A young Jupiter may have been discovered in our solar neighborhood. Scientists have found one of the youngest and brightest free-floating, planet-like objects that's relatively close to the sun to date.
The planet-like object is only 10 million years old. That makes it young when looking at it on a galactic timescale. It's currently between four and eight times the mass of Jupiter, which makes it fall in the range of a small brown dwarf of a large planet.
The new object is named 2MASS J1119-1137 and was discovered with the help of its unique light signature with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
"We identified 2MASS J1119-1137 by its highly unusual light signature," said Kendra Kellogg, a graduate student at Western's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "It emits much more light in the infrared part of the spectrum than it would be expected to if it had already aged and cooled."
In this case, the researchers had to distinguish the new object from other potential objects that may actually just be stars instead of potential planets.
"Much more commonly, distant old and red stars residing in the far corners of our galaxy can display the same characteristics as nearby planet-like objects," said Jacqueline Faherty of Carnegie, one of the researchers. "When the light from the distant stars passes through the large expanses of dust in our galaxy on its way to our telescopes, the light gets reddened so these stars can pose as potentially exciting nearby young planet-like objects in our data, when they actually are not that at all."
In this case, the researchers found that 2MASS J1119-1137 is a low-mass object and not a reddened star. After finding out that its age is about 10 million years, the researchers believe that this object is actually a flee-floating planet analog. It's very similar to another one that was discovered three years ago, called PSO J318.5?22.
"Discovering free-floating planet analogs like 2MASS J1119-1137 and PSO J318.5?22 offers a great opportunity to study the nature of giant planets outside the solar system," Kellogg said.
The findings reveal a bit more about these objects, which may help scientists better understand the process of planet evolution.
The findings are published in the April 2016 journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
