In 2012, astronomers spotted a “perplexing, isolated” object that was found to have a mass four to seven times that of Jupiter – by far the biggest planet in the solar system – around 100 lightyears away.
Experts believed it was the closest rogue planet ever found, but after studying the object over the past several years, researchers say that it might not be what they had originally thought.
The object, known as CFBDSIR 2149-0403, was thought to have been a planet that was kicked out of its star system or never had one in the first place and is now lonelily orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy.
With the possibility of it being a planet not as realistic as first thought, astronomers began theorising it could be a brown dwarf star but again this seems unlikely as it is too small, with the smallest brown dwarf stars having about 13 times the mass of Jupiter.
It had also been thought that the object was moving along in a group of objects called the AB Doradus, which would have given it an age of 50 to 120 million years old.
However, it later separated from these objects, leaving the astronomers clueless about its age.
A team of researchers from the Grenoble Alpes University in France wrote in their study published in arXiv: "Our new ... parallax and kinematics safely rule out membership to any known young moving group, including AB~Doradus.”
Lead author Philippe Delorme told Phys: "Though determining that certainly improved our knowledge of the object it also made it more difficult to study, by adding age as a free parameter.”
With the possibility of a star ruled out, the astronomers have broadened their theory, saying that it could be a “combination of both”.
However, alien conspiracists believe that it could be of ET origin, due to its highly metallic content.
One theory that has quickly arose, according to YouTube channel SecureTeam10, is that it is potentially a Dyson Sphere – a large structure built by an extraterrestrial civilisation that orbits a star and harnesses energy from it.
The video starts by saying: “Scientists and astronomers have located a rogue object about 100 lightyears away that is exhibiting some strange characteristics which is once again challenging what we know about the universe with which we live, and the objects found within that universe.”
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Is this proof of aliens?
It adds that “this object either has very low gravity, or an unusually low or an unusually high metal content”, implying that it could be a man-made, or more specifically an alien-made, structure.
For any doubters that ridicule the idea of an alien civilisation, the narrator of the video says that “it is mathematically impossible that we are the only life in the universe.”
