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Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb), PDRs4ALL ERS Team
Two mysterious “rogue,” Jupiter-sized objects may have arisen from embryonic stars, a new study suggests. The theory can explain some of these aspects Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs), as to why the members of each pair are so widely separated, but more data are needed to confirm the hypothesis.
The James Webb Space Telescope He saw these JuMBOs in the trapezoid region of the Orion Nebula. Each JuMBO pair consists of two gas giants, each between 0.7 and 30 times the mass of Jupiter. These “rogue” companion planets were found to orbit each other – but not the parent star – at a distance of 25 to 400 astronomical units, or 25 to 400 times the average distance between the Earth and the sun.
Astrologers have offered several theories as to how these mysterious pairs are formed. Another theory it’s that they were simultaneously thrown from their homes by a passing star, though other scientists believe that this is impossible. One mind is that the JuMBOs have exited orbits of stars but their gravity pulls them towards each other and out of orbit during close encounters.
However, all these theories assume that JuMBOs come from planets that have already formed. In contrast, the new study suggests a very different idea: that the Orion Nebula’s JuMBOs are not an existing pair of planets but rather the heart of an embryonic star.
A star forms from a large and dense cloud of gas and dust called the pre-stellar core. As the core grows, it collapses under its own weight, forming a child star called a protostar; or interstellar particles, they can form twin or triple stars.
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But such places are not stable places. They may be surrounded by large stars – such as the Orion Nebula – that emit incredibly high-energy radiation. Twenty years ago, astronomers Anthony Whitworth and Hans Zinnecker theoretically demonstrated that these energetic photons can collapse pre-stellar cores, removing their outer layers. At about the same time, a compression wave would push through the center, merging it into a small-mass object. The result was that the star itself turned into a world or a brown dwarfit is sometimes called a “failed star” because it is not big enough to fuse hydrogen to helium.
The authors of the new study were aware of the Whitworth and Zinnecker study and wondered if the same method could create JuMBOs, too. They saw that they were JuMBOs[‘] separation is like that of stellar binary systems and two stars of equal or greater mass to the Sun,” Richard Parkersenior lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Sheffield in the UK and lead author of the new study, told Live Science in an email.
This makes them different from the many brown dwarfs elsewhere in the Milky Way, which are separated by a few Earth-sun distances, Parker said, so another mechanism must be involved. “We assumed that the core had already broken up to form a binary star, but the radiation from the giant star removed most of the mass,” he added.
To test this idea, Parker and Jessica Diamond, a graduate student at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the study, turned to theory. First, they created a group of true pre-stellar cores, each with a mass within that observed in nature. They also assumed that the nucleus would be divided into two, and they determined the central value between the brothers – again, from the values observed between the two stars. Then, they applied Whitworth and Zinnecker’s calculations to actual cores. This hit them with high-energy radiation from a nearby massive star, which removed the central mantle and compressed its core.
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Diamond and Parker found that the resulting paired objects had eight and separation distances similar to JuMBOs’. The findings show that, with the strong push of radiation from neighboring stars, forming binary stars can form pairs of hostile planets, providing an explanation for how the JuMBO twins formed. Their results to learn was published November 5 in The Astrophysical Journal.
More data, such as evidence of JuMBOs in other star formations with massive stars, would help confirm that hypothesis, Parker said. In his opinion, one example of such an area is the Scorpius-Centaurus constellation, a cluster of thousands of stars that make up parts of the constellations Scorpius and Centaurus.
In any case, Parker does not reject JuMBO formation through other means. “I always have a hard time thinking there’s only one way to do things like this,” Parker said. “We know so little about them that it’s possible they can form in different ways.”