Rogue planet is gobbling up 6.6 billion tons of dust per second
Andrew Paul
created: Oct. 5, 2025, 6:15 p.m. | updated: Oct. 14, 2025, 5:50 p.m.
About 620 light-years from Earth, a gigantic rogue proto-planet is currently devouring 6.6 billion tons of dust and gas per second.
Occasionally, a rogue planet forms as it simply floats in space.
For months, Scholz and colleagues used both the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to monitor this rogue planet now classified as Cha 1107-7626.
In only a matter of months, the rogue planet’s growth rate grew to around 6.6 billion tons per second, about eight times larger than researchers’ initial assessments.
This visible-light image, part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the position in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626.
1 month, 1 week ago: Popular Science