AssetID: 55144706
Headline: RAW VIDEO: 'Rogue planet' is growing fast as it wanders through space
Caption: Astronomers have found a quickly growing “rogue planet” wandering through space alone without a star. The object, known as Cha 1107-7626, is swallowing gas and dust from its surroundings at an extraordinary rate of six billion tonnes per second, according to new observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. It is the strongest growth event ever recorded in such a planet – or in any planet at all – and could shed light on how these mysterious objects form. “People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery we see that planetary-mass objects freely floating in space can be exciting places,” said Víctor Almendros-Abad of the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo in Italy, who led the study. Cha 1107-7626 lies about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon and is estimated to be between five and ten times the mass of Jupiter. Still in its formative years, it is encircled by a disc of gas and dust that continues to feed it in a process known as accretion. But researchers found that the rate of accretion is not steady. By August 2025, the planet was absorbing material around eight times faster than just a few months earlier. “This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded for a planetary-mass object,” Almendros-Abad said. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, were obtained using ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the VLT, alongside data from the James Webb Space Telescope and older observations from another VLT instrument, SINFONI. “The origin of rogue planets remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?” said co-author Aleks Scholz of the University of St Andrews. The new findings suggest that at least some rogue planets may form in a star-like way. Similar bursts of accretion have been seen in young stars, the researchers note. “This discovery blurs the line between stars and planets and gives us a sneak peek into the earliest formation periods of rogue planets,” said Belinda Damian, also from St Andrews. The team found that the burst was likely triggered by magnetic activity, a mechanism previously only observed in stars. They also detected water vapour during the event – the first time such a phenomenon has been observed in a planet. Free-floating planets are notoriously difficult to detect as they emit so little light. ESO’s forthcoming Extremely Large Telescope, now under construction in Chile, is expected to transform the search. “The idea that a planetary object can behave like a star is awe-inspiring and invites us to wonder what worlds beyond our own could be like during their nascent stages,” said Amelia Bayo of ESO.
Keywords: feature,video,planet,space,science,nasa,eso
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