James Webb Finds Evidence of Free-Floating Planets So Large They Can Gather Their Own Planetary Systems

So much for heliocentrism.

An international team of astronomers using observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope have found evidence of massive planets out there that're capable of forming their own planetary systems — without a star.

These planets would be the center of something like a mini version of our solar system where other, smaller planets revolve around it. But without the light of a star, these systems, if they exist, would go largely overlooked by our telescopes, lost to the dark void of space.

The work, a new study accepted for publication in the The Astronomical Journal, focuses on free-floating "rogue" planets which are not gravitationally bound to a star. While some rogue planets are first formed around a stellar object before being ejected from their system,