ESO/L. Sidewalk/m. Kornmesser
An illustration of the growth outbreak of the wandering planet Cha 1107-7626
A team of astronomers has identified a huge “outbreak of growth” on a wandering planet that is consuming a record gas and dust value of its surroundings, in a process of formation similar to that of the stars.
A new study reveals that an unusual wandering planet, to which astronomers named Cha 1107-7626is consuming gas and dust of its surroundings to a hallucinating rhythm of six billion tons per second.
The discovery, presented in a published Thursday in the magazine The Astrophysical Journal Lettersit was performed with the aid of the Verry Large Telescope (VLT) X-Shooter, which ESO has in the Chilean desert of Atacama, and the James Webb space telescope.
This is the higher growth rate ever registered for a wandering planet, or any type of planetproviding valuable information on how they form and grow, notice the ESO in.
The wandering planets, unlike our solar system, do not orbit stars, floating freely for themselves.
“The process of attracting material (accretion) of this pllaneta is the most intense ever recorded for a planetary mass object,” explains the astronomer Victor Almendros-Abadresearcher at the Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Italy and the main author of the study.
“We tend to think about planets like quiet and stable worlds, but this discovery shows us that planetary mass objects that float freely in interstellar space They can be very exciting places”Adds Almendros-Bad.
The team of astronomers, consisting of ten scientists, includes Koraljka Muzicresearcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon.
In August, the planet was accumulating mass about eight times faster than just a few months earlier. However, the team of Victor Alwardros-Bad found that the this young planet’s accretion rate is not constant.
Having a mass five to ten times higher than that of Jupiter, Cha 1107-7626 is located around 620 light years away from Earth, in the constellation of the chameleon. It is still in formation, being fed by a disc of gases and dust that surrounds it.
Or astronomer Aleks sow ofresearcher at the University of St. Andrews, in the UK, and co-author of the study, wondered if the wandering planets “will have a form similar to that of the stars, but with very small massesor if they will be giant planets ejected from its systems of origin ”.
The results indicate that some wandering planets seem to share a Training process similar to that of the starssince huge sudden accretion rates similar to it have already been observed in young stars.
“This discovery Breaks the line between stars and planets and brings us closer to the first phases of training of the wandering planets, ”added the study co-author Belinda Damianalso astronoma of the University of St. Andrews.
By comparing the light emitted before and during the enormous increase in the accretion rate, astronomers gathered clues about the nature of the process.
A magnetic activity It will have played “an important role in the huge rate of accretion of matter, something that had only been previously observed in stars, suggesting that even small mass objects may have strong magnetic fields, capable of feeding such accreation events.”
The team of scientists also found that the disk chemistry around the planet Changed during the phenomenon of accretionhaving been detected water vapor during the event, but not before. This phenomenon had already been observed previously in stars, but never in any kind of planet.
“The idea that a planetary object can behave like a star is very interesting and leads us to imagine how different worlds from ours would be during their early stages,” he concludes AMELIA BAIOESO astronoma and also co-author of the study.
