ORION NEBULA CONTAINS PAIRS OF UNEXPLAINED OBJECTS

The very first constellation I remember learning about was Orion. I think I read about it in school first and then easily found it after dark.

It’s unmistakable in the winter sky in this part of the world. It dominates the view to the south from late autumn all the way until early spring. Its distinctive belt, sword, club and its bright stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel, make it one of the most recognizable constellations in the northern hemisphere.

When I got a telescope, one of the first things I pointed it toward was the Orion Nebula, or Messier 42. It’s a dense cloud of gas and dust about 1,350 light-years from Earth, and you can find it in the area of Orion’s sword, just under the three bright stars that make up its well-known belt.

STARS ARE FORMING ALL THE TIME IN THE ORION NEBULA

Stars are forming all the time in the Orion Nebula. In fact, it’s one of the most studied stellar nurseries in the galaxy.

Orion and its famous nebula are all over the news this week. Dr. Mark McCraughrean has been studying the formation and evolution of stars and planets for the past four decades.

He’s currently the Senior Science Advisor in the Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency (ESA). This week he and ESA research fellow Dr. Samuel G. Pearson released two new papers about a survey of the Orion Nebula by the James Webb Space Telescope.

VISUALLY SPECTACULAR AND REVEAL AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY

At the same time, the European Space Agency released some images from that survey. They’re visually spectacular, and they reveal a completely unexpected discovery.

The images show an accumulation of about 150 free-floating objects around the size of the planet Jupiter. Astronomers call bodies like these planetary-mass objects (PMOs), and they’ve encountered them before.

The surprising new discovery is that in 42 cases, these PMOs are binary – twin objects that orbit one another. Up until now, scientists thought the likelihood of objects having companions had to do with their mass.

SURPRISING DISCOVERY – BINARY PLANETARY MASS OBJECTS

Scientists had found that the most massive stars nearly always have a companion while less massive objects like the failed stars they call brown dwarfs only have a twin about 8% of the time. So, astronomers have always assumed that objects with the mass of a planet would almost never be binary.

Professors McCraghrean and Pearson have named these strange new objects “Jupiter Mass Binary Objects” or JuMBOs for short. “There’s something wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation — or both,” Dr. Pearson told the New York Times.“They shouldn’t exist.”

Stars, including those forming in the Orion Nebula come from vast clouds of dust and hydrogen gas. Gravity draws the clouds together, making them denser and denser.

STARS FORM FROM CLOUDS OF DUST AND GAS

When they reach a certain critical density, their hydrogen atoms compress, igniting nuclear fusion. And, voila, a star is born.

If the cloud, or a region in the cloud, isn’t quite that dense, a different kind of fusion causes brown dwarfs, or failed stars. Technically, they don’t generate enough light or heat to qualify as stars.

These newly-discovered JuMBOs seem to be similar gaseous objects, but even smaller than brown dwarfs. Their mass ranges from about 13 times that of Jupiter on the high end to as little as 60% of the gas giant’s mass on the low end.

“MUST BE SOME FUNDAMENTAL EXTRA INGREDIENT”

This is puzzling. As the researchers say in their paper, “If the JuMBOs formed via a ‘star- like’ mechanism, i.e., via core collapse and turbulent fragmentation, then there must be some fundamental extra ingredient involved at these very low masses.”

They go on to write, “Alternatively, perhaps the JuMBOs formed through a “planet-like” mechanism in a circumstellar disk around a host star and were violently ejected.” The trouble is that the ejected planet hypothesis has its own issues.

As the researchers write, “How pairs of young planets can be ejected simultaneously and remain bound, albeit weakly at relatively wide separations, remains quite unclear. ”

AND ANOTHER THING…

The scientists were able to detect these new JuMBOs because of the advanced capabilities of the new James Webb Space Telescope. Specifically, Webb’s near-infrared camera, NIRCam, not only provides higher resolution than the Hubble Space Telescope, but also provides it in the infrared range of the spectrum, revealing stars and planetary systems scientists have never seen before.

We humans are natural explorers and finding out what’s beyond the horizon helps us to make sense of the world around us and our place in it. The questions posed by these newly uncovered JuMBOs will help scientists piece together the new story we all need about where worlds come from, including our own.

“The main question is, ‘What?! Where did that come from?’” Professor Pearson told CNN. “It’s just so unexpected that a lot of future observations and modelling are going to be needed to explain it.”

We always have more to learn if we dare to know.

The Orion Nebula Is Full of Impossible Enigmas That Come in Pairs

Unprecedented discovery seems to defy fundamental astronomical theories

Jupiter Mass Binary Objects in the Trapezium Cluster

‘Black Widow’ Binary Star Found – Shortest Orbit Ever

Dimming of Betelgeuse Explained by Hubble Telescope

Tidal Dwarf Galaxy Reveals Clues About Star Formation