Nomad Planets: Stepping Stones To Interstellar Space?

An anonymous reader writes "Ian O'Neill suggests in an opinion piece at Al Jazeera that brown dwarves and nomad planets (planets not orbiting any star) could be a much needed stepping stone on our way to foreign stars. Quoting the article: 'In February, a fascinating paper was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society detailing calculations on how many "nomad planets" the Milky Way must contain after estimating our galaxy's mass from how much gravity it exerts on surrounding space. Scientists from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) had uncovered something surprising — there are likely many more planets in the Milky Way than stars. ... Louis Strigari and his Kavli team calculated that there must be 100,000 planets for every star in the Milky Way (PDF). That's a lot of planets! But how can this be? Every star can't have tens of thousands of planets ranging from Pluto-sized to Jupiter-sized. This planetary "excess" actually suggests the existence of planets that were born without a star — nomad planets. ... we need all the help we can get if we are to venture to another star, so these ultracool brown dwarfs could become much-needed "stepping stones" for future starships to refuel on their light-years of journey time. There may be the possibility that these sub-stellar objects may even become more desirable targets for interstellar travellers. After all, there may be dozens of these invisible objects between here and Proxima just waiting to be uncovered by the sophisticated infrared telescopes of the future; they'd certainly make for more accessible scientific curiosities.'"

light-years of journey time??

[Anonymous Coward]

When did a light year become a unit of time?

Re:light-years of journey time??

[Anonymous Coward]

When did a light year become a unit of time?

Ever since the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Re:Surprising?

[khallow]

The estimate while not based on a lot of evidence, does have a rational basis. The authors are using a power law model and estimates of large nomads (objects above the mass of Jupiter through to brown dwarf mass) from microlensing events to give a crude estimate for the population of planets down to Pluto size. It's shaky, but not unreasonable given that asteroids follow the same power law distribution, for example.

Re:Dark matter?

[John Hasler]

Sounds like they're hypothesising that all the "dark matter" is actually made of planets, or did i miss something...

You missed the fact that the total mass of all these little objects is negligible compared to the amount of dark matter that needs to be accounted for. You also missed the fact that "Maybe it's all cold baryonic matter!" was the first thing the physicists thought of but when they went through the calculations they could not make the numbers work out.

Re:Kessel Run

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you are an idiot.

Re:Too Bad

[Attila Dimedici]

According to NASA only 50% of astronauts who have spent more than 6 months in space have eye damage. That is still a significant problem, but not quite as severe as you make it out to be. Additionally, they report that 60% of those who spend more than 30 days in space have some health problems as a result. They are more interested in figuring out why the other 40% do not.