New York : Floating without support Astronomers have been left perplexed by Jupiter-sized “planets” that are only orbiting one another, leading them to reevaluate their theories regarding the formation of stars and planets.
In October, astronomers discovered about 500 previously undiscovered spots in the Orion Nebula using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
In a thorough new survey of the well-known Orion Nebula, the telescope observed about 40 pairs and discovered that dozens of the worlds appear to be in pairs orbiting one another.
Scientists have now made an attempt to explain the so-called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects (JUMBOs), which are gas giant pairs that are free-floating and solely orbit each other, in an article that appeared in Wired that was first published in Quanta Magazine.
According to them, these objects are too light to have formed alone and are unexpectedly numerous.
One possibility is planets with “tightly-spaced orbits” being dragged out of their solar system by a passing star.
Still, “we’re missing something and we don’t know what it is,” said Nienke van der Marel, a researcher who studies planet formation at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.
The JUMBOs have caught experts in both star and planet formation flat-footed.
“This has not been predicted at all. There are no existing theories where we would have expected these wide, free-floating planetary objects in these numbers,” said Matthew Bate, an astrophysicist at the University of Exeter specialising in star formation.
At least some of the JUMBOs may be probably mirages.
“The deeper an object lies in a dusty environment (and the Orion nebula is extremely dusty), the tougher it is to distinguish it from a distant, more massive star behind the nebula, which would be expected to have a partner,” said the report.
“One needs to be a bit cautious at the moment,” said Nuria Miret Roig of the University of Vienna.
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