{"id":245552,"date":"2023-10-09T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=245552"},"modified":"2023-10-05T05:30:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T04:30:53","slug":"jupiter-sized-objects-in-orion-nebula-baffle-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/jupiter-sized-objects-in-orion-nebula-baffle-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Jupiter-Sized Objects in Orion Nebula Baffle Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_245553\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/James-Webb-Space-Telescope.webp\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-245553\" class=\"wp-image-245553\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/James-Webb-Space-Telescope.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/James-Webb-Space-Telescope.webp 770w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/James-Webb-Space-Telescope-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/James-Webb-Space-Telescope-768x512.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-245553\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist&#8217;s rendering shows the James Webb Space Telescope.<br \/>File: Northrop Grumman\/NASA via AP<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><em>The new entities, nicknamed \u2018JuMBOs\u2019, are neither stars nor planets. And they shouldn\u2019t exist, researchers say.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"article-b-l\">\n<div class=\"article-dates\">\n<div class=\"date-simple css-1yjq2zp\"><span aria-hidden=\"true\"><em>2 Oct 2023<\/em> &#8211; <\/span>Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) have used NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope to make an astonishing discovery: free-floating objects the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, in the Orion Nebula, the nearest star-forming region to Earth.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wysiwyg wysiwyg--all-content css-ibbk12\" aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p>The discovery has upended our understanding of how stars and planets are formed. Before this, scientists thought nebulas, which give birth to stars inside huge clouds of gas and dust, weren\u2019t capable of spontaneously creating planet-sized objects, but the new findings suggest otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>Even more baffling is the fact that the objects are formed in pairs instead of individually.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s something wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation \u2013 or both,\u201d Samuel Pearson, an ESA scientist who worked on the research, told The New York Times. \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">New space images!\ud83e\udd29<\/p>\n<p>The NASA\/ESA\/CSA James <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Webb?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >#Webb<\/a> Space Telescope has added detailed images of the Orion Nebula to our ESASky application.<\/p>\n<p>Zoom into this region with a rich diversity of phenomena including protostars, brown dwarfs and even free-floating planets! <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/In4FQk8hrX\" >pic.twitter.com\/In4FQk8hrX<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; European Space Agency (@esa) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/esa\/status\/1708787072788504816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >October 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The new entities have been called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs. They aren\u2019t big enough to be stars, and because they don\u2019t orbit around a star, JuMBOs aren\u2019t technically planets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cMost of us don\u2019t have time to get wrapped up in this debate about what is a planet and what isn\u2019t a planet,\u201d Professor Mark McCaughrean, a senior adviser for science and exploration at the ESA, told The Guardian. \u201cIt\u2019s like my car is a chihuahua-mass pet. But it\u2019s not a chihuahua. It\u2019s a cat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to a research paper that McCaughrean co-authored and hasn\u2019t been peer-reviewed yet, JuMBOs are about a million years old, which makes them young relative to the rest of the universe. Their surface temperatures are roughly 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n<p>But unlike planets, which are eventually able to maintain consistent temperatures thanks to the energy they receive from the stars they orbit, JuMBOs eventually cool down rapidly and freeze. They\u2019re also largely made up of gas, which means they\u2019re unlikely to be able to support life.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>Gravitational waves &#8211; astrophysicists hear the hum of the universe:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Gravitational waves: Astrophysicists hear the hum of the universe\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n6gp-LFk8eo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have multiple hypotheses for how JuMBOs came into being. The first is that they were formed in areas of the nebula too sparse to create proper stars. The second is that they were formed as planets meant to orbit stars but then got \u201ckicked out\u201d for unknown reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ejection hypothesis is the favored one at the moment,\u201d McCaughrean told the BBC. \u201cWe know single planets can get kicked out from star systems. But how do you kick out pairs of these things together? Right now, we don\u2019t have an answer. It\u2019s one for the theoreticians.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other scientists called the pairs phenomenon unprecedented.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy reactions ranged from \u2018Whaaat?!?\u2019 to \u2018Are you sure?\u2019 to \u2018That\u2019s just so weird\u2019 to \u2018How could binaries be ejected together?\u2019\u201d astronomer Heidi Hammel, who was not on the research team, told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>No current scientific models, she said, predicted pairs of planet-sized objects being ejected from a nebula but added that maybe there just hasn\u2019t been a telescope powerful enough to spot them before.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists and astronomers have studied the Orion Nebula for years to observe the formation and early evolution of stars and other celestial objects.<\/p>\n<p>It lies 1,350 light years away from Earth and is visible to the naked eye as a misty smudge at the bottom of the Orion constellation, part of the \u201csword\u201d of a mythical Greek hunter whom the constellation is named after.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2023\/10\/2\/james-webb-telescope-finding-jupiter-sized-objects-in-orion-nebula-baffles-scientists?utm_source=brevo&amp;utm_campaign=Weekly%204102023&amp;utm_medium=email\" >Go to Original &#8211; aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2 Oct 2023 &#8211; The new entities, nicknamed \u2018JuMBOs\u2019, are neither stars nor planets. And they shouldn\u2019t exist, researchers say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":245553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[936,939,304,1157,938],"class_list":["post-245552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-astronomy","tag-cosmology","tag-science","tag-space-science","tag-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245556,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245552\/revisions\/245556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}