Six billion tonnes a second: Rogue planet found growing at record rate

Astronomers have identified an enormous growth spurt in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead. The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope (ESOs VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second. This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet ...