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Rogue Planet Find Makes Astronomers Ponder Theory
by Maggie Fox
October 5, 2000
Eighteen rogue planets that seem to have broken all the rules about being born from a central, controlling sun may force a rethink about how planets form, astronomers said on Thursday... "The formation of young, free-floating, planetary-mass objects like these is difficult to explain by our current models of how planets form," Zapatero-Osorio said... They are not linked to one another in an orbit, but do move together as a cluster, she said... Many stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, may have formed in a similar manner to the Orion stars, she said. So there could be similar, hard-to-see planets floating around free near the Solar System.

2 posted on 02/15/2012 6:43:56 PM PST by SunkenCiv (FReep this FReepathon!)
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To: SunkenCiv

If there were two sun like stars orbiting each other at 250-1000 AU, a planet at one AU from one of them would see the other sun as a bright star, somewhere between as bright as Venus and Mars, depending on whether it was 250 or 1000 AU away.


8 posted on 02/15/2012 8:31:41 PM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets (Ceterum autem censeo, Obama delenda est.)
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