Tech
Scientists discover mysterious massive glowing planet
Astronomers have discovered a massive planet with a strange glow just outside the solar system, where it is just drifting without any kind of orbit.
There are many mysterious things about the rogue planet, which was discovered using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico.
The mysterious planet, which was discussed in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal, was named SIMP J01365663+0933473, or SIMP for short.
Read also: NASA spacecraft set to begin 7-yr mission to “touch the sun”
SIMP is “right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets,” said Melodie Kao, who helmed the study while she was still a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. She is now at Arizona State University as a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow.
The planet is considered to be a rogue one because it does not have an orbit around a parent star, unlike the planets of the solar system.
The rogue planet is also 12 times bigger than Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, with a magnetic field that is 200 times stronger.
RipplesNigeria… without borders, without fears
Click here to join the Ripples Nigeria WhatsApp group for latest updates.
Join the conversation
Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism
Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.
As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.
If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.
Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.
INVESTIGATION: In Kwara, multimillion-naira milk processing plant is abandoned, converted to a chicken outlet
After the government spent millions of naira to establish a milk processing plant in Kwara State that would provided jobs...
SPECIAL REPORT: For Sokoto communities, promise of healthcare is akin to death sentence
In this story, ABDULRASHEED HAMMAD delves into the dire realities of Primary Health Care services in Sokoto State, shedding light...
ICYMI…SPECIAL REPORT: NNPCL hides behind PIA to frustrate disclosure, accountability
Nigeria’s major oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), in what appears to be a common practice of disregard...
INVESTIGATION: Multi-million naira Ekiti resort center remains uncompleted a decade after
The multimillion-naira project, expected to comprise recreational buildings, now consists of cassava farmland, a bush used for excretion, and a...
SPECIAL REPORT: Torturous experiences of students with disabilities in Oyo tertiary institutions
For students with disabilities in Oyo state-owned tertiary institutions, learning is a torturous and distressing experience, considering the building structures...