Just as the Earth orbits the Sun, most planets discovered outside our solar system also orbit a star. However, some are isolated; They are known as wandering planets.
Although its origins are still poorly understood, astronomers have discovered a particularly voracious one in its infancy, offering a new perspective on these lonely worlds.
Researchers reported that this rogue planet, called Cha 1107-7626, is five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It was observed during an intense growth phase at the center of a disk of gas and dust, forming much like a young star, while absorbing surrounding material at a speed never before recorded in an object of this type.
At its peak, during August of this year, it was consuming such material at a rate of six billion tons per second, about eight times faster than just a few months earlier.
“The burst we detected is extraordinary, similar to some of the most intense growth phases observed in young stars. It reveals that the same physical processes that drive star formation can also occur on a planetary scale,” explained astronomer Víctor Almendros-Abad, from the INAF Astronomical Observatory in Palermo (Italy), lead author of the study published this month in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“This object is between one and two million years old, which is very young by astronomical standards,” Almendros-Abad added. The researcher noted that the wandering planet appears to be in its final stages of formation and that its mass is not expected to increase much further.
Scientists believe it has strong magnetic fields that channel material from the rotating disk into its interior, a phenomenon observed until now only in stars.
The researchers observed Cha 1107-7626 using the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), based in Chile. The object is located within our galaxy, the Milky Way, about 620 light years from Earth, in the Chameleon constellation. (A light year is equivalent to the distance that light travels in one year: 9.5 billion kilometers).
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How wandering planets arise
Rogue planets, also called free-floating planetary-mass objects, typically have a mass several times that of Jupiter and exist as isolated systems that wander through space without being gravitationally bound to a host star.
“How these objects form is still an open question,” said study co-author Belinda Damian, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
In theory, Damian explained, they can form like stars, from the collapse of an interstellar cloud of gas and dust – known as a molecular cloud – or as ordinary planets within a disk of material that rotates around a newborn star, from which they would later be ejected.
Although Cha 1107-7626, a gas giant similar to the largest planets in our solar system (and not a rocky world like Earth), is forming in a star-like manner, it will not reach the mass necessary to initiate hydrogen fusion in its core, as happens with stars.
Other celestial objects, known as brown dwarfs, also form in this way and do not become stars either. Their mass ranges from about 13 to 81 times that of Jupiter, and they can burn deuterium (a form of hydrogen) in their cores for a limited time.
Cha 1107-7626 could offer a deeper understanding of how some wandering planets are born.
“This is a really exciting discovery, as we usually think of planets as calm, stable celestial bodies, but now we see that these objects can be dynamic, like stars in their early stages,” Damian said. “This blurs the line between stars and planets, and allows us to glimpse the early periods of formation of wandering planets.”
With information from Reuters
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