Discovering two strange celestial bodies

A strange pair of celestial objects vaguely located on the boundary between the planet and why have just been discovered outside the solar system. So far, several dozen such objects have been recognized, but this is the first time they have created a " twins ".

Planemo twins Dubbed "planemo ", these two bodies orbit around each other rather than on orbit around why the mother. Their existence challenged the current hypotheses about the birth of planets and stars, astronomers said.

"This is really an unusual twins - each body weighs only about 1% of the solar mass," said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the study.

Astronomers believe that both belong to a group of planet-like objects floating in the universe - so they are called planet-sized objects, or "planemo" - without being real. becoming stars.

They seem to be compressed from a miniature cloud of gas, in a way similar to stars, but too cold to be true stars. And although there is a mass similar to many giant planets found outside the solar system, they are not considered true planets.

"We have to resist the urge to call it 'double planet' because the couple may not be born in the way that the planets in our solar system form," said a co-author of the study. .

The two bodies mentioned above have similar colors and spectra, indicating they were born about the same time about 1 million years ago.

T. An