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Space
Space
Science
Robert Lea

These mysterious objects born in violent clashes between young star systems aren't stars or planets

An illustration of two clashing young star systems creating a shower of rogue planets.

Are they stars? Are they planets? Or are they neither? Some rogue planetary mass objects that wander the cosmos alone could be created when young star systems clash, meaning they represent an entire cosmic class of their own.

Free-floating, planetary mass objects are bodies with around 13 times the mass of Jupiter that are often found drifting through young star clusters, such as the Trapezium Cluster in Orion. Their origins posed a particular puzzle in 2023, when astronomers discovered 40 pairs of planetary mass objects called Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs, in the Orion nebula.

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