Milky Way spewing out planet-size spitballs

​New York: When a star comes close to the black hole only to be ripped apart, the outward gas streamer gathers itself into planet-size objects which are then flung across the galaxy in a game of cosmic 'spitball', new research has revealed.

The team from Harvard University noted that the closest of these planet-mass objects might be within a few hundred light-years of Earth with a weight somewhere between Neptune and several Jupiters.

"A single shredded star can form hundreds of these planet-mass objects. We wondered: Where do they end up? How close do they come to us? We developed a computer code to answer those questions," said lead author Eden Girma.

These planet-size objects glow from the heat of its formation and are very different from a typical planet because they made of star-stuff.