Scientists Scan Mysterious Planet as It Drifts Through Space

Not every large object in space forms part of a solar system. One of these, SIMP 0136, wanders aimlessly in the Milky Way, about 20 light years away from Earth. Such untethered objects are typically classified either as “free-floating planets,” which form inside a star system, but are thrown out by the gravitational force of another planet, or as “brown dwarfs,” which form like stars in dense molecular clouds of gas and dust, but lack the mass to undergo stable nuclear fusion like a typical star. It is unclear yet whether SIMP 0136 belongs to either of these categories. To try to find out more about SIMP 0136’s characteristics, a team made up of researchers from Boston University and other institutions recently conducted detailed observations of the mysterious free-floating SIMP 0136 using the James Webb Space Telescope.