Number 204 (Story #2), November 23, 1994 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein DARK MATTER DOES NOT CONSIST OF RED DWARF STARS. The existence of nonluminous matter has been invoked to explain the rotation and interactions of certain galaxies. What is the nature of this dark matter? One possibility is that, like matter here on Earth, the dark matter consists of baryons---neutrons and protons---residing in atoms which make up faint stars such as red dwarfs. Indeed in the vicinity of our own Sun there are many such dim stars. But further afield in the Milky Way the density of red dwarfs, surveyed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), is surprisingly low. The HST measurements conclude that red dwarfs can account for no more than 6% of the mass of the galactic halo and 15% of the galactic disk. Dark matter therefore will have to consist of even lighter objects, such as brown dwarfs, or exotic, hypothetical particles not yet detected. (The Washington Post, 16 November 1994.)