Astronomers have identified an enormous ‘growth spurt’ in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead. The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second. This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet of any kind, providing valuable insights into how they form and grow.

Berlin (dpa) – Six billion tonnes per second — that’s the rate at which the planet Cha 1107-7626 eats up gas and dust from its surroundings, based on…

Er treibt einsam durch das All und frisst: Noch nie wurde ein Planet beobachtet, der sich derart große Mengen Gas einverleibt wie »Cha 1107-7626«. Eigentlich verhält er sich wie ein Stern – was bedeutet das?