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Scientists Just Weighed Planet, Here’s How

Astronomers have achieved something that seemed impossible until now: they successfully weighed a planet floating alone through the Milky Way galaxy with no star to orbit, marking the first time scientists have directly measured both the mass and distance of a rogue planet simultaneously. The Saturn sized world was discovered by an international team led by Subo Dong of Peking University when they combined observations from telescopes on Earth with data from the now retired European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, using a rare cosmic alignment to unlock secrets about this mysterious wanderer. The planet has a mass about 22 percent that of Jupiter, roughly the same as Saturn, and sits approximately 10,000 light years from Earth in the direction of the Milky Way’s center, likely having formed around a star before being violently thrown out of its planetary system during chaotic gravitational encounters. Scientists detected the rogue world through a technique called microlensing, which occurs when a planet’s gravity bends and magnifies the light from a distant background star like a natural magnifying glass, creating a brief flicker that reveals the hidden object’s presence.

What made this discovery groundbreaking was that observers spotted the microlensing event from two different locations at the same time, with Earth based telescopes detecting it about two hours before Gaia saw it from 1.5 million kilometers away in space, and this difference in timing allowed researchers to calculate the planet’s exact distance and mass for the first time. The finding proves that billions or even trillions of starless planets may be drifting through our galaxy after being ejected from their original homes, with some possibly forming independently in space like miniature failed stars called brown dwarfs. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launching in September 2026 will conduct infrared microlensing surveys expected to discover hundreds more rogue planets, and scientists will finally have a proven method to weigh these cosmic orphans and understand their mysterious origins. The door is now open to study this emerging population of lonely planets wandering the darkness between stars, rewriting what astronomers thought they knew about how planetary systems can fall apart and send worlds tumbling into the void.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2509858-rare-saturn-sized-rogue-planet-is-first-to-have-its-mass-measured/

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