Orphaned planet and twin Earths that 'could share life' revealed

From a world 11 times more massive than Jupiter to a pair of Earth-like planets that may house life, scientists have revealed a host of fascinating new findings about our
galactic neighbors.

Take HD-106906b, or "fat Jupiter" as some observers have termed it.

A planet far larger than our incredibly massive neighbor which has become partially exiled from its solar system, ending up nearly 16 times farther away from its host star than Pluto is from the sun.NASA releases breathtaking ultra-HD video of the sun 01:13

Fat Jupiter may have formed near the star like a normal world, before getting booted out to the very edges of the system by a dramatic event in the recent galactic past.

"We think the whole [fat Jupiter] system has recently been disturbed by some violent gravitational interaction, though we're not sure exactly what happened," said Paul Kalas, an adjunct professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley.

"Something recently happened that kicked it out."

A similar event may have occurred in the distant history of our own solar system.

Scientists believe that we once shared our part of the Milky Way with a ninth planet (or tenth, if we're counting Pluto) before Jupiter's huge gravitational pull sent the other planet spinning out into the wastes of intergalactic space.