NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered yet another rare sight while scanning the depths of space. 40 of them, actually. Earlier this week, the European Space Agency – which operates the telescope alongside NASA – shared images that show the Orion nebula in unprecedented detail, and captured dozens of “planets” that apparently “shouldn’t exist”.
The planet-like objects are around the size of Jupiter (the biggest planet in our solar system) but that isn’t the most surprising thing about them. What’s really caught researchers off guard is that they don’t seem to be orbiting a star, but instead float freely in groups of two through space.
This upends what we previously knew about planet formation, since this was based on the idea that they come together from clumps of dust that surround a given star, which the planets are then bound to by gravity. In fact, these free-floating objects are so new and mysterious that they’ve earned their own nickname: Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or “JuMBOs” for short.
The Orion nebula, or M42, is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth, sharing the same spiral arm of the Milky Way. It’s even visible to the naked eye, appearing faintly in a clear night sky. Nevertheless, astronomers are currently unsure about why the JuMBOs are floating in pairs, and why they don’t seem connected to any nearby stars. Some say that they might have formed out of regions in the nebula where the material wasn’t dense enough to form full stars, while others say they might have formed around stars before being flung violently out of their orbit.
This is why scientists are always on the lookout for bizarre phenomena in outer space, of course. Often, they can help us confirm our more outlandish theories about the universe, or even force us to “rethink our understanding” entirely. Most of all, they serve to remind us how little we really know, and how much is left out there to discover.