Strange ‘rogue planet’ travels through space alone

By Ashley Strickland

A strange 200 million-year-old object with the mass of a planet has been discovered 20 light-years from Earth, outside our solar system. The “rogue,” as it’s referred to by researchers, is producing an unexplained glowing aurora and travels through space alone, without a parent star.

The object, named SIMP J01365663+0933473, has 12.7 times the mass of the gas giant Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. It also has a strong magnetic field that is more than 200 times stronger than Jupiter’s.

The temperature on its surface is more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Although this sounds hot, it’s quite cool compared with the sun’s surface temperature of about 9,932 degrees Fahrenheit.

So what exactly is this rogue object?

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