*WASHINGTON – Scientists have found evidence of the first everplanetary-mass object beyond our solar system. And it’s huge!*
Probably a dozen times bigger than Jupiter, according to the researchers atthe National Radio Astronomy Observatory. They’re calling it a ‘rogue’planet because it appears to be traveling through space without any kind oforbit around a parent star.
‘This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf,or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially helpus understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets,’ said MelodieKao, led the study while a graduate student at Caltech, and is now a HubblePostdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University.
Brown dwarfs are objects too massive to be considered planets, yet notmassive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen in their cores — theprocess that powers stars.
Kao’s team used a radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexicocalled – fittingly – the ‘Very Large Array’ (VLA) to pick up its magneticactivity and study it.