Posted on 12/22/2021 2:15:54 PM PST by BenLurkin
Astronomers first learned about free-floating planets in the 1990s, but many unanswered questions remain, such as the conditions under which they form, their size and composition, and their relative abundance in the galaxy.
This effectively doubles the total number of known free-floating planets—a sign that the total population of rogue planets in our galaxy is huge.
The newly detected rogue planets were detected in nearly 20 years’ worth of astronomical data, including observations gathered by the European Southern Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, and ESA’s Gaia satellite.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Interesting, thanks.
“free-floating planets”
Is there any other kind?
17), woowzers, we getting there. Only a trillion plus more to go. /s
Yes.
170.... 200.... 5000....
Ooops, those are just Musk’s Starlink sat boxes
I’m running out of fingers and toes.
How many thousands of light years away?
Planet X!
Our early solar system had a few other planets than the current set. One collided with the Earth to form the moon. Another knocked Uranus off its axis.
It would be interesting if we could find some singling of the Earth that were expelled deep into space.
he total population of rogue planets in our galaxy is huge.
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what better way to hide than a wandering planet - no worries about your sun going nova, no worries about others finding you to take your resources, cf The Dark Forest theory.
FREE?? I'll take one of them planets if it's free!
I want to know what made these planets go rogue? Why can’t the be nice like the good planets?
The thing about discovering an exo-planet is that to do so, one must observe the brightness of a distant star and measure the amount of light it normally gives off and compare it to the amount of light when a planet comes directly between the star and the observer. The problems I see with that is 1) the planets observed so far have fast orbits of mere days in length so they are usually too close to the star to support life and therefore have no seasons and b) what about stars whose planets orbit in a plane not aligned with the observer?
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