Get ready for a story that sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but is completely real. Recently, a group of astronomers discovered something that left everyone open-mouthed: a planet that defies everything we thought we knew about how the universe works!
We tell you: this planet is called 2M1510 (AB) b (yes, it sounds complicated, but the important thing is not the name, but what it does). They found it in Chile, thanks to one of the most powerful telescopes in the world: the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory. And what they saw was so unexpected that they are still trying to understand it.
It turns out that this planet doesn’t behave like other planets. In most systems we know, planets revolve around their stars in the same plane, as if they were dancing on a perfectly aligned dance floor. But this planet decided to go off script: it rotates at a 90-degree angle to the plane of its two stars. Yes, completely sideways!
To give you an idea, imagine a spinning top spinning on the table. Now imagine another spinning top, but this one spins sideways, as if it were balancing on the edge of a plate. That’s how this planet spins. It’s what scientists call a polar orbit, and until now, such a polar orbit has never been seen so clearly.
Astronomers Amaury Triaud and Thomas Baycroft of the University of Birmingham were studying a system made up of two brown dwarfs, which are celestial bodies larger than a planet, but not big enough to be stars. They noticed that something strange was happening with them: their motion didn’t add up. It was as if an invisible force was pushing them in a strange way.
After many observations and calculations, they discovered the unthinkable: there was a planet there, rotating in a totally perpendicular way! And not only that. This system was already a rarity, because there is only one other known system in the entire universe with two eclipsing brown dwarfs. Now, with this planet, it becomes truly unique.
And this is where it gets even more exciting. According to current theories of astronomy, a planet rotating at that angle should not be stable. But 2M1510 (AB) b is there, spinning quietly, defying everything science thought it knew about the formation of planets and star systems.
This discovery opens a huge door:
Could it be that there are more planets like this one out there, and we just haven’t detected them? Or are we facing a case so rare that we have to rewrite the astronomy books?
The truth is that this planet not only adds one more name to the list of exoplanets discovered. It reminds us that the universe is far more complex and mysterious than we imagine. Just when we think we understand it all, the cosmos throws us something completely unexpected… and we have to start all over again.
So yes, this planet is out of orbit in every sense. And thanks to it, scientists today have more questions than answers, but also a huge smile, because every time the universe surprises us, it gives us the opportunity to learn something new.
And you, can you imagine how many other things are out there, waiting to be discovered?