‘Rogue planet’ growing at fastest rate ever observed by scientists

By Stephen Beech

A “ rogue planet ” is growing at a record-breaking rate of six billion tons per second, reveals new research.

Located around 620 light-years away from Earth, scientists say it has experienced a record-breaking “growth spurt” – “gobbling up” gas and dust at a “furious” pace.

Unlike the planets in our Solar System, so-called “rogue planets” don’t orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead.

The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), located in Chile’s Atacama Desert, reveal that the planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tons a second.

It is the strongest growth rate ever recorded by a planet of any kind, according to the study by an international team of astronom