The James Webb Space Telescope captured images in the near-infrared wavelength range of the region near the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula. - CD/ANN
SHANGHAI: Deep in space, mysterious wanderers roam freely - of planetary masses yet not hosted by stars. These celestial nomads, called planetary-mass objects (PMOs), have baffled astronomers since their discovery in 2000. How were these cosmic orphans born?
On Thursday (Feb 27), an international team led by China's Shanghai Astronomical Observatory cracked the code in Science Advances: Violent collisions between newborn stars' gaseous disks in crowded stellar nurseries are mass-producing these rogue worlds. The discovery not only solves a 25-year-old puzzle but also may rewrite cosmic classification rules.
