SPACE — Scientists discovered hundreds of free-floating planets in the Orion Nebula. These floating planets or ‘rogue’ planets are not gravitationally bound to their parent stars. From these findings, scientists concluded a rogue planet or rogue planet perhaps more common than previously thought.
New data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed 540 planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster. If confirmed, this would be a planetary sample rogue largest ever discovered.
Astronomers Samuel Pearson and Mark McCaughrean of the European Space Agency (ESA) made the observations and posted a preprint paper to arXiv. This paper has not yet been peer reviewed, but has been submitted to Nature.
The researchers said JWST’s near-infrared survey allowed them to discover and characterize a large sample of 540 planetary mass candidates. The team says this planetary mass object (PMO) is too small to be a star, as its mass is well below the normal limit for brown dwarfs.
Within this large group of rogue planets are 42 pairs of gravitationally bound planets, something that has never been observed before. Astronomers call them Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs.
“How pairs of young planets can be ejected simultaneously and remain bound, albeit weakly over relatively wide distances, is still unclear,” the researchers wrote in their paper, reported by Universe Today.
McCaughrean believes this twinkling object is a very big discovery. In their pre-print paper, researchers say that this planetary-mass binary object is “a highly unexpected result and challenges current theories of star and planet formation.”
A planet is defined as an object that orbits a star. Additionally, current theories of planet formation suggest that objects the size of Jupiter could only have formed through processes that produce stars within clouds of dust and gas found in nebulae.
The exact mechanism of why planets exist rogue it is unknown, but there are several theories. These theories include that the planets are pulled away from one star due to gravitational interactions with another passing star, or that the planets float freely into space after the star dies.
The researchers speculate that JuMBOs’ planetary ejections could be caused by planetary scattering in planetary disks or dynamic interactions between stars.
Planet rogue usually impossible to image in visible light. Therefore, infrared imaging with JWST is the perfect tool to search for them.
2023-10-05 07:20:00
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