Scientists have received an unexpected Christmas gift this year: a potential solution to the mystery of JuMBOs, strange celestial objects that seem not to be planets or stars. Try putting a bow on that!

This gift comes courtesy of a team of researchers who believe that mysterious JuMBOs (Jupiter-mass binary objects) are actually stellar cores that have been violently "unwrapped" by massive, powerful stars like kids excitedly unwrapping presents on X-mas day. This could potentially solve a mystery that arose in 2023.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discovered 42 pairs of these free-floating planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster. They were confused because they weren't associated with a star and had somehow managed to stay in binary pairs. This suggested that JuMBOs didn't form like planets or stars, creating quite the conundrum.