Tiny, round, cold clouds in space have all the right
characteristics to form planets with no parent star. New observations, made
with Chalmers University of Technology telescopes, show that not all free-floating
planets were thrown out of existing planetary systems. They can also be born
free.
Previous research has shown that there may be as many as
200 billion free-floating planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Until now
scientists have believed that such “rogue planets”, which don’t orbit around a
star, must have been ejected from existing planetary systems.