Astronomers discover a bizarre 'runaway' planet acting like a star

Astronomers have spotted a 'rogue' planet gobbling gas and dust at a record rate, and they can't explain its baffling behaviour.

- ELIZABETH HOWELL

Although many rogue planets, which float freely through space without orbiting a star, have been discovered before, this one, known as Cha 1107-7626, appears to be the fastest-growing free-floating planet ever discovered, gorging at a peak rate of 6 billion tonnes of matter per second, according to observations from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the James Webb Space Telescope. The exoplanet's rapid growth spurt may help scientists learn more about the difference between large planets and small stars. “Our main motivation to study this kind of object is to understand whether these objects are former planets that have been ejected from their planetary system, or they have formed 'isolated' from the gravitational collapse of molecular cloud material, like stars,” said Víctor Almendros-Abad, an astronomer at the Palermo Astronomical Observatory in It