Webb Telescope Uncovers 6 Distant, 'Rogue' Planets — And A Mystery That's Stumped Scientists
Headlines:
* NASA's Parker Solar Probe Discovers a New Type of Solar Wind Bubble (The New York Times) * Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Human Migration Through DNA (BBC News) * World's Largest Known Star May Be a 'Super-Widy' Star, Study Says (The Washington Post) * New Species of Blind Fish Discovered in Mexican Caverns (National Geographic) * NASA's Europa Clipper Mission to Study Jupiter's Icy Moon (Space. com) * Water Found on Distant Exoplanet Believed to be Similar to Earth (Scientific American) * Study Reveals First Evidence of 'Mega-Tsunamis' on Mars (The Guardian) Note: These headlines are subject to change as new information becomes available.
Researchers using the James Webb Telescope have discovered six distant ⁘rogue⁘ worlds that may have peculiar origins.
What's uncommon is that none of the planet-sized bodies, all between five and 15 times Jupiter's mass, orbit a star, as the Earth does to the sun.
A Johns Hopkins University team is drawn to the potential that these were actually brown dwarfs, the astronomic term for failed stars.
"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?⁘ said lead study author Adam Langeveld.
The ⁘celestial entities⁘ ⁘ found in the nebula NGC1333 within the Persues constellation 960 light years away ⁘ most likely formed from the failed stars' collapse of gasses and dust, reported New Scientist magazine .
"In some ways, what's most striking is what we didn't find," researcher Ray Jayawardhana told the outlet of the discovery, now published in ⁘The Astronomical Journal.⁘
It could be an important distinction that brown dwarfs cannot form from anything comparatively lighter ⁘ as it is, the discovery equated to only about 10% of NGC1333's mass.
"Our observations confirm that nature produces planetary mass objects in at least two different ways,⁘ Jayawardhana said in a release . ⁘From the contraction of a cloud of gas and dust, the way stars form, and in disks of gas and dust around young stars, as Jupiter in our own solar system did.⁘
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