2023-10-03 05:06:08
In the jargon, scientists call them “Jumbos”. To laymen’s eyes, this phenomenon, when visible in a photograph, is comparable to marvelous plumes of smoke whose hues are iridescent. In the eyes of specialists, however, it is a little more complex.
In the Orion Nebula, around a hundred floating entities have been observed. Their size is too small to be stars, but the objects in question also defy the conventional definition of a planet: they do not orbit a parent star.
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These features were captured in spectacular images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, we learn The Guardian, this Monday, October 2. This discovery could one day result in the creation of a new astronomical category.
Discovery of ‘Jumbos’ may herald new astronomical category https://t.co/71ZfSpWXcX
— Guardian news (@guardiannews) October 2, 2023
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A mysterious class of objects
Professor Mark McCaughrean, Senior Advisor for Science and Exploration at the European Space Agency (ESA), reacted to this unusual discovery. The specialist, whose comments were relayed by the British daily, said that the search for these entities had been directly inspired by data recorded by ground telescopes.
Indeed, these data have alerted scientists to the existence of a mysterious class of objects. “We set out to find these little entities and we found themobserved the professor. They evolve freely, are not attached to a star.”
Scientists, at the end of their work, realized that these large hot and gaseous objects seemed to have a composition similar to that of a planet. And for good reason, analyzes have highlighted the presence of steam and methane in their atmosphere.
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Not planets, but what then?
However, these are not planets. Specialists chose to designate them by the name “Jupiter mass binary objects”, because of the hundred of these entities, several dozen formed pairs.
In astronomical terms, “Jumbos” are “babies”, because they have only been around for about 1 million years. Their surface temperature rises to almost 1,000°C. However, in the absence of a host star, this infernal heat will give way to rapid cooling. Very quickly, these objects will – for a short time – present temperatures within the habitable range. Then, the entities will become extremely cold.
However, because they are gas giants, the surface of these floating entities would not harbor liquid water, the newspaper continues. This means that they will probably never be able to support any extraterrestrial life.
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Lessons to be learned
These scientific results have been distributed in pre-publication form. That is, in the future they will still need to be peer reviewed.
“I don’t know how to explain this large number of objects [que mes confrères] have seenreacted Matthew Bate, director of the astrophysics department at the University of Exeter, who was not involved in this work. In all the theories formulated so far, it seems that we have missed something. […] A mechanism must be at the origin of the formation of these [objets].”
Quoted by the Guardian, the researcher also welcomed a discovery “rare”. “Over the past decade, we thought we understood star formation quite well.he concluded. So it’s a very surprising result and we’re going to learn a lot from it.”
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