Produced by: Manoj Kumar
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Millions of rogue planets drift through space, untethered to any star—scientists just found out how they might be born.
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New simulations show that violent crashes between young star disks create tidal bridges of gas, birthing free-floating planets.
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PMOs are neither failed stars nor lost planets—they may form from pure gravitational chaos in young star clusters.
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Up to 14% of PMOs form in pairs, explaining why these cosmic wanderers often have companions despite never having a home star.
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The Orion Nebula holds hundreds of these rogue planets, confirming that violent disk interactions are shaping new worlds in real-time.
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Some PMOs retain massive gas disks, meaning they could host their own mini-moons or even planets—starless solar systems in the making.
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Unlike ejected planets, PMOs travel in sync with stars in their clusters, revealing a hidden order in the chaos of space.
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Colliding star disks stretch gas into long filaments, which collapse into PMOs—proving that even destruction can create life.
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This discovery forces astronomers to rethink planet formation—rogue worlds might be more common than planets in solar systems.
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