2023-10-04 14:14:35
Asteroids, comets, giant planets, orphan planets, stars and dozens of other space objects are all types of celestial bodies that researchers periodically discover and study for decades. The James Webb Telescope’s latest near-infrared observations of the Orion Nebula indicate that scientists may be on the verge of discovering a new category of celestial bodies – free-floating gas giants that are not gravitationally bound to any star and can move. in pairs. Their mass is equal to half or one mass of Jupiter. They are called Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs). The discovery was made at a distance of 1,350 light years from Earth, in the center of the Orion Nebula – in an area called the Trapezium of Orion (open star cluster). In total, James Webb discovered approximately 150 free-floating gas giants, 84 of them moving in pairs (42 pairs). The paired objects are separated by distances 200 times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and they revolve around each other in an orbit that takes more than 20 thousand Earth years to complete. Planet-like bodies captured by the James Webb Telescope. Such objects move in pairs and are not gravitationally bound to any star / © NASA, ESA, Mark McCaughrean & Sam Pearson Paired JuMBO worlds do not exactly meet the standard definition of a planet because they do not orbit a parent star. But these are not orphan planets, since they do not “travel” alone. In addition, these objects are unlikely to represent “substars”, because in order to turn into the same brown dwarf (substellar object), a cosmic body must have a mass from 12.57 to 80.35 times the mass of Jupiter. According to existing models, objects as small as JuMBO cannot form directly from clouds of dust and gas, that is, appear during the process of star formation. Scientists have two hypotheses to explain the nature of JuMBO. The first says that these worlds were still able to form in those regions of the Orion Nebula where the density of matter was insufficient to form a full-fledged star, after which they found themselves “in free flight.” According to the second hypothesis, JuMBOs appeared around stars as ordinary gas giants, and then left their orbits due to gravitational disturbances. However, why they move in pairs remains a mystery. Astronomers have suggested that these are fairly young objects – they are only about a million years old. A team of European astronomers led by European Space Agency (ESA) senior specialist Mark McCorin described these worlds in two studies. The scientist noted that the work is being prepared for publication in academic journals, but has not yet been peer-reviewed, so the results should be considered preliminary. “These free-moving gas giants in pairs show well that our knowledge of the formation of planets and stars is not entirely accurate. According to all available data, such objects should not exist in the Universe, but they do,” explained Samuel Pearson, one of the study’s co-authors. Scientists hope to soon solve the mystery of the JuMBO worlds. European astronomers want to use the James Webb spectrometer to study the composition of the atmosphere of wandering gas giants. When researchers know the composition of the gas envelope of these objects, then they may understand how they formed. For now, Pearson suggests that there is a high probability of methane and water present in JuMBO’s atmosphere. Future observations will show whether he is right or wrong.
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