PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Young rogue planet displays record-breaking ‘growth spurt’

Findings provide insights into the tumultuous infancies of such celestial bodies

2025-10-02
(Press-News.org) A young rogue planet about 620 light-years away from Earth has experienced a record-breaking “growth spurt,” hoovering up some six billion tons of gas and dust each second over a couple of months. 

A team of international researchers have explored changes in the planet’s growth and immediate surroundings. The observations provide insight into how rogue planets—free-floating planetary-mass objects that do not orbit stars—behave and grow in their infancy.  

“We’ve caught this newborn rogue planet in the act of gobbling up stuff at a furious pace,” said senior co-author and Johns Hopkins Provost and Professor Ray Jayawardhana. “Monitoring its behavior over the past few months, with two of the most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, we have captured a rare glimpse into the baby phase of isolated objects not much heftier than Jupiter.”  

Jayawardhana added: “Their infancy appears to be much more tumultuous than we had realized.” 

The findings were accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online.  

Located in the Chamaeleon constellation, the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626 is five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. Like a young star, the planet is surrounded by a disk of dust and gas. When material from the disk spirals onto the central object, it grows through a process called accretion. 

Observations taken with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope revealed how rapidly the rogue planet was accreting material. At its peak in August, the planet’s growth rate had shot up to six billion tons per second, about eight times greater than in the months prior. 

“This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded in a planetary-mass object,” said lead author Víctor Almendros-Abad, an astronomer at the Palermo Astronomical Observatory of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy. “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.”  
 
Researchers found the planet’s magnetic field plays an important role in channelling material from the disk’s inner edge, as it does in young stars. Data from the James Web Space Telescope, a powerful observatory that can gather longer infrared wavelengths, showed the chemistry of the disk had changed. Water vapor was present during the growth spurt but not before.  

“We’re struck by quite how much the infancy of free-floating planetary-mass objects resembles that of stars like the Sun,” said Jayawardhana. “Our new findings underscore that similarity, and imply that some objects comparable to giant planets form the way stars do, from contracting clouds of gas and dust accompanied by disks of their own, and they go through growth episodes just like newborn stars.” 

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

The RESTART trial: a drug to block a toxic HIV molecule

2025-10-02
What if the presence of a well-known but misunderstood viral protein explains why some people living with HIV (PLWH) never recover their health, even with antiretroviral treatment? Dr. Madeleine Durand and Andrés Finzi, researchers at the CRCHUM, Université de Montréal’s affiliated hospital research centre, will explore this through the launch of a groundbreaking clinical trial this fall. Two studies, one approach With the publication of a remarkable study in 2023, the two scientists and Mehdi Benlarbi, a PhD student in Finzi’s lab, showed a keen interest in the HIV molecule gp120. The virus is known to infect ...

New polymer designs for beyond-5G telecommunications

2025-10-02
With the rollout of fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications networks and 6G looming on the horizon, the demand for advanced materials that can handle high-frequency signals is rising rapidly. These systems use electromagnetic waves ranging from tens to hundreds of gigahertz (GHz), where signals are highly sensitive to transmission loss, interference, and distortion. To address these issues, scientists and engineers rely on special insulating materials, known as dielectrics, which help guide signals with minimal loss. Polymer-based dielectrics are particularly attractive. ...

Hanbat National University study finds quantum computing can make homes smarter and greener

2025-10-02
Residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems constitute a significant proportion of energy usage in buildings, necessitating energy management optimization. In this context, occupancy aware HVAC control is a promising option with 20-50% energy savings in homes. However, occupancy sensing technology suffers from long payback times, privacy issues, and poor comfort. Moreover, there is an increasing need for further advanced technologies that help regulate indoor air quality in addition to energy control. To meet these expectations, scientists have recently turned to intelligent control methods such as ...

Tiny cell messengers in obese individuals accelerate Alzheimer’s-linked plaque buildup in the brain

2025-10-02
HOUSTON – Oct. 2, 2025 – Obesity has long been acknowledged as a risk factor for a wide range of diseases, but a more precise link between obesity and Alzheimer’s disease has remained a mystery – until now. A first-of-its-kind study from Houston Methodist found that adipose-derived extracellular vesicles, tiny cell-to-cell messengers in the body, can signal the buildup of amyloid-β plaque in obese individuals. These plaques are a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease. The study, “Decoding Adipose–Brain Crosstalk: Distinct Lipid Cargo in Human Adipose-Derived ...

Do elephants know when we're looking at them?

2025-10-02
Kyoto, Japan -- With their massive flapping ears and long trunks, it isn't hard to believe that elephants tend to rely on acoustic and olfactory cues for communication. They use gestures and visual displays to communicate as well, but we don't really know how much. Visual communication research has mainly focused on species that are primarily visual, like nonhuman primates. A previous study demonstrated that African savanna elephants can recognize human visual attention based on a person's face and body orientation, but this had yet to be investigated in their Asian cousins. Asian elephants split from African elephants millions of years ago, so their behavior and cognition differ ...

Psilocybin targets brain circuits to relieve chronic pain, depression

2025-10-02
PHILADELPHIA— Researchers at Penn Medicine have identified specific brain circuits that are impacted by psilocybin—the active compound found in some psychedelic mushrooms—which could lead to new paths forward for pain and mental health management options. Chronic pain affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide and is often deeply entangled with depression and anxiety, creating a vicious cycle that amplifies suffering and impairs quality of life. The study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania- ...

MPs and public overestimate time left for climate action, study finds

2025-10-02
A new study has found that UK Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public overestimated the time left to meet a critical deadline for limiting global warming.  Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) surveyed a representative sample of the previous House of Commons, and the public in Britain, Canada, Chile and Germany, on their knowledge of a well-publicised statement from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).   It related to when global ...

Semaglutide and tirzepatide recommended as first-line treatment of obesity and most of its complications in new guidance from European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO)

2025-10-02
Semaglutide or tirzepatide should be the first line treatment for people living with obesity and most of its complications, according to a new framework for the pharmacological treatment of obesity and its complications from the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO) to be published in the journal Nature Medicine. “Even though there are several options on the market, the reality is that semaglutide and tirzepatide are so effective that they should be the first choice in almost all cases,” says co-first author Dr Andreea Ciudin. The authors are an international team of obesity experts led by the co-chairs of the EASO Obesity Management Working Group who are Dr ...

Generative AI is more efficient than nature at designing proteins to edit the genome

2025-10-02
Researchers at Integra Therapeutics, in collaboration with the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), have designed and experimentally validated new synthetic proteins that can edit the human genome more efficiently than proteins provided by nature. This work, a global pioneer published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology, will be of great use in improving the current gene editing tools used in biotechnology research and personalized medicine by developing cellular (CAR-T) and gene therapies, especially to treat ...

ESMT Berlin study: ESG ratings show limited financial impact in the Gulf

2025-10-02
Firms in the Gulf region are increasingly expected to align with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. Yet the link between ESG performance and financial outcomes remains ambiguous. A new study examines whether publicly listed companies in GCC member states that achieve high ESG ratings also deliver superior financial performance. The study “ESG and financial performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council” was authored by Catalina Stefanescu-Cuntze, professor of management science and faculty lead of the Master in Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Program at ESMT Berlin, together with Rodrigo Tavares and Catarina Sá from Nova School ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

The Lancet: Billions lack access to healthy diets as food systems drive climate and health crises, but sustainable, equitable solutions are within reach, says new EAT-Lancet report

Countries with highest reported levels of hearing loss have lowest use of hearing aids

Early medical abortion at home up to 12 weeks is safe, effective, and comparable to hospital care

New approach to gravitational wave detection opens the Milli-Hz Frontier

Rice membrane extracts lithium from brines with greater speed, less waste

Exercise lowers disease risk. This researcher wants to understand how

Hurricane evacuation patterns differ based on where the storm hits

Stem Cell Reports welcomes new members to its Editorial Board

Researchers develop molecular qubits that communicate at telecom frequencies

Mayo Clinic awarded up to $40 million by ARPA-H for pioneering air safety research

People with Down syndrome have early neuroinflammation

CNIO researchers create the “human repairome”, a catalogue of DNA “scars” that will help define personalized cancer treatments

Strengthening biosecurity screening for genes that encode proteins of concern

Global wildfire disasters are growing in frequency and cost

Wildfire management: Reactive response and recovery, or proactive mitigation and prevention

Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of a low-temperature brown dwarf

Scientists develop rapid and scalable platform for in planta directed evolution

New tiny prehistoric fish species unlocks origins of catfish and carp

Plant microbiota: War and peace under the surface

Fossilized ear bones rewrite the history of freshwater fish

Detection of phosphine in a brown dwarf atmosphere raises more questions

USF study: Ancient plankton hint at steadier future for ocean life

MIT researchers find a simple formula could guide the design of faster-charging, longer-lasting batteries

Towards efficient room-temperature fluorine recovery from fluoropolymers

Mapping RNA-protein 'chats' could uncover new treatments for cancer and brain disease

The hidden burden of solitude: How social withdrawal influences the adolescent brain

Kidney disease study reveals unexpected marker

AI wrote nearly a quarter of corporate press releases in 2024

The ‘big bad wolf’ fears the human ‘super predator’ – for good reason

Kidney organoid unlocks genetic cause of chronic kidney disease

[Press-News.org] Young rogue planet displays record-breaking ‘growth spurt’
Findings provide insights into the tumultuous infancies of such celestial bodies