Scientists have identified a “rogue” planet drifting freely through space, untethered to any star system. Unlike most planets, which orbit stars like Earth around the Sun, rogue planets travel independently across the galaxy.
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These free-floating worlds are difficult to detect because they do not reflect light from a nearby star. In this case, astronomers discovered the planet using a microlensing event—a phenomenon where the gravity of an object magnifies the light of a more distant star behind it.
By observing the event from both ground- and space-based telescopes, researchers were able to calculate the planet’s mass at roughly 22% that of Jupiter. It lies approximately 3,000 parsecs from the centre of the Milky Way.
Researchers believe the planet likely formed within a planetary system before being ejected due to gravitational disruptions, such as interactions with other planets or unstable stars. Lower-mass rogue planets are thought to be expelled in this manner, making them rare but not unprecedented.
This discovery adds to the small number of known rogue planets, a figure expected to grow with upcoming missions like NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The research detailing this finding was published in the journal Science under the title “A free-floating-planet microlensing event caused by a Saturn-mass object.”
