There is a mysterious reason why the two rogue planets in Orion are emitting intense radio waves
Researchers are unable to determine how this pair of planets that are free-floating came into being or why they emit such a strong light.
Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took a picture of them in October 2023, astronomers have been scratching their minds over the peculiar, spinning pairs of celestial bodies in the Orion Nebula that are nearly the size of Jupiter. Unless they were brutally evicted from a solar system, which is highly improbable given their delicate and undisturbed dance, the free-floating pairs contradict the long-held belief among astronomers that planets can only originate within the orbit of a star.
In the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers recently identified radio-wavelength signals from one of these 42 so-called Jupiter-mass binary objects (JuMBOs). These signals suggest that the pair is extremely luminous. Having radio data definitely adds a new level to the problem, as stated by Luis F. Rodríguez, the primary author of the study, who is an astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It is important to understand what these objects are,” he says.
After learning about the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) discovery, Rodriguez and his team searched for unknown radio-wave sources in the constellation Orion using data from public telescopes. They discovered a source that occurred three times over the course of a decade at the exact same place as the pair, which is often referred to as JuMBO24. The signals indicate that JuMBO24 is not traveling very swiftly through the nebula, which would indicate that it may have been born on its own rather than being blown away from a star system.
“The Orion Nebula is just so far away that I would never have expected there to be detectable radio emissions,” says Melodie Kao, a planetary radio expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not a member of the study. “I would have never expected there to be radio emissions.” The magnetic fields of large planets can attract electrons, which results in the formation of a carousel of electricity that travels around the equator of the planets and emits radio waves in the manner of an antenna.
However, the signal from JuMBO24 would require an extraordinary amount of power to reach Earth. According to Kao, “This JuMBO would have to be extraordinarily bright—one hundred times brighter than anything we’ve ever seen,” to put it another way. If this property is confirmed, JuMBOs would be even more perplexing than they already are because the magnetic field of a typical planet is not capable of maintaining such a brilliant glow.
The astronomer Jan Forbrich, who works at the University of Hertfordshire in England, adds that “I don’t think the last word has been spoken on this,” but that “it’s a really intriguing paper.” Despite not participating in this investigation, Forbrich’s 2012 discovery of an unexplained radio source in Orion enabled the conduct of this study. Both he and Kao anticipate conducting additional radio surveys of this and other JuMBOs to confirm their status as influential radio sources.
The opinion of Rodríguez is that a greater number of radio telescopes ought to listen to the station of Orion. According to him, JuMBOs might contribute to our comprehension of the origin of planets and the number of planets in the universe. In his words, “it means there are probably a zillion planets in our own galaxy that we haven’t accounted for.” This is because if such couples can develop without a host star, then it has the potential to occur.
