The voracious rogue planet consumes a staggering 6 billion tons of gas and dust every second. This peculiar behavior challenges the distinction between planets and stars, indicating that both may form via similar mechanisms.

It appears that free-floating gas bodies, not gravitationally bound to a parent star, are quite common, potentially outnumbering stars in galaxies. However, astronomers remain uncertain about whether these bodies will develop like planets orbiting stars, wander alone through galaxies, or independently emerge like stars.

Víctor Almendros-Abad from Palermo Observatory in Italy, and his team have observed remarkable growth of the rogue planet now known as CHA 1107-7626.

The planet garnered astronomers’ attention back in 2008 due to what appeared to be a disc of primitive planets around it. Almendros-Abad and his colleagues began monitoring these celestial objects in April this year using a sizable telescope in Southern Europe, but by June, the planet’s mass consumption rate surged to nearly ten times what it had been previously.

Such a growth rate aligns with what has only been previously observed in stars, including our own Sun.

“This indicates that the formation processes of stars and these objects are likely very similar,” says Almendros-Abad. “Thus, when considering star formation, we must also account for these rogue planets.”

To elucidate this unprecedented growth rate, Almendros-Abad and his team speculate that a mechanism akin to that observed in stars is likely at work; however, the reason and timing of the planet’s sudden surge in mass consumption remain unclear.

The similarities in their growth mechanisms imply that the line between stars and planets may be even hazier than previously believed, suggests Almendros-Abad. “Every time I observe these rogue planets, I see that the boundary between a star and a planet is not as defined as we thought. There must be chemical signatures, yet we have yet to discover the ‘Rosetta Stone’ that differentiates the formation processes.”

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