Space Daily August 24, 2026 • 12:50

Astronomers have measured a Saturn-mass object apparently drifting through the Milky Way without a star—and microlensing surveys suggest that unseen free-floating worlds may outnumber the galaxy’s stars, perhaps by as much as 20 to one. - Space Daily

A directly weighed Saturn-mass lens strengthens the free-floating planet case, but the estimate of roughly 20 such worlds per star remains a broad, model-dependent population inference.

A short gravitational microlensing event observed from Earth and the Gaia spacecraft has given astronomers a direct mass estimate for an object with no detected host star. The lens, designated KMT-20… [+7904 chars]

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Astronomers have measured a Saturn-mass object apparently drifting through the Milky Way without a star—and microlensing surveys suggest that unseen free-floating worlds may outnumber the galaxy’s stars, perhaps by as much as 20 to one. - Space Daily

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