Gaia's Surprise
Gaia has been scanning the sky now since 2012 but is soon due to be decommissioned, but it's scanned billions of stars in our Milky Way enabling astronomers to produce an amazing map of our galaxy, at least those parts we can see.
In the previous data release by Gaia, two interesting systems were found, Gaia 4 & 5, two low mass red dwarfs 244 light years and 144 light years respectively.
Both small stars appear to have extra large planetary companions, one being a brown dwarf, and the other a large Jupiter sized planet.
The surprise is, such small stars are theorised to not generally hold such large planets. and so these two, are upending assumptions, and when Gaia finally ends it's mission in March and sends it's final upload, it may reveal many many more examples, the tip of a iceberg that challenges assumptions.
Of course, there are other possibilities here, planets can be passed between stars, they can be thrown out into space, and then collected again. There has been speculation about Uranus in relation to this in the past.
In a close cluster, it's reasonable to imagine stars, planets, and many rogues being passed around between the cluster, before finally settling or being ejected out of the cluster.
As these small low mass stars make up more than 70% of all stars, it's perfectly reasonable to imagine they are like a heavenly sponge, picking up the neglected and ejected planets .
