The process of planet formation has already been well understood by scientists over the past decades. Planets consist of protoplanets, or creatures “built” by gravity into protoplanetary disks orbiting newly formed stars. Therefore, most often, the already formed planets remain close to their stars, surrounded by a common center of mass.
They keep spinning until their star dies, when they are destroyed (most often). It’s inside Case Earth, Mars, Jupiter and other planets of the solar system, which formed about 4.5 billion years ago around the young sun and revolve around it to this day. However, planetary history is not always rosy, as scientists now argue.
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Astronomers have discovered a collection of more than 70 lonely planets
An international team of astronomers using the telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the European Space Agency (ESA) Gaia probe and other observatories has discovered a group of single exoplanets (exoplanets), that is, those that … do not orbit any star.
As explained by the researchers, there are “at least 70” planets in the group (it is currently difficult to estimate their exact number, but at least 70) and they have been discovered in the star-forming region of the Milky Way, relatively close to our solar system. Objects have masses similar to Jupiter’s and move freely through space – that is, they are not gravitationally bound to stars.
We didn’t know how much [planet swobodnych – red.] We can expect and are excited to find a lot
– Says the lead author of the study, astronomer Nuria Merritt Roig, working in the laboratory DrAstrophysics at Bordeaux in France and the University of Vienna in Austria.
Always vague and usually very dark. Researchers found unique samples
Scientists assure that the discovery of 70 free planets is an absolute record. So far, very few of these things have been discovered. All because it is so elusive and mysterious. They are not illuminated by stars and do not block the light of any of them, and thanks to the phenomenon of transit (the passage of a planet in front of its star, which leads to a noticeable decrease in its brightness), we discover the most “ordinary” planets.
In the case of solitary planets, researchers must use the gravitational effect on space-time or … hope for a little luck. In this case, the free planets were found because they were very small. They were created a few million years ago and are still hot enough to emit small amounts of light.
The team of astronomers used in their research data collected during a trivial period of 20 years of observation. The researchers explain that among the tens of millions of light sources in the observed region, very weak sources were separated. Then they were analyzed and found to be solitary.
We measured the light motions, colors and brightness of tens of millions of sources over a large area of the sky. These measurements allowed us to accurately identify the weakest objects in this region – the free planets
Merit Roig explains.
How lonely planets are formed?
Researchers don’t know how the set of objects just discovered was created. Scientists assume, however, that free planets generally form (perhaps in one of two ways—they are formed in Results A very small gas cloud collapses to form a star, or is not ejected from orbits around its parent stars until after some time. new The research aims to help determine which of these models is most likely.
Astronomers talk about a breakthrough in the search for these types of objects, because the discovery shows that they are not uncommon in the Milky Way, as we have thought until now. Even Hervey Bowie, one of the study’s authors, claims that in our galaxy alone there may be up to several billion isolated planets. It’s just so far we haven’t been able to detect them.
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