Scientists suspected that a giant planet called “2MASS J2126-8140” was alone, traveling the galaxy without its star. However, the latest data suggests that this planet is still not homeless: its star is just very, very far away. More precisely, at a distance of a trillion kilometers from it.
To make this distance easier, it is about 6900 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The radius of the orbit of the planet is 140 times greater than that of Pluto. At such a distance, a dim red dwarf around which the planet rotates looks like only one, undistinguished star in the sky.
Astronomer Simon Murphy and his colleagues at the Australian National University discovered the relationship between the planet and the star after determining their distance to the Earth - about 100 light years. Further analysis showed that these objects move together.
Planet 2MASS J2126-8140 is a gas giant 12-15 times the size of Jupiter, and it takes about a million years to complete one orbit around its star. Scientists still do not know how such a star system could have been formed.
“They could not have formed, like our system, from a large disk of dust and gas,” said Murphy.
Scientists suggest that the star duet and the planets were born relatively recently (10 to 45 million years ago) and they originated from a “gas cloud that sent them one way,” says Murphy.
“This system is definitely in a quiet part of the galaxy. The star and the planet are so weakly interconnected that any star passing by could completely destroy this bond. ”
Based on Popular Science
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