Scientists have identified a planetary system in the Milky Way unlike anything seen before, leaving astronomers debating how to classify one of its unusual worlds. The discovery challenges long-held definitions of planets, moons and stars.
The system includes a red dwarf star with about 40% of the mass of the Sun, orbited by a brown dwarf, a celestial body that blurs the line between a planet and a star.
The brown dwarf, in turn, is orbited by a gaseous world roughly the size of Jupiter, newly discovered using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Using our solar system as a frame of reference, a body that orbits another body that itself orbits a star would normally be called a moon - or, in this case, an exomoon, because it lies beyond our solar system.
However, the object orbiting the brown dwarf is unlike any of the many moons in our solar system, all of which are relatively small rocky or icy worlds, both in terms of its composition and its size.
"This will certainly be a matter of debate. In general, most astronomers are fine with the term exosatellite, at least as a placeholder until we formally adopt definitions for objects like the one we found," said Kevin Hoy, a doctoral student in astrophysics.
The system is about 71 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, about 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
The exosatellite has at least 90% of Jupiter's mass. It completes an orbit of the brown dwarf every 170 days at a distance roughly one-fifth of that between Earth and the Sun.
"I think this discovery has opened a Pandora's box for the scientific community. This type of object is completely new and unusual, truly different from what we are familiar with in our solar system," said study co-author Alice Zurlo, an astrophysicist at Universidad Diego Portales and director of YEMS.
More than 6,300 exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – have been discovered. However, finding exomoons has proved more challenging, with only a handful of strong candidates identified.
The researchers are now trying to determine the origins of the exosatellite.
"It may have formed from the disk of gas and dust around the brown dwarf, just as planets form around stars. Or it may have been captured (gravitationally) by the brown dwarf later on," Zurlo said.
A brown dwarf is neither a star nor a planet, but something in between. The one in this system is about 33 times more massive than Jupiter, around 50% larger and much hotter.
"Because the system is very young, the brown dwarf is still shining with the heat left from its formation," Zurlo said.
Since the first detection of exoplanets in the 1990s, scientists have identified a wide variety of planetary systems, some resembling our own and others markedly different. The newly studied system stands out as one of the most unusual yet discovered.
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has outlined an expanded vision for the Zangezur Corridor, describing it not simply as a transport route connectin...
At least 250 people have died and more than 570 have been injured after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday, the Colombian As...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Russia is preparing to deploy additional North Korean forces on its territory and has received...
One hundred years after the First World War and more than eighty years after the devastation of the Second World War gave rise to the United Nations, humanity once again finds itself living in an age of permanent crisis.
Flights arriving at Catania airport in eastern Sicily were suspended after volcanic ash from a new eruption of Mount Etna drifted into the airspace around the airport, disrupting operations at one of Italy’s busiest aviation hubs.
Iran said it was nearing a final pact with Oman defining new shipping lanes between them through the Strait of Hormuz but repeated that the U.S. must meet other conditions.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has surpassed $1.1 billion at the global box office, becoming the highest-grossing film of the director’s career.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for Iran to pay compensation for decades of deaths and damage, adding a new demand to peace talks as Tehran seeks compensation and sanctions relief before reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Nvidia is teaming up with some of the biggest names in global finance in a move that underscores how artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the world's most sought-after investment themes.
Parts of Europe and the Arctic will briefly fall into darkness on Wednesday, 12 August, as the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun in a total solar eclipse.
Meta said one of its AI models hacked another company's systems during cybersecurity testing, intensifying concerns about how developers can contain increasingly capable AI systems following similar incidents involving Anthropic and OpenAI.
Scientists say the accidental crash of a discarded SpaceX rocket stage into the moon has provided valuable data on impact cratering while posing no threat to Earth or lunar hardware.
AI agents developed by Anthropic and OpenAI carried out unauthorised online actions during cybersecurity tests, including creating fake identities to deceive real people and attempting to plant malicious code, the U.K.'s AI Security Institute (AISI) said on Tuesday (5 August).
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment