About Brown Dwarfs

[AcidSludge]

The first time I seen or heard about these wannabe stars (or beefed up gas giants, depends) was in 1994, when Frontier: Elite II came out, where they were one of the tons of celestial objects to marvel at. I always found this thingies somewhat eerie and strange - I mean, lithium fusion, about 20°C to 150°C surface temperature (do they have a surface at all?), and they looked (in FE2, that is) kind of scary - I'm not a physics buff, and informations about brown dwarfs are relatively sparse and uncertain. So my main questions are:

What happens at the end of a "life circle" of brown dwarfs? Some sort of nova? Do they just burn out, leaving a big lump of material floating around whatever whereever?

How they may freaking look like?

Are planets orbiting brown dwarfs possibly capable of sustaining life as we know it?

[_Augustus_]

They don't die. They live practically forever.

Brighter brown dwarfs (Between M5 and L5) look red. T-class and late-L class look magneta, and Y-class looks like planets.

They could have life, I suppose.

[HoloYolo]

They don't die. They live practically forever.

Brighter brown dwarfs (Between M5 and L5) look red. T-class and late-L class look magneta, and Y-class looks like planets.

They could have life, I suppose.

Brown Dwarfs do in fact die. They burn like a coal, starting out at their brightest and hottest. After a few billion years, they slowly fade into darkness, like White Dwarfs. They cannot have life on anything orbiting them, as they are way too cold even at its hottest. When they die, they just become gas giants flying around their native galaxy, waiting for its nearest black hole to suck them up. It is slightly possible that they get pulled into a star system and become a huge planet.