A Newly Discovered Rogue Planet's Rapid Accretion Startles Astrophysicists

 

              Artist's conception of the newly discovered rogue planet Cha 1107-7626

The nature of ‘rogue planets’, we should note, is typically not taught in conventional introductory astronomy courses. Instead attention is focused on either our solar system’s stable orbs, or more recently the ex0planets systems revealed by the Kepler mission, e.g.

Brane Space: New "Goldilocks" Planets Found: But Do They Harbor Life?

 But more recently, untethered planets ("interstellar loners")  have come to attention such as a newly studied object known officially as Cha 1107-7626, which has a mass five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.  This entity- moving through space without a star to orbit - is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Officially, this particular rogue planet is still forming and is fed by a surrounding disc of gas and dust formed about 1 million years ago. 

In June, researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile noticed gas and dust accreting around an object at a much faster rate than a month earlier. (Any material constantly falling onto another object under gravitational attraction is a process known as accretion. For example we note a similar process of gas etc. accreting onto black holes forming what is called 'an accretion disk'.). 

In this case when the European team enlisted observing time on the James Webb telescope - whose infrared telescope can penetrate dust clouds -  the researchers confirmed that the rogue was funneling hot gas and other material from the accretion disk onto itself. It actually increased its consumption of material 8-fold between May and August adding 6 billion tons per second.  This was a rate never before seen by astrophysics.

The documentation of the discovery was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Oct. 10 by R. Jayawardhana,  Victor Almendros-Abad et al:

Discovery of an Accretion Burst in a Free-floating Planetary-mass Object - IOPscience

 Prof. Jayawardhana  noted how the finding provides information on the origin and formation of rogue planets and how they can behave like mass-consuming objects such as black holes, e.g.

One theory of origin is that rogue planets actually get kicked out of existing solar systems. Another is that they form on their own. According one co-author of the paper: Victor Almendros-Abad:  "The object actually formed like a star and we were fortunate to be able to observe the whole process together."

And in the words of  Prof. Jayawardhana:

"It's quite conceivable this rogue planet would be accompanied by a set of mini-planets of its own, a kind of solar system in miniature."

A conclusion not yet supported by evidence but totally reasonable.

See Also:

Young rogue planet displays record-breaking 'growth spurt' | Hub