A team of astronomers has revealed that hundreds of billions of planets have escaped from their solar systems and are roving freely in space, secluded and far from any host star.

The team of astronomers led by Takahiro Sumi, of Osaka University in Japan, used New Zealand-based Mount John University Observatory’s 5.9-foot telescope to regularly observe the infinite stars at the center of the Milky Way to search for gravitational microlensing event.

The researchers reported that they observed 10 Jupiter-sized planets, each around 10,000 to 20,000 light-years away from Earth. There were no stars within a range of billion miles or so of those planets. Researchers concluded that Milky Way is littered with free-range planets of all sizes, wandering silently and desolately in the spaces between the stars.

It is suggested that the orphan planets escaped from their formative solar systems soon after they condensed from the interstellar dust that also created their stars.

Speaking on the topic, Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science said, "If they are ejected, it's a real puzzle as to how that happened because you have to be kicked out by something bigger than you."

The team also claimed that there are at least two Jupiter-sized planets for each of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. Previously it was thought that around 10-20 per cent of stars had massive planets attached to them, but the new study claims that planets are at least twice in number as stars.