NASA’s extremely powerful James Webb Space Telescope just spotted an enormous object freely floating in space and gave it an unintentionally hilarious name.
SIMP 0136, as it’s called, presumably because it’s obsessed with a female space object that doesn’t even know SIMP exists, is described as a “planetary-mass” object, meaning, well, that it’s got the mass of a planet — and a big one. Authors of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters say that it’s 13 times the mass of Jupiter.
SIMP is around 20 light-years away from us and, unlike other planets in our solar system, from our perspective, it doesn’t appear as a shining star in the night sky. It’s also rotating rapidly, fully rotating once every 2.4 hours. Unlike the tumbling spacecraft launched by a private space mining company, SIMP’s rapid rotation makes it much easier to survey.
Researchers say SIMP seems to have cloud layers and temperature variations, some of which are similar to those found on giant planets in our solar system like Jupiter and Saturn. The biggest difference is that SIMP doesn’t orbit a star — it’s not simping for a star, if you will.
The James Webb’s ability to explore broader spectrums of infrared light also revealed “hot spots” in the object’s atmosphere. This could be auroras like the aurora borealis that shimmers in the sky here on Earth.
A co-author of the study on SIMP 0136 described the object as “watching Earth from far away.” All of that might suggest that we’re looking at a planet, but the truth is researchers don’t actually know what Simp 0136 is. It could be a rogue planet that’s unmoored itself from the stuffy confines of a solar system, or maybe it’s a brown dwarf—a star that failed to become a star.
Whatever it is, it’s huge and hurling through space at the beat of its own drum like a planet that realizes there’s a big wide universe out there and wanted to see it for itself.
Godspeed, gigantic planet-like thing tearing ass through space on a quest for meaning. I hope you find what you’re looking for.
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