James Webb Telescope Found Strange Free-Floating Object in Space
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a mysterious “planetary-mass” object, named SIMP 0136, floating freely in interstellar space.
Located 20 light-years from Earth and weighing 13 times Jupiter’s mass, it spins rapidly, completing a rotation every 2.4 hours.
Using JWST’s infrared capabilities, researchers detected “complex atmospheric features,” including potential cloud layers and temperature variations, as detailed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
SIMP 0136 shares similarities with gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, which “also have multiple cloud layers and high-altitude hot spots,” though it lacks a host star.
Astronomers speculate it could be a brown dwarf, an object between a planet and a star. This discovery builds on earlier observations by NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer telescopes.
Lead author Allison McCarthy noted, “We already knew it varies in brightness, and we were confident there are patchy cloud layers that rotate in and out of view and evolve over time.”
JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph provided a broader infrared spectrum, revealing new insights. Principal investigator Johanna Vos explained, “Until now, we only had a little slice of the near-infrared spectrum from Hubble, and a few brightness measurements from Spitzer.”
By analyzing hundreds of light curves against atmospheric models, researchers identified patchy clouds and bright “hot spots,” possibly linked to auroras.
Coauthor Philip Muirhead compared the observations to viewing Earth from afar: “If you were to look at each color separately, you would see different patterns that tell you something about its surface and atmosphere.”
JWST also detected carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, but questions remain. Vos said, “But these results are really exciting because they are showing us that the abundances of molecules like methane and carbon dioxide could change from place to place and over time.”
“If we are looking at an exoplanet and can get only one measurement, we need to consider that it might not be representative of the entire planet,” she added.
