Mysterious cosmic body is a rogue ‘Super-Jupiter’
A phantom “Super-Jupiter” 13 times more massive than our solar system’s gas giant is drifting through the cosmos around 20 light-years from Earth. Although discovered in 2006, the “free-floating planetary-mass object” known as SIMP 0136 has continued to stump astronomers for nearly two decades—is it a rogue planet, failed star, or something else entirely? Thanks to an international team’s recent work utilizing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), newly recorded details are helping clarify the nature of SIMP 0136. The results, published on March 3 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, depict a complicated cosmic body that continues to expand our understanding of the universe. First detected nearly 20 years ago, SIMP J013656.5+093347 (SIMP 0136, for short) appears to be a rapidly rotating, planet-sized object situated in the Pisces constellation. It’s relatively isolated in the northern sky, and is the region’s brightest entity of its kind. Taken altogether, SIMP 0136 offers astronomers...