An international research team has discovered an exotic binary system composed of two young planet-like objects, orbiting each other - and not a star.
They are planet-like because they look like giant exoplanets but they formed in the same way as stars, proving that the mechanisms driving star formation can produce rogue worlds in unusual systems - deprived of a Sun.
Star-forming processes sometimes create mysterious astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are smaller and colder than stars, and can have masses and temperatures down to those of exoplanets in the most extreme cases. Just like stars, brown dwarfs often wander alone through space, but can also be seen in binary systems, where two brown dwarfs orbit one another and travel together in the galaxy.