" star, like the sun.

However, after searching through observations collected by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar Observatory, a team of scientists has discovered a tightly orbiting pair of brown dwarfs that are working together to combat this "failure." One brown dwarf is actively siphoning material from its companion, meaning it could achieve the mass needed to trigger nuclear fusion in its core and become a fully-fledged star. Either that, or these brown dwarfs will collide and merge, birthing an entirely new star with enough mass to trigger nuclear fusion.