He James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected “planets” the size of Jupiter They float freely in space and apparently in pairs, disconnected from any star.
The telescope observed about 20 pairs in a new study of the Orion Nebulaand have been nicknamed Jupiter Mass Binary Objectso JuMBO for its acronym in English. An article about the discovery has been submitted to Nature.
One possibility is that these objects arose from regions of the nebula where the density of the material was insufficient to form full-fledged stars. Another possibility is that they formed around stars and then were expelled into interstellar space through various interactions.
“The ejection hypothesis is the most favored at the moment. Gas physics suggests that we shouldn’t be able to create objects with the mass of Jupiter on their own, and we know that individual planets can be ejected from star systems. But , how can you eject pairs of these things together? Right now, “We don’t have an answer. “It’s an answer for theorists,” he told the BBC. Mark McCaughreanESA’s chief scientific advisor, who led the research.
Using JWST’s infrared resolution and sensitivity, astronomers have substantially added to information already extracted by older telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope.