Astronomers have discovered a massive \u201crogue planet\u201d that is growing by six billion tonnes per second \u2014 the fastest rate yet seen for a distant world.<\/p>\n
The planet, Cha 1107-7626, is about 620 light years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Not tethered to any star, it is ploughing its own course through the cosmos, and is up to ten times more massive than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.<\/p>\n
A study based on observations by the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope (VLT) suggests it is still growing, pulling material from the vast disc of gas and dust that surrounds it.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Butterfly Nebula gives a glimpse of how our sun may die<\/a><\/p>\n As it pulls in the material, it creates a hot spot on the planet\u2019s surface that is visible to the VLT\u2019s instruments.<\/p>\n The observations show that the planet is now accreting matter about eight times faster than was seen a few months ago. Astronomers gathered clues about the nature of this accretion process by comparing the light emitted by the object before and during this burst.<\/p>\n Accretion is the process by which matter accumulates due to gravitational attraction, forming larger and larger celestial bodies such as stars and planets. Remarkably, magnetic activity appears to have played a role in driving the dramatic infall of mass towards Cha 1107-7626, something that has previously been observed only in stars.<\/p>\n Rogue worlds are rare and enigmatic. Aleks Scholz, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews and a co-author of the study, said: \u201cThe origin of rogue planets remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?\u201d<\/p>\n