Berlin (dpa) – Six billion tonnes per second — that’s the rate at which the planet Cha 1107-7626 eats up gas and dust from its surroundings, based on measurements from August 2025. Put simply, this planet grows by about 1,000 times the mass of the Pyramids of Giza every second. That makes it the fastest-growing planet ever documented, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Cha 1107-7626 is a so-called rogue planet, meaning that unlike the planets in our solar system, it does not orbit a star but drifts freely through space. Observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allowed scientists to document its enormous appetite. According to a research team led by Víctor Almendros-Abad from the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo in Italy, the discovery points to parallels with the formation of stars. Cha 1107-7626 has a mass five to ten times that of Jupiter and is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. It is still in its formation phase and is being fed by a disk of gas and dust surrounding the planet, the team reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In August, the planet underwent a so-called accretion burst, consuming material at a rate about eight times faster than just a few months earlier. This surge was about eight times faster than its previous rate, highlighting the dynamic nature of its growth phase. The discovery underscores the importance of studying rogue planets like "Cha 1107-7626" to better understand the processes of planetary and stellar formation. "People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery we see that planetary-mass objects freely floating in space can be exciting places," said Almendros-Abad. The following information is not intended for publication dpa jak yysw n1 hu kll
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