Researchers are working to explain the presence of a mysterious large object floating outside the solar system that may be a rogue planet, RT reported. It appears to be traveling through space alone.
The object is about 20 light years away from Earth, farther than the Alpha Centauri star system that is about 4 light years away. A light year is equal to about 6 trillion miles.
“This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets,” study lead astronomer Melodie Kao said.
A brown dwarf is an object too large to be a planet, but isn’t big enough to sustain the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in its core that is typical of stars. The object is about 13 times heavier that Jupiter, and doesn’t appear to orbit a parent star.
The new discovery, made with the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array telescopes in New Mexico, marks the first radio observations of a planetary-mass object beyond our solar system. It also is first time researchers have measured the magnetic field of such a body, according to Astronomy.com.
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