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Scientists report finding floating planets
The Earth orbits around the Sun but some scientists say there may be heavenly bodies that float without being gravitationally bound to a fixed star.
An international team, including researchers from Japan's Nagoya and Osaka universities, says it has discovered 10 suspected floating planets, each with mass equivalent to that of Jupiter.
The discoveries were made over 18 months from April 2006, using a special telescope installed on an observatory in New Zealand.
The researchers say the discoveries must be floating planets because unlike fixed stars they did not emit light. They say they found no fixed star around these planets.
Associate Professor Takahiro Sumi at Osaka University says the discoveries are a step forward to finding about how planets were created and how they develop.
Some scientists expect that a surveyor to be launched by the US Aeronautics and Space Agency, NASA, in 2020 will capture pictures of such floating planets.
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