In a discovery that has astronomers buzzing, a young rogue planet located about 620 light-years away in the Chamaeleon constellation has been observed undergoing a record-breaking growth spurt, consuming gas and dust at a rate that blurs the distinction between planets and stars. This finding, published October 2, 2025, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, offers a rare window into the tumultuous infancy of planetary-mass objects that roam the galaxy untethered to any star.
The planet, officially named Cha 1107-7626, is estimated to be just 1 to 2 million years old—an infant by cosmic standards, especially when compared to the 4.5-billion-year-old planets of our solar system. According to the BBC, this rogue world weighs in at five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our own neighborhood. It’s not just the planet’s size that’s turning heads, but the extraordinary pace at which it’s growing.
Between June and August 2025, Cha 1107-7626 was seen hoovering up gas and dust from a surrounding disk at a peak rate of six billion tons per second—about eight times faster than its previous accretion rate. This is the fastest growth episode ever recorded for a planetary-mass object, according to Víctor Almendros-Abad, lead author of the study and an astronomer at the Palermo Astronomical Observatory of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy. "This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded in a planetary-mass object," Almendros-Abad told AFP. "People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery we see that planetary-mass objects freely floating in space can be exciting places."
The observations, made using both the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the James Webb Space Telescope, revealed not only the planet’s voracious appetite but also surprising changes in its immediate environment. The chemistry of the disk shifted dramatically during the growth spurt: water vapor appeared in the disk while the planet was gobbling up material, but had not been detected beforehand. As reported by CNN, this kind of chemical transformation had previously been seen only in disks around young stars, not around planets.
Ray Jayawardhana, senior co-author and provost at Johns Hopkins University, emphasized the significance of the findings. "We’ve caught this newborn rogue planet in the act of gobbling up stuff at a furious pace," Jayawardhana said in a statement. "Monitoring its behavior over the past few months, with two of the most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, we have captured a rare glimpse into the baby phase of isolated objects not much heftier than Jupiter. Their infancy appears to be much more tumultuous than we had realized."
What’s driving this cosmic feeding frenzy? The research team found that magnetic activity plays a crucial role in channeling matter from the disk onto the planet—a process previously associated only with star formation. "Comparing observations from before and during the event showed that magnetic activity seems to be the main driver behind how much gas and dust is falling on the planet," the study authors told CNN. This revelation suggests that even objects with much less mass than stars can have strong magnetic fields capable of fueling rapid growth, challenging previous assumptions about the differences between stars and planets.
The discovery also reignites debate about the origins of rogue planets. As Alexander Scholz, a co-author and astronomer at the University of St. Andrews, explained to AFP, "Their origin remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?" For Cha 1107-7626, the evidence points toward a star-like birth. "This object most likely formed in a way similar to stars—from the collapse and fragmentation of a molecular cloud," Scholz said. The planet’s disk of gas and dust, its magnetic activity, and its bursts of growth all mirror the processes seen in the earliest stages of star formation.
Belinda Damian, another study co-author, put it bluntly: "What the astronomers saw happen to Cha 1107-7626 blurs the line between stars and planets." Amelia Bayo, also a co-author, added, "The idea that a planetary object can behave like a star is awe-inspiring. It invites us to wonder what worlds beyond our own could be like during their nascent stages."
The team’s observations didn’t just stop at the present. Archival data revealed that Cha 1107-7626 experienced a similar high-growth event back in 2016, hinting that such bursts might be a recurring feature of its development. "When the burst kept going through July and August, I was absolutely stunned," Scholz told CNN. The team now aims to determine how long these episodes last and how often they occur. As Scholz put it, "From that we can find out how much they really contribute to the growth, or what is triggering strong accretion bursts."
Further afield, the discovery has implications for the broader study of rogue planets, which are believed to number in the trillions across our galaxy but are notoriously difficult to detect due to their faintness and isolation. New telescopes coming online in the next few years, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile, are expected to revolutionize the hunt for these wandering worlds. Víctor Almendros-Abad noted, "The ELT will be powerful enough to not only study these faint, free-floating planets in much more detail, but for example it will also be possible to look for close companions that might be responsible for triggering such bursts."
The findings are also sparking curiosity about what else might be lurking in the disk around Cha 1107-7626. Dr. Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University who was not involved in the study, mused to CNN about the potential for moons forming from the planet’s disk, drawing comparisons to Saturn’s moon Titan, which boasts a thick atmosphere and active weather. "One can only think of Saturn’s moon Titan, which boasts an atmosphere and weather, to imagine what such moon might be like and whether it could eventually play host to life," van Loon said.
For now, Cha 1107-7626 remains a tantalizing mystery—an object that looks like a planet but acts, in its youth at least, very much like a star. As Jayawardhana summed up, "Our new findings underscore that similarity and imply that some objects comparable to giant planets form the way stars do, from contracting clouds of gas and dust accompanied by disks of their own, and they go through growth episodes just like newborn stars."
With new technologies poised to peer even deeper into the cosmos, astronomers are eager to uncover just how many other rogue planets might be experiencing their own cosmic growth spurts—and what secrets they might hold about the origins of worlds, both familiar and strange.
