The James Webb Space Telescope has captured images of 6 proto-objects that may represent a “floating” state between planets and stars.
Astronomer Adam Langeveld from Johns Hopkins University (USA) and his colleagues analyzed data collected by James Webb from the young star cluster NGC 1333 in the Perseus constellation and discovered 6 “planetary mass objects” that are quite unusual.
These objects are in a state that is hard to define: half resembling stars, half resembling planets.
Six unusual planetary mass objects formed directly from gas and dust in interstellar space – (AI illustration: Anh Thu).
Some of these objects, which are difficult to categorize distinctly, are referred to by astronomers as “brown dwarfs.”
They exceed the maximum size limit that a planet can have and do not orbit any parent star. However, they are too small compared to stars to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, which means they cannot be classified as a type of star.
Sometimes, they are considered “failed stars.” They can also be regarded as “super planets.”
In this recent analysis, the research team identified 19 brown dwarfs. Additionally, there are 6 objects described as “planetary mass, freely floating.”
Measurements indicate that these objects have masses ranging from 5 to 15 times that of Jupiter, equivalent to nearly 1,600 to 4,800 times our Earth.
They are also isolated and formed from a cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space, without a parent star, making them akin to “planets from nothing.”
Some of these objects – including the smallest, which is 5 times the size of Jupiter – still have a gas and dust disk surrounding them.
All of these objects are only 1 to 3 million years old, similar to other objects in the NGC 133 cluster.
The smallest planetary mass object in James Webb’s data – (Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA).
This indicates that all these objects are still in the “proto” stage and it is uncertain what they will evolve into in the future.
However, researchers predict that they are 6 of the lowest mass objects ever discovered, currently evolving into brown dwarfs or true stars, rather than planets.
Previously, most brown dwarfs were known to have masses starting around 8 times that of Jupiter.
But if these objects were to become brown dwarfs in the future, it would not be unreasonable for them to have planetary-like masses at birth, as brown dwarfs also possess half of a planetary nature.
According to astronomer Ray Jayawardhana from Johns Hopkins University – a co-author of the study, these observations confirm that nature can create “planetary mass objects” in at least two ways.
The first method is like our Earth and most other known planets: from the protoplanetary disk of a star.
The second method is from a region of emptiness that is literally just gas and dust. These materials then collapse to form a dense enough cluster, leading to the formation of a planetary mass object.
The 6 “planets from nothing” in NGC 1333 serve as an example.
The researchers plan to conduct further observations of some of the most interesting objects among them, including one that is just 5 times the mass of Jupiter, named NIRISS-NGC1333-5.
Along with its star cluster, it is located about 1,000 light-years away from Earth, making it a significant challenge for researchers.
