Free-floating planet found

Astronomers have discovered a lonely free-floating planet outside the solar system.

A gas-giant exoplanet named PSO J318.5-22 is only 80 light years away from Earth and has a mass six times that of Jupiter. Formed 12 million years ago, this planet is considered a "newborn."

- We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone - said Dr Michael Liu, leader of the research team from the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

- I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do - he added.

The astronomers, whose work is published in the magazine Astrophysical Journal Letters, identified the planet using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on the Haleakala volcano of Hawaii's Maui island.