Rogue exoplanet or failed star? James Webb Space Telescope looks into a new cosmic case
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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have peered into the atmosphere of a cosmic body that could be a rogue planet or a "failed star." Either way, the world wanders the cosmos without a parent.
The cosmic orphan, or "free-floating planetary-mass object," designated SIMP 0136 drifts through the universe around 20 light-years from Earth — and it does so without a stellar anchor. SIMP 0136 has a mass that's around 13 times the mass of Jupiter, but it is around the same size as the solar system gas giant. Discovered in 2003, SIMP 0136 rotates so rapidly that a day on this rogue world lasts just around 2.4 Earth hours.
There is a possibility that SIMP 0136 isn't a planet at all but is an object called a "brown dwarf," a stellar body that forms like a star but fails to gather enough mass to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in its core. The confusion arises from the fact that these "failed stars" have a lower mass limit of around 13 times the mass of Jupiter — right around the mass of SIMP 0136, in fact.
Because SIMP 0136 is relatively bright for an isolated planetary mass object and its light isn't contaminated by the light of a parent star, it has been a popular target for astronomers.Thus, even before the JWST examined this object, a range of ground-based instruments as well as the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes had studied it. These investigations, however, left astronomers with some puzzles surrounding SIMP 0136.
Astronomers had previously discovered that SIMP 0136 fluctuates in brightness. It was reasoned that these changes couldn't simply be the result of clouds on the Jupiter-size world alone, but rather have to do with a complex combination of atmospheric factors.
Using the JWST, the team was able to monitor infrared light from SIMP 0136 for two full rotations, observing variations in the world's cloud layers, temperature and even its chemistry. Many of the details the scientists observed were previously hidden from view.
"We already knew that it varies in brightness, and we were confident that there are patchy cloud layers that rotate in and out of view and evolve over time," Allison McCarthy, study team leader and a researcher at Boston University, said in a statement. "We also thought there could be temperature variations, chemical reactions, and possibly some effects of auroral activity affecting the brightness, but we weren't sure."
Observing SIMP 0136 with the JWST over two rotations allowed the team to use the telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) as well as its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). This meant the researchers could collect data in a wide range of wavelengths of infrared light.
The result was hundreds of highly detailed light curves showing how each wavelength of infrared light changed in brightness as SIMP 0136 rotated."To see the full spectrum of this object change over the course of minutes was incredible," Johanna Vos , the team's principal investigator and a researcher at Trinity College Dublin, said in the statement. "Until now, we only had a little slice of the near-infrared spectrum from Hubble, and a few brightness measurements from Spitzer."
The researchers noticed that the infrared light from SIMP 0136 had distinct light curve shapes, with some wavelengths brightening while others dimmed; the rest did not change at all.They reasoned there must be various factors influencing these variations.
"Imagine watching Earth from far away. If you were to look at each color separately, you would see different patterns that tell you something about its surface and atmosphere, even if you couldn't make out the individual features," Philip Muirhead, study team member and a researcher at Boston University, said in the statement. "Blue would increase as oceans rotate into view. Changes in brown and green would tell you something about soil and vegetation."To assess what is causing the light variations of SIMP 0136, the team developed atmospheric models to determine which regions of the atmosphere were responsible for which wavelength of light."Different wavelengths provide information about different depths in the atmosphere," McCarthy said. "We started to realize that the wavelengths that had the most similar light-curve shapes also probed the same depths, which reinforced this idea that they must be caused by the same mechanism."
One band of infrared wavelengths originated from deep into the atmosphere of SIMP 0136 where the team suspects patchy clouds of iron particles lurk. Another wavelength grouping is thought to come from higher in the atmosphere and patchy clouds of silicates.
The final set of wavelengths are theorized to originate from high above these clouds in relation to the temperature of SIMP 0136. Brighter areas could correspond with auroras detected around SIMP 0136 in radiowaves.Alternatively, these bright patches could be the result of hot gas traveling upwards through the atmosphere of SIMP 0136.
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There are light curves that the JWST saw from SIMP 0136 that can't be explained by either the object's clouds or its temperature.These could be influenced by the carbon chemistry of SIMP 0136's atmosphere, as pockets of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide rotated in and out of the JWST's view. Another explanation could be chemical reactions causing changes in the atmosphere of SIMP 0136.
"We haven't really figured out the chemistry part of the puzzle yet, but these results are really exciting because they are showing us that the abundances of molecules like methane and carbon dioxide could change from place to place and over time," Vos said. "If we are looking at an exoplanet and can get only one measurement, we need to consider that it might not be representative of the entire planet."
The team's research was published on Monday (March 3) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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USA Today
33 minutes ago
- USA Today
Could an asteroid hit the moon? Odds rise after NASA's Webb examines YR4. The projections
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Yahoo
6 hours ago
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I asked the White House to comment on Vought's apparent fingerprints on the NASA budget plan, but received no reply. The abrupt termination of Isaacman's candidacy for NASA administrator is just another blow to the agency's prospects for survival. The space community, which saw Isaacman as a political moderate committed to NASA's institutional goals, was cautiously optimistic about his nomination. "Someone who had the perceived endorsement of the president and the power to execute, would be in a position if not to change the budget numbers themselves, but to take a smart, studied and effective route to figure out how to make the agency work better with less money," Dreier told me. That may have been wishful thinking, he acknowledged. No replacement has yet been nominated, but "I don't think anyone is thinking this is going to be a better outcome for the space agency, whoever Trump nominates," Dreier says. 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Scientific American
7 hours ago
- Scientific American
New Doubts about Milky Way–Andromeda Collision, Explanation of 2023 Marine Heat Wave and Worms That Build Towers
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Let's kick off the week with a quick roundup of some science news you may have missed. You've probably heard that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is doomed to collide with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy sometime around 5 billion years from now. But according to new research, maybe we shouldn't count on this multigalactic merger deal going through. In a study published last Monday in Nature Astronomy, researchers who analyzed data from the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope and NASA's Hubble say the event is more of a coin flip than a given: the team's 100,000 computer simulations suggest there's just about a 50/50 chance of the two galaxies colliding within the next 10 billion years or so. When you look at the next 4 to 5 billion years, that chance drops down to around 2%. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. In other space news, scientists are buzzing about a tiny star that punches way above its weight. TOI-6894 is a red dwarf that's roughly 20% as massive as our sun. But in a study published last Wednesday in Nature Astronomy, researchers say they've spotted the signature of a giant planet orbiting the little guy. The planet, called TOI-6894b, is described as a low-density gas giant—it is a little bigger than Saturn, but only has around half as much mass. Astronomers say the presence of a gas giant around such a small star is so surprising that it challenges the most widely accepted theory of planet formation. That theory, called core accretion, suggests that giant planets are born when their solid cores get massive enough to start pulling in lots of gas. Smaller stars generally lack enough gas and dust in their protoplanetary discs to allow for such a process, but this red dwarf ended up with a gas giant anyhow. Because red dwarf stars are super common in our galaxy, this could mean gas giants are more plentiful than we thought. The researchers will use the James Webb Space Telescope to study the planet's atmosphere, which should provide more clues about its formation. Now let's move on to some environmental news. Back in the summer of 2023 an extreme marine heat wave hit the North Atlantic Ocean, affecting water temperatures from Greenland to the Sahara and all the way over to the Americas. A study published last Wednesday in Nature aimed to explain why. The researchers say the summer temperature surge was equivalent to around 20 years of typical warming in the North Atlantic. While climate change, of course, played a role, the new study pinpoints some other factors that made water temperatures particularly hot that summer. For starters, in June and July of that year, the winds over the North Atlantic were weaker than at any other period on record, which meant less churning to mix sun-warmed surface waters. As a result heat was more concentrated and rose more quickly. The researchers also note that it's possible a reduction in sulphur emissions led to fewer clouds in some areas, so more sunlight hit the water. But the scientists were quick to add that weak wind was the primary driver—and that climate change is likely to make things worse. Reducing pollution from the atmosphere, generally speaking, remains a great thing to do. In a news release, the study's lead author noted that if we don't cut down our fossil fuel emissions, extreme marine heat waves like the one we saw in 2023 will only get more common and more intense. And that's bad news for everyone: warm water releases heat into the atmosphere, contributing to heat waves and severe rainstorms. Warmer oceans also mean more hurricanes. And higher water temperatures are tied to increases in coral bleaching as well. But another study, published last Thursday in Frontiers in Marine Science, offers some hope for ailing coral—not from bleaching but from a disease that can be just as devastating to a reef. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, was first identified off the coast of Florida just over a decade ago and has now been spotted on reefs throughout the Caribbean. More than 20 species of coral can catch it. SCTLD quickly destroys a coral's soft tissue, with some species dying within weeks of symptoms appearing. It's not clear exactly what causes SCTLD, but it seems likely that bacteria at least play a part because treating affected corals with an antibiotic paste has been shown to help them survive. The issue with this treatment is that it's a temporary fix, and it opens the door for the potential evolution of a resistant strain of whatever bacterium is involved. This new study reports on the promising results of treating coral with pro biotics instead. Corals have microbiomes just like we do, and a boost of good bacteria seems to help keep them healthy. The researchers behind the new study started by testing more than 200 strains of bacteria from disease-resistant corals and ultimately focusing on a particularly promising strain from great star corals in the lab. In 2020 the scientists took their experiment into the ocean, applying a solution of seawater and probiotics to a Florida reef impacted by SCTLD and using weighted plastic bags to create a sort of in-ocean aquarium that kept the treatment from floating away. After two and a half years, the probiotics seemed to be preventing the spread of SCTLD without causing any other disruptions to the reefs' microbiome. More research is needed to see how this treatment might impact coral in other regions, but probiotics could prove to be an important tool for fighting this devastating disease. We'll wrap up today's episode with something fun, if maybe also a little bit creepy: an act of 'collective hitchhiking' featuring a living tower of worms. Nematodes are tiny worms that you probably don't spend much time thinking about, but they're actually the most abundant animals on Earth, making up an estimated four-fifths of all animal life on our planet. According to a study published last Thursday in Current Biology, these creatures might sometimes use their vast numbers to make up for their miniscule size. Individual nematodes will sometimes stand on their tails and wave around to try to hitch a ride on a passing animal. Scientists have long suspected that they can also link together to form multi-worm 'towers' to increase their height, but this had only ever been observed in a lab setting. In the new study scientists describe seeing some of these waving worm towers inside decaying apples and pears found in the dirt of orchards. Further observations proved that, far from a chaotic pile of worms, these structures reflect the kind of superorganism behavior we see in slime molds and fire ants. While many species of nematode could be found in each piece of rotting fruit, the towers only consisted of members of the same species. Once in place, the nematodes would wave in unison as if they were one giant worm. Experiments in the lab showed that nematodes could self-assemble in just two hours and remain stable for more than 12. They could even create little arms with which to explore the space and build bridges to cross gaps to new locations. So the next time you're struggling with a group project at school or work, just remind yourself that even nematodes can figure out how to work together. That's all for this week's science news roundup. We'll be back on Wednesday. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
