There’s an orphan planet roaming our galactic neighborhood.
It’s a globe of gas about the size of Jupiter, astronomers say. And it’s out there by its lonesome, untethered to any star, drifting about 100 light-years from Earth. (In astronomical terms, that’s close.)
Astronomers have spied lonely planets before. But this newest object, seen near the southern constellation Dorado, is the closest to Earth yet found.
Unobscured by starlight, the new planet — it has no name, just a catalog number — provides a perfect opportunity for astronomers to learn about the mysterious class of “substellar objects.” Such rogue bodies might number in the billions in our galaxy alone.
“There could really be a lot of them,” said Christian Veillet, former director of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, who studied the lonely planet. “But it’s a big challenge in terms of observing them.”
The first sign of possible extraterrestrials detected in the cosmos didn't come in the form of...
L ike many scientists, I came to the US as a young adult, driven by idealism...
Crows are able to look at a handful of four-sided shapes and correctly distinguish those that...
Nasa has dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and person of color...
