A young rogue planet about 620 light-years away from Earth has experienced a record-breaking "growth spurt," hoovering up some six billion tons of gas and dust each second over a couple of months.
A team of international researchers have explored changes in the planet's growth and immediate surroundings. The observations provide insight into how rogue planets—free-floating planetary-mass objects that do not orbit stars—behave and grow in their infancy.
"We've caught this newborn rogue planet in the act of gobbling up stuff at a furious pace," said senior co-author and Johns Hopkins Provost and Professor Ray Jayawardhana . "Monitoring its behavior over the past few months, with two of the most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, we have captured a rare glimpse into the baby phase of isolated objects not much heftier than Jupiter."
Jayawardhana added: "Their infancy appears to be much more tumultuous than we had realized."
