Lonely planet guide: planets that have no stars

Astronomers on Wednesday said they had found a previously inconceivable phenomenon: planets that do not appear to be anchored to a host star but instead wander the heavens, AFP reported Thursday.

In a two-year scan of the cosmos, 10 planets with roughly the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet of our Solar System, have been found at such enormous distances from the nearest star that some of them could be said to float freely through the Milky Way, the report said.

The investigation, published in the British science journal Nature, breaks new ground in the science of exoplanets, or planets that exist beyond our solar system, AFP said.

More than 500 such planets have been identified since 1995. But these are the first of Jupiter size that have been found to be orbiting at such a huge range from the nearest star or seem to be "unbound" from it, it said.

The new planets were found in a search that looked for objects ranging between 10 and 500 astronomical units (AU) from a star. The AU is a standard measurement comprising the span between Earth and the Sun, nearly 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).

목성급 '떠돌이 행성 가족' 발견

구심점이 되는 항성 없이 우주를 떠돌아다니는 '외로운' 행성의 존재가 발견됐다.

AFP통신은 18일(현지시간) 세계적 과학저널 네이처에 항성으로부터 상상을 넘어서는 먼 거리의 궤도를 돌거나, 중심이 되는 항성 없이 은하계를 떠돌아다니는 행성에 대한 논문이 실렸다고 보도했다.

논문은 2개 연구팀에 의해 작성됐으며 이들은 2년 동안 은하계의 항성 수천만 개를 연구하는 과정에서 이 천체들을 발견했다.

이런 행성의 존재는 1995년부터 500개 이상 관측됐지만 목성 크기의 거대한 행성이 10개나 정처 없이 떠돌아다니는 것이 발견되기는 처음이다.