This new entity, called “JuMBO”, is neither a star nor a planet. And they shouldn’t exist, researchers say.
Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have made a surprising discovery using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. That means there is a floating object in the Orion Nebula, the closest star-forming region, that is the same size as Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. To the earth.
This discovery has upended our understanding of how stars and planets form. Scientists previously thought that nebulae, which form stars in giant clouds of gas and dust, were not capable of spontaneously producing planet-sized objects, but this new discovery suggests otherwise. It suggests that.
Even more puzzling is the fact that the objects are formed in pairs rather than individually.
“There’s something wrong with our understanding of planet formation, star formation, or both,” ESA scientist Samuel Pearson, who worked on the study, told the New York Times. “They shouldn’t exist.”
New space image!🤩
NASA/ESA/CSA James #webb The Space Telescope has added detailed images of the Orion Nebula to the EASky application.
Zoom in on this region, which is home to a variety of phenomena, including protostars, brown dwarfs, and even free-floating planets. pic.twitter.com/In4FQk8hrX
— ESA (@esa) October 2, 2023
The new entity is called Jupiter Mass Binary Object (JuMBO). JuMBO is not technically a planet, as it is not large enough to become a star and does not orbit a star.
“Most of us don’t have the time to get caught up in debates about what is and isn’t a planet,” ESA’s senior adviser for science and exploration, Professor Mark McCaurian, told the Guardian. “My car is like a pet Chihuahua. But it’s not a Chihuahua. It’s a cat.”
According to a research paper co-authored by McCaurian that has not yet been peer-reviewed, JuMBO is about 1 million years old, making it young compared to the rest of the universe. Their surface temperature is approximately 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit).
But unlike planets, which can eventually maintain a constant temperature thanks to the energy they receive from the stars they orbit, JuMBO eventually cools quickly and freezes. Also, since most of them are composed of gas, they are unlikely to be able to support life.
Scientists have several theories about how JuMBO came into being. The first is that they formed in regions of the nebula that were too sparse to form proper stars. The second is that it formed as a planet orbiting a star, but was then “kicked out” for unknown reasons.
“The ejection hypothesis is the leading one at the moment,” McCaurian told the BBC. “We know that a single planet can be ejected from a star system. But how do we kick a pair of these things together? There’s no answer at this point. That’s not what theorists say. It’s for.”
Other scientists called the pairing phenomenon unprecedented.
“My reactions ranged from ‘What?!'” “Are you sure?” astronomer Heidi Hummel, who was not part of the research team, told the BBC.
No current scientific models predict planet-sized objects flying out of nebulae, she says, but adds that it’s possible that telescopes just weren’t powerful enough to spot them until now. .
Scientists and astronomers have studied the Orion Nebula for years to observe the formation and early evolution of stars and other celestial bodies.
It lies 1,350 light-years from Earth and is visible to the naked eye as a misty smudge at the bottom of the constellation Orion. This is part of the “sword” of the mythical Greek hunter from whom the constellation takes its name.