Lonely planets found which float freely through the Milky Way | Hacker News Reader

Lonely planets found which float freely through the Milky Way

smh.com.au

35 pointskschua23 comments

More seriously: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-147

The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can't be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.

wtf

What percentage of dark matter could this explain?

My thought exactly. The whole "dark matter" thing seems like just a huge fudge-factor.

That's exactly what it is. It's the difference between estimating mass based on visible light and estimating mass based on gravitational effects. If both those estimates are accurate, it implies the existence of a lot of non-luminescent matter. So some scientists look for "dark matter", while others try to find flaws with either estimation.

Very little, I think. Jupiter-mass planets weigh nothing compared to stars, and this only says they only outnumber stars 2:1.

let's just hope none of them come our way

Now, witness the power of this fully armed and operational battle station.

"Fire at will, commander."

Not funny.

The most effective means of interstellar travel may be bases within planets or asteroids, not spaceships. When humans have communities on the Moon and Mars, perhaps they'll build habitats inside asteroids, then with a few nudges to some of them, upset the entire gravitational equilibrium of the asteroid belt, slinging those asteroids out of the solar system, via the gravity fields of the giant gas planets. Humans are more likely to survive interstellar trips buried inside planets than a spaceship's husk.

I don't follow, this is a star-wars pun thread.

This is a bit confusing, since a planet is defined as "a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals.", the relevant part being "Orbiting a star or stellar remnant". I wouldn't think it would be possible to have a freely floating planet.

Yawn. Yeah, if you have a deep affection for semantic pettiness, planets without stars are not possible.

This points to a problem with our definition. For most people planets are anything spherical that’s too small to be a star and doesn’t orbit another one of those spherical non-stars. That’s certainly the definition this article uses.

I’m not really sure how one could be confused by that. One might be petty about it – but confused?

You called him petty twice for adhering to definitions, but without these definitions it is difficult to speak precisely. The other part of your comment was much more constructive: perhaps our definition should be amended. Until the, no, these cannot be planets by definition. What is wrong with that?

Does the pettiness solve a problem with our communication? I would argue that it doesn't. I would be very surprised if anyone was actually confused by this or other similar articles. This is not even so much a problem with preciseness. All those articles say, in so many words, that they are talking about 'planets that don't orbit stars'. They amend the definition right there and then, problem solved.

This is a common way of describing things. Something is described in terms of something else, the properties that are different are pointed out separately. One might describe an e-book in terms of a book made of paper, pointing out, along the way, the important differences. Since e-books and books made of paper are very similar nobody would protest if, in that context (and after the explanation of the differences), the naked word 'book' would be used to refer to e-books.

I think is less surprising than the fact that Jupiter, and in fact all 4 big planets in our solar system, are actually just gas bubbles, and not actually not the rocky balls us ordinary people imagine as planets. That's right: they have no surface.

These planets are just too small to be stars.

This was a preview of the astronomical models of the Theory of Matrix / DNA, 20 years ago. Lonely planets float freely in space until they have close to a star and be caught in its orbit. The energy of the star reaches the core of the planet which is a germ of star and triggering the start of a nuclear reaction. When the planet's consumes its mass and becomes light it escapes from the stellar orbit, returning to float in space, it grows becoming a pulsar and then unfolds as a supernova. In http://theuniversalmatrix.com website everything is explained.

I wonder if they are moving fairly fast because with that much mass, if they have not been sucked into a star/black hole yet, then their slingshot would have massive momentum.

Also known as "Rogue planets". (Source: Star Trek Enterprise ep. "Rogue Planet").

Sure enough it's fiction, but I can't think of a better nickname.

Small dyson spheres?

Way too small - they'd have to contain a star, so they'd need to be at least as massive as one.

For a smaller enclosure, is there no alternative to a star? What's the purpose of the star anyways? Heat and light? What if the sphere was perfectly insulated. Perhaps once you replace a star with something else, it ceases being a dyson sphere (by definition)

(obviously, I'm not a physicist!)

Stars are balls of matter massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion from their own gravity. The fusion reaction is what releases all the energy.

You could still settle one of these. They'd probably be a very good source for He3, and might have rocky bodies for raw materials.

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