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James Webb Telescope makes 'JuMBO' discovery of planet-like objects in Orion
- ltbarcly3 3y agoThe confusion about 'pairs' is because it takes an interaction with another object to eject something from an orbit. (and as mentioned in the article it's not clear how these could form on their own). So how these would form is not clear, we don't see binaries of gas giants orbiting stars, but to be ejected they would have to somehow have been 2 gas giants interacting with a third mass (and not the star they are orbiting) to eject the pair. Pairs of objects can't couple like this if they randomly meet in space because they would always be on a hyperbolic trajectory relative to each other unless they had a mechanism to bleed energy, which generally they do not outside of a stellar disk. I guess my hypothesis is that these gas giants were ejected from the system they formed in, but rather than being merely ejected they also collided with something which ripped them apart. Imagine if the collision which created the moon also ejected the earth from orbit, like that.
- lawlessone 3y agoThose photos are amazing.
- perihelions 3y agohttps://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01231 https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01231 ("Jupiter Mass Binary Objects in the Trapezium Cluster")
- jl6 3y ago> Gas physics suggests you shouldn't be able to make objects with the mass of Jupiter on their own This is new to me. I always imagined that on the way to star formation the coalescing gas would start as a small central mass and grow larger and larger, passing through a Jupiter-mass stage and eventually igniting. I also imagined that the process could involve several small central masses which would variously end up as binary/ternary/++ star systems and all manner of brown dwarves/planets/debris in orbit around the center. And I also imagined that this process would stop at whatever point the gas supply ran out. So in my mind, a pair of Jupiters would be a failed binary star system that didn’t quite have enough mass to achieve ignition as a pair of stars. But maybe I’m missing a gas-physics reason why it couldn’t happen like this.
- macintux 3y agoIt would be interesting to hear more. My only (completely uneducated) guess is that if you don’t have enough gas to form a star, the density isn’t sufficient to begin the process at all.
- misja111 3y agoThat's a fascinating thought actually. Why does a mass of gas always have to materialize into a solar system? Why not into one or more planets, if the amount is too low? Or also the other way around: what if there is so much gas that it's too much to fit into a single star, what would it materialize into then? A twin star solar system, or something else?
- samus 3y agoThere is no "too much". The result would simply be a larger star.
- dougmwne 3y agoThere is a theorized “Eddington Limit” that stars can only grow to a certain mass before the power of their fusion reactions counterbalance gravity and they blow off additional matter instead of absorbing it. It’s approximately a few hundred solar masses.
- liotier 3y agoHow does the Eddington Limit relate to black hole formation ? Does it means that accretion is slow until the star's matter has finished fusing ?
- samus 3y agoBlack holes form when there is insufficient force to counter accretion and subsequent compression by gravity. There are a few forces that act as a counter: - thermally generated pressure as a result of exothermic reactions (like nuclear fusion), - Coulomb pressure (atomic nuclei opposing each other), or - quantum-mechanical degeneracy pressure (keeps white and brown dwarfs and neutron stars from collapsing)
- austin-cheney 3y agoThat photo with the 5 insets indicates 5 pairs of objects but it also shows 3 additional objects (not called out) with the same relative luminosity.
- irrational 3y agoThe pairs really does sound strange. If they found one pair, that would be odd. Two pairs? Huh, is there a pattern? But five plus pairs? I can't wait for the theorists to explain how these are so common.
- zardo 3y agoMaybe previously discovered rogue planets via gravitational micro-lensing are also binaries. I don't think they would be easy to tell apart.
- pmontra 3y agoMaybe every single binary Jupiter gets ejected from its solar system because of unknown unknowns. There are many young solar systems there, so we have a chance to watch them even if they don't occur often.
- actionfromafar 3y agoThey've seen things you people wouldn't believe... binary pairs on fire off the shoulder of Orion... All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...
- UtopiaPunk 3y agoWow, cool!
- tristramb 3y agoI remember reading many years ago that the Orion Nebula could be expected to full of loose planets that have ejected by newly formed solar-systems as they settle down. It didn't mention anything about binary planets, though.
- lapama 3y agoThey could be "alive". There is little margin to explain the binary aspect in Amy other way.