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How do two gas giants become isolated in the cosmos?
A November story from Quanta Magazine that was published in Wired today considered the nascent attempts to explain so-called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects (JUMBOs) — gas giant pairs, free-floating and orbiting only each other — littering the Orion nebula.
According to the article, they’re too light to have formed alone and are unexpectedly numerous. One possibility is planets with “tightly-spaced orbits” being dragged out of their solar system by a passing star.
Rogue Worlds Throw Planetary Ideas Out of Orbit | Quanta Magazine
[Quanta Magazine]
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