Astronomers have detected a free-floating planet, Cha 1107-7626, drawing in gas and dust at a rate of about 6 billion tons per second, an observation that challenges current ideas about how planets and stars form. The finding was made using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, with additional data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Cha 1107-7626 is located roughly 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. With a mass estimated at five to ten times that of Jupiter, it is still in the earliest stage of formation — about one to two million years old. Unlike planets in our solar system, this object does not orbit a star. It moves freely through space, making it a rogue planet, a class of objects believed to number in the trillions across the Milky Way.
