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Two mysterious, gigantic icy balls of gas have been discovered in space and they could alter our understanding of how stars form.

at Meisei University in Japan and his team found the objects when analysing data collected by the AKARI spacecraft, a Japanese observatory that examined the Milky Way in infrared from the 1980s until it suffered electrical failure in 2011.

It is unclear exactly what the balls are, or even how far away they lie, but the distance between them as they appear in the sky suggests they are unrelated to each other. They seem to be star鈥憇ized spheres of carbon monoxide gas mixed with carbon dioxide and water ices, all containing a hotter source of energy.

The researchers say nothing quite like this has been seen before. They think they have either聽spotted stars in the midst of聽being created or normal stars that are hidden behind a peculiar interstellar cloud.

Both ideas have issues. The balls look similar to a typical young star, but stars usually evolve in clusters and these objects aren鈥檛 in a known star-forming region. We have seen isolated stars before, but we know very little about them, including how they moved from where they were born, says Onaka.

If these objects are indeed young stars, that could have major implications for how often stars form in the Milky Way because it means we have underestimated or聽overlooked some stellar nurseries. 鈥淚f these are truly young stellar objects, it may change our understanding of the rate of star birth and thus could affect the evolution of galaxies,鈥� says Onaka.

If, however, the objects are just two ordinary stars hidden behind interstellar clouds, there is another mystery to solve. Such clouds are common, but these two appear to be unusually dense and isolated. Studying them could help broaden our understanding of the make-up of interstellar space, says Onaka.

, who is at the University of Leeds, UK, says it would be a very important find if the balls turn out to be evolving stars. 鈥淚t could mean young stellar objects have been escaping their birthplaces at very high speeds, which would imply that we may have missed an important class of object,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t may even mean that our theories of star formation need revisiting.鈥�

at the Space Telescope Science Institute in聽Maryland is less certain that these objects are unusual because there may be scenarios Onaka鈥檚 team hasn鈥檛 ruled out.

鈥淚 would worry that any conclusions one way or another are difficult as lots of stars and dense clouds reside in the galactic plane, and so the line of sight鈥� can聽get crowded,鈥� he says.

Onaka plans to use a large radio telescope to study the objects. He says evolving stars are typically surrounded by warmer gases that may not show up in infrared data, but should be picked up by radio telescopes. Such a detection would suggest the objects are probably young stellar objects.

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