Rogue planet devouring 6 billion tons every second

 Astronomers spotted rogue planet devouring 6 billion tons of gas and dust every second

A rogue planet is feasting like a star, rewriting the rules of planetary birth. Astronomers have uncovered a runaway feeding frenzy in a rogue planet drifting freely through space, devouring six billion tonnes of gas and dust every second. Located 620 light-years away in the Chamaeleon constellation, the object, Cha 1107-7626, is growing at the fastest rate ever seen in any planet. The dramatic surge in mass revealed evidence of strong magnetic fields and changing chemistry, including water vapour, previously only observed in young stars. Astronomers say the rogue planet behaviour usually seen in stars. Six hundred and twenty light-years from Earth, a young rogue planet is experiencing an extraordinary growth spurt. Cha 1107-7626. Located about 620 light-years away, this rogue planet is about 5-10 times more massive than Jupiter and doesn’t orbit a star. It is eating up material from a disc around it and, using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have discovered that it is now doing so at a rate of six billion tonnes per second, the fastest ever found for any kind of planet. The team suspects that strong magnetic fields could be funnelling material towards the planet, something only seen in stars. 

Astronomers have spotted a planet named Cha 1107-7626 taking in gas and dust from the disc around it at a rate of six billion tonnes per second, which is a record for a planet of its size. Similar behaviour has been seen in stars, but not in planets. This is an enormous 'growth spurt' in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead. The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second. This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet of any kind, providing valuable insights into how they form and grow. "We were trying to study how fast is the rate of material getting into the object. And what we suddenly found is that there was a very strong growth of material that was impacting the central object," said Víctor Almendros-Abad, an astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo. "And when we saw this, it's when we realised that it was a very special phenomenon. This is the first time that this kind of phenomena has been observed in such a low mass object".

"People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery we see that planetary-mass objects freely floating in space can be exciting places," says Víctor Almendros-Abad. Cha 1107-7626 is still forming, estimated to be five to ten times the size of Jupiter. As a rogue planet, it drifts freely through space without orbiting a star, making its feeding frenzy even more intriguing. The torrent of gas and dust is fuelling unusually rapid growth. "So in this growth spurt, what we found is that there was an increase by almost an order of magnitude, almost 10 times more mass and flux coming into the object. So this is very significant because you have typical variations because of some inhomogeneities in the material around it, but this kind of variation is not typically observed. It's not routine variability," explains Almendros-Abad. The newly studied object is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. This rogue planet is still forming and is fed by a surrounding disc of gas and dust. This material constantly falls onto the free-floating planet, a process known as accretion. However, the team led by Almendros-Abad has now found that the rate at which the young planet is accreting is not steady. 

By August 2025, the planet was accreting about eight times faster than just a few months before, at a rate of six billion tonnes per second! "This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded for a planetary-mass object," says Almendros-Abad. The discovery was made with the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO's VLT, located in Chile's Atacama Desert. The team also used data from the James Webb Space Telescope, operated by the US, European and Canadian space agencies, and archival data from the SINFONI spectrograph on ESO's VLT. One possible explanation is that magnetic fields are funnelling material into the planet, a mechanism long known in star formation, but never before observed in a planet. "In astronomy, when we talk about quick things, for instance, we say that star formation happens quickly, and quickly we mean a million years. So quickly is very relative," said Amelia Bayo, an astronomer at the European Space Observatory. "But this object went from gaining material at a very different rate, so at a low level, let's say, to gaining material hundreds of times more efficiently in days. Something that happens in a matter of days and months in astrophysics is crazy".

"The origin of rogue planets remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?" asks co-author Aleks Scholz, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, UK. The findings indicate that at least some rogue planets may share a similar formation path to stars since similar bursts of accretion have been spotted in young stars before. As co-author Belinda Damian, also an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, explains: "This discovery blurs the line between stars and planets and gives us a sneak peek into the earliest formation periods of rogue planets." By analysing light before and during the burst, astronomers pieced together how the planet was accreting matter, but many questions still remain. "So we will definitely follow up on this object because we have observations from this object from almost 20 years ago and 15 years ago and we see a similar behaviour. So there are indications that this is a recurrent event," said Almendros-Abad. "Now we need to understand how recurrent, how important, how long-lasting because we didn't get an idea of the full duration of this burst. We just had a lower limit, let's say, because after two months, we couldn't continue observing. So it could be possible that the object is still in this during this enhanced accretion phase," he added.

By comparing the light emitted before and during the burst, astronomers gathered clues about the nature of the accretion process. Remarkably, magnetic activity appears to have played a role in driving the dramatic in fall of mass, something that has only been observed in stars before. This suggests that even low-mass objects can possess strong magnetic fields capable of powering such accretion events. The team also found that the chemistry of the disc around the planet changed during the accretion episode, with water vapour being detected during it but not before. Free-floating planets are difficult to detect, as they are very faint, but ESO's upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), operating under the world's darkest skies for astronomy, could change that. Its powerful instruments and giant main mirror will enable astronomers to uncover and study more of these lonely planets, helping them to better understand how star-like they are. As co-author and ESO astronomer Amelia Bayo puts it: "The idea that a planetary object can behave like a star is awe-inspiring and invites us to wonder what worlds beyond our own could be like during their nascent stages."