James Webb Space Telescope

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Just cool

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'We know so little': Bizarre 'runaway' planets discovered by James Webb telescope may be failed stars in disguise

Mysterious pairs of "rogue," Jupiter-size objects may have arisen from embryonic stars, a new study suggests. The theory could explain some characteristics of these Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs), such as why members of each pair are so widely separated, but more data is needed to confirm the idea.

The James Webb Space Telescope spotted these JuMBOs in the trapezoid zone of the Orion Nebula. Each JuMBO pair comprises two gas giants, each between 0.7 and 30 times the mass of Jupiter. These "rogue" planet partners have been found orbiting each other — but not a parent star — at a distance of about 25 to 400 astronomical units, or 25 to 400 times the average distance between Earth and the sun.

Astronomers have proposed several ideas for how these mysterious duos form. One theory is that they were flung simultaneously from their home systems by a passing star, although some scientists believe this is very unlikely. Another idea is that JuMBOs emerged around a star but their gravities tug them toward each other and out of orbit during close encounters.

However, all of these theories assume that JuMBOs originate from planets that have already formed. In contrast, the new study proposes a radically different idea: that the Orion Nebula's JuMBOs aren't preexisting pairs of planets but rather the hearts of embryonic stars.

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What the Webb telescope has discovered in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years away

The most powerful telescope to be launched into space has made history by detecting a record number of new stars in a distant galaxy.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, history's largest and most complex space observatory that serves thousands of astronomers around the world, has captured a unique image that revealed 44 individual stars in a galaxy 6.5 billion light-years away from the Milky Way, according to a paper published Monday in Nature Astronomy.

Astronomers used Webb's high-resolution optics and distortion in space to reveal the existence of dozens of previously unknown stars, the researchers said. The detection of a "treasure trove" of stars was only possible because the light from the 44 new stars was magnified by a large cluster of galaxies, called Abell 370, in front of it, according to the Center for Astrophysics.

The technique is known as gravitational lensing, which is when a massive amount of matter -- like a cluster of galaxies -- creates a gravitational field that distorts and magnifies the light from distant galaxies that are behind it but in the same line of sight, according to NASA. The effect is essentially like looking through a giant magnifying glass.

The strong gravitational magnification enabled astronomers to detect faint background sources and study their internal structures, which can lead to identifying individual stars in distant galaxies, according to the paper.

Gravitational lensing is also known as the "Einstein Ring" because renowned physicist Albert Einstein predicted the possibility in his theory of general relativity.