Hundreds of mysterious 'rogue' planets discovered by James Webb telescope may finally have an explanation

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the Orion Nebula shows swirling clouds of orange, blue, white and green dust in a field of twinkling stars.

The mystery behind hundreds of strange, free-floating planets detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be a step closer to being solved.

Many "rogue" planets, which lack a parent star, lurk in the cosmos. These free-floating planets (FFPs), including pairs of Jupiter-size worlds that orbit each other, are mysterious to scientists. But a new study likely rules out one way these so-called Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs) could have formed.