Brown and black dwarfs: their structure, evolution and contribution to the missing mass.

The present study examines the observability of boron and black dwarfs in the solar neighborhood, either in the visible during their early evolution or as faint but close IR objects during their prolonged degenerate cooling phase. Black dwarfs are found to be an attractive explanation for the missing mass in the solar neighborhood and elsewhere. The most likely detection is as faint IR objects with measurable parallax, but estimates of the IR magnitudes indicate that detection may be beyond current capabilities.