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Exoplanets News 28 June 2025 - 4 October 2025

Rogue Planet Gobbles 6 Billion Tons of Gas per Second — Behaving Like a Star

Rogue Planet Gobbles 6 Billion Tons of Gas per Second — Behaving Like a Star

A Cosmic Feeding Frenzy Astronomers have long known that rogue planets (also called free‑floating planetary‑mass objects) drift through space without a host star sciencealert.com. Most are cold and quiet, but Cha 1107-7626 is anything but quiet. In late June 2025, it suddenly brightened dramatically. Follow-up observations revealed an EXor‑type accretion burst – a rapid feeding episode like those seen in infant stars sciencealert.com. By August, the planet’s accretion rate had skyrocketed: at its peak it was pulling in roughly 6 billion tons of cosmic gas and dust every second phys.org. This translates to about 10⁻⁷ Jupiter masses per year – an unheard‑of rate for any planet sciencealert.com. Víctor Almendros‑Abad, an
6,000 Exoplanets and Counting: NASA’s Cosmic Milestone in Planet Discovery

6,000 Exoplanets and Counting: NASA’s Cosmic Milestone in Planet Discovery

What Are Exoplanets, and Why Does 6,000 Matter? Exoplanets are planets that orbit a star other than our Sun – in other words, worlds beyond our own solar system. Some even drift freely in space without a parent star (so-called “rogue planets”) science.nasa.gov. Ever since the first exoplanets were confirmed in the 1990s, they have reshaped our understanding of the universe. We now know planets are abundant: over 6,000 have been confirmed so far, and astronomers estimate billions more likely exist in our galaxy alone nasa.gov. Reaching 6,000 confirmed exoplanets is more than just a number – it’s a testament
18 September 2025
From “Smart” Healing Gel to Alpha Centauri’s New Planet: Science Breakthroughs You Can’t Miss (Aug 8–9, 2025)

From “Smart” Healing Gel to Alpha Centauri’s New Planet: Science Breakthroughs You Can’t Miss (Aug 8–9, 2025)

In preclinical tests on diabetic mice, a single application of a hydrogel-based “smart” wound dressing achieved 90% wound closure in 12 days by silencing thrombospondin-1 with microRNA-loaded extracellular vesicles. The James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI directly imaged a gas-giant planet roughly the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A at about 2 AU, about 4 light-years from Earth. If confirmed, this would be the closest exoplanet ever directly imaged to Earth. As of August 7, 2025, NOAA forecast a 50% above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season with 13–18 named storms and 5–9 hurricanes by November. France’s southern wildfires became the largest
Major Astronomy News in June 2025: Webb’s Exoplanet Discovery, Rubin’s First Images, Space Missions & More

Major Astronomy News in June 2025: Webb’s Exoplanet Discovery, Rubin’s First Images, Space Missions & More

The James Webb Space Telescope directly imaged a Saturn-mass exoplanet, TWA 7 b, about 0.3 Jupiter masses at 50 AU from its star, marking Webb’s first direct exoplanet discovery. The missing baryon problem was resolved using 69 fast radio bursts, showing about 76% of ordinary matter lies in hot intergalactic gas, ~15% in halos around galaxies, and ~9% in galaxies. Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein), the largest Oort Cloud comet, showed CO outgassing jets at 16.6 AU with a nucleus about 140 km across, observed by ALMA. Solar Orbiter delivered the first views of the Sun’s south pole from an inclination
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