BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Strange ‘twin’ new worlds found
A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System.
A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of “twins”.
Dubbed “planemos”, they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.
Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars, astronomers report in the journal Science.
“This is a truly remarkable pair of twins – each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun,” said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.
“Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery.” [Read on]