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Astronomers have seen a new “rogue” planet floating through our galaxy, apparently unattached to a star. With a mass somewhere between that of Earth and Mars, the planet is believed to be the smallest of its kind ever discovered.
The finding is courtesy of researchers using a technique called “gravitational microlensing,” which involves looking at objects in the foreground, such as the planet, passing in front of distant stars. The closest object is revealed as the star’s light bends and increases, a phenomenon that also reveals characteristics such as its mass.
“When we first saw this event, it was clear that it must have been caused by an extremely small object,” says Radoslaw Poleski, a researcher at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw and co-author of a study on the discovery. published in Astrophysical journal letters. “We can rule out that the planet has a star within about eight astronomical units.” (An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the sun, also known as about 93 million miles.)
Findings based on gravitational microlenses are rare, as they depend on the astronomer’s telescope being in near perfect alignment with the object and the star, adds Przemek Mroz, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute of Technology of California. “If we looked at a single source star, we would have to wait almost a million years to see the microlensing source.
The researchers, who based the study on data collected during microlensing studies of the Milky Way, also say that studying these free-floating planets could allow astronomers to discover more about the galaxy’s planetary systems, including our own.
Other objects that have been detected floating in space in recent months include an asteroid calculated to have a small chance of colliding with Earth just before the US election, and 24 planets considered potentially “super habitable” (which could be useful after the election, tbh).
See a simulated version of a gravitational microlensing event involving a “rogue” planet below.
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