Not every planet has a star to call home. Some may wander through the Galaxy alone — and finding them is one of astronomy’s currently most intriguing challenges. When we think of planets, we usually imagine worlds orbiting stars, just like Earth orbits the Sun. But the Universe may be home to a much stranger population: planets that travel through space without a parent star. An artistic depiction of a free-floating planet drifting amidst a sea of stars, capturing the solitud

Fig. 1 : A stylised visual of a star in the Galactic disc, with surrounding stars, and a symbolic reference to lithium (Li, atomic number...

An international team of astronomers led by Dr Maria Luiza Linhares Dantas, a postdoctoral researcher at the Nicolaus Copernicus...