Astronomers have spotted six rogue worlds, or cosmic objects that don't orbit stars, using the James Webb Space Telescope.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024 10:30PMAstronomers have spotted six rogue worlds, or cosmic objects that don't orbitThe celestial bodies are slightly bigger than Jupiter, and the observations are shedding light on how stars and planets form across the universe.
But Webb - which is capable of observing the universe in infrared light - was able to look right through the dust. "We are probing the very limits of the star forming process," said lead study author Adam Langeveld, also an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins, in a statement. "If you have an object that looks like a young Jupiter, is it possible that it could have become a star under the right conditions? This is important context for understanding both star and planet formation."Typically, stars form from clouds of gas and dust.
"Those tiny objects with masses comparable to giant planets may themselves be able to form their own planets," said study coauthor Aleks Scholz, an astrophysicist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom, in a statement. "This might be a nursery of a miniature planetary system, on a scale much smaller than our solar system."
"The diversity of systems that nature has produced is remarkable and pushes us to refine our models of star and planet formation."
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