![María Rosa Zapatero Osorio at EWASS 2015. Credits: Iván Jiménez / IAC. María Rosa Zapatero Osorio at EWASS 2015. Credits: Iván Jiménez / IAC.](/sites/default/files/styles/crop_square_2_2_to_320px/public/images/news/reportajes77_119_hi.jpg?itok=EvShhnD0)
By IVÁN JIMÉNEZ Twenty years ago an exceptional discovery blurred forever the boundary between what we call stars and what we call planets. A star is characterized by producing nuclear reactions in its interior. However in 1995 a group of researchers of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), among them Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio (now at the Centre for Astrobiology (CAB-CSIC-INTA) discovered an object which appeared to be a star, but without sufficient mass to produce significant nuclear reactions. Although it was given the name Teide-1, the scientists had in fact found a type of
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