Hey, leave Robert Reich out of this!
well.... I always wanted to be a planet but I'd live with being a star
I'm wondering how close the companion mass is ... could the sum of the masses have prevented the brown dwarf from 'lighting up' due to the center of mass being too close to the outer region of the 'star'? The clue may be the 1 to 2 size ratio and a distance too close together.
55 Cancri
http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/55cnc.html
"Farthest out, at 5.9 Astronomical Units (AU) from the star, is the most massive, 55 Cnc-d, which is at least 4.1 times the mass of Jupiter and takes 14.7 years to orbit. The other three are much closer and less massive. Next in order are 55 Cnc c, b, and e with minimum masses of 0.21, 0.84, 0.045 solar, orbital radii of 0.24, 0.11, 0.038 AU, and periods of 44, 14.7, and 2.81 days. The existence of 55 Cnc-c is questionable. 55 Cnc-e has the smallest measured minimum mass, only about that of Uranus or Neptune. It is also closest to its parent star, its orbit just 10 percent the size of that of Mercury... 55 Cancri is a mid-sixth magnitude star (magnitude 5.95) class G (G8) dwarf 41 years away. A bit cooler (5280 Kelvin) and carrying only 0.87 of a solar mass, it shines at just 58 percent of the luminosity of the Sun, its radius 0.9 solar."
