Story at a glance
- A new study was published by a group of astronomers that found at least 70 new rogue planets and estimate there are billions more.
- Astronomers used multiple telescopes from the European Southern Observatory along with 20 years worth of data from other telescopes on the ground and in space.
- Discovering rogue planets is important because scientists believe it can help inform how planets form, evolve and break apart.
Astronomers just made a big discovery that could be the first step in understanding how planets form, evolve and break apart.
A newly published report revealed that astronomers have found at least 70 new rogue planets that are as big as Jupiter but don’t rotate around any stars, roaming freely in the Milky Way. Astronomers used multiple telescopes from the European Southern Observatory along with other facilities and 20 years worth of data from other telescopes on the ground and in space.
Because rogue planets aren’t tethered to a star, they can be hard to spot. However, one of the authors of the study, Núria Miret-Roig, explained in a press release that in the few million years after their formation, many of these rogue planets are still hot enough to glow. That makes them detectable by sensitive cameras on large telescopes.
“We measured the tiny motions, the colors and luminosities of tens of millions of sources in a large area of the sky. These measurements allowed us to securely identify the faintest objects in this region, the rogue planets,” said Miret-Roig.
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The number of rogue planets doesn’t stop at 70 though, with the study suggesting that there could be many more star-less planets that have yet to be discovered.
“There could be several billions of these free-floating giant planets roaming freely in the Milky Way without a host star,” said Hervé Boouy, project leader of the new research study.
Studying rogue planets is important because astronomers believe they can provide clues as to how they formed. Researchers from the new study said they believe rogue planets can form from the collapse of a gas cloud that’s too small to form a star, or that could have been kicked out from their parent system.
NASA also established the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that aims to answer pressing cosmic questions, including the discovery of planets outside our solar system. It’s expected to begin work in 2027.
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