Astronomers have identified an enormous ‘growth spurt’ in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead. The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second. This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet of any kind, providing valuable insights into how they form and grow.

A young rogue planet about 620 light-years away from Earth has experienced a record-breaking “growth spurt,” hoovering up some six billion tons of gas and dust each second over a couple of months. A team of international researchers have explored changes in the planet’s growth and immediate surroundings. The observations provide insight into how rogue planets—free-floating planetary-mass objects that do not orbit stars—behave and grow in their infancy.  

Dark energy, which drives the accelerated expansion of the Universe, is assumed to be constant since the Universe began by today’s leading model. Researchers from Japan, Spain, and the U.S. explored the possibility of time-varying dark energy by conducting one of the largest cosmological simulations to date. Their results show that while dark energy variations have modest effects alone, variations in other parameters like matter density significantly alter galaxy formation and cosmic structure, aligning closely with the latest observations.

These curious rings are a relatively new astronomical phenomenon, having been detected for the first time just six years ago. Only a handful of confirmed examples are known – most of which are 10-20 times the size of our Milky Way galaxy. ORCs are enormous, faint, ring-shaped structures of radio emission surrounding galaxies which are visible only in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum and consist of relativistic, magnetised plasma. Previous research has suggested they might be caused by shockwaves from merging supermassive black holes or galaxies. Now, a new study published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society proposes that the rings of light may actually be linked to superwind outflows from spiral host radio galaxies.

Georgia State researchers are joining a bold global mission: to build a revolutionary telescope that could detect life beyond our solar system. An "audacious" leap that might change how we see our place in the universe.