A free-floating-planet microlensing event caused by a Saturn-mass object.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41477875.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/science.adv9266.
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Abstract
A population of free-floating planets is known from gravitational microlensing surveys. None have a directly measured mass, owing to a degeneracy with the distance, but the population statistics indicate that many are less massive than Jupiter. We report a microlensing event-KMT-2024-BLG-0792/OGLE-2024-BLG-0516, which was observed from both ground- and space-based telescopes-that breaks the mass-distance degeneracy. The event was caused by an object with [Formula: see text] Jupiter masses that is either gravitationally unbound or on a very wide orbit. Through comparison with the statistical properties of other observed microlensing events and predictions from simulations, we infer that this object likely formed in a protoplanetary disk (like a planet), not in isolation (like a brown dwarf). Dynamical processes then ejected it from its birthplace, producing a free-floating object.