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Mark Marley (NMSU)
The brown dwarf Gliese 229 B, with an effective temperature near 900 K, lies midway between the realm of the giant planets and the numerous young, hot brown dwarfs that have recently been discovered. Observations and models of this coolest-known brown dwarf have revealed an object that in many ways is closer to a giant planet than to a cool star. As such Gliese 229 B provides a laboratory in which processes that are likely ubiquitous in the warm atmospheres of some extrasolar giant planets can be observed today. I will compare what we have learned about convection, non-thermochemical equilibrium transport of species, and condensation in this object to what we can expect to discover from future spectroscopic observations of extrasolar giant planets. If obtainable, such observations will allow us to map out the behavior of these fundamental planetary processes as a function of planetary mass, age, and effective temperature.