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Space

Planets Without Stars 110

Posted by michael from the excession dept.
Smitty825 writes: "The LA Times is reporting that scientists have discovered planets that have no sustaining stars. They are still pretty big (like 5-15 times Jupiter's size), but they are still too small to be considered Brown Dwarfs! Read the full story here." There's also a story in space.com.
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Planets without Stars More

Planets without Stars

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  • This is interesting.
    Actaully, they are closer to brown dwarfs than anything else. Also, almost all planets put out their own radiation (which is a form of light). Jupiter, for example, is hot enough to put out quite a bit of radiation without the sun. So, by the standard definition, I don't think even earth counts as a planet. I'm sure earth puts out some radiation on the lower end of the scale (radio waves and such which count as light, just not visible light). But perhaps the dictionary meaning isn't the one used in astronomy. If it is, I think it needs to be updated. Either that, or ignored.
  • Always want to do their own thing.

    -John
  • It may be changing, but there are plenty of constants that let people form fairly good pictures of what's going on. This was a surprise to some of those pictures.
  • Thanks, but that's from 1913. Eighty-seven years later, astronomy is a lot different. In 1913 people didn't even have any idea that there were extrasolar planets.

    Thanks!
  • Wow, what other kind of makeup could I get at the rouge planet? I could use a nice lip gloss too.

    Sorry couldn't let this one go by.. pet peeve of mine. Moderate accordingly.
  • I don't wnat to sound like a smarty pants either, but it comes as no surprise to me that you posted this exact post.
  • The fact that they are or not orbiting a star is irrelevant.

    Well, not exactly. The only reason planets orbit stars is because we define them in that manner, just as we define a moon to orbit a planet. Does it matter that these particular bodies are orbiting planets? Not really. If the people who define what a planet is, decide they want to change the definition, then so be it.

    By the way, etimologically planet means wanderer, so refusing to call these wandering objects planets goes against common sense, at least for people fluent in Greek

    There are so many levels I could take this. Let's just say, that your logic escapes me. Just because it's etymologically based on the greek word for wanderer matters very little with how we define it today. Asteroids wander but we don't call them planets. Comets wander but they're not planets either. Many, many words are based on words from other languages, that have totally different meanings in today's indioms.
  • ...prefers to live away from the sun:

    10. Whoops. I didn't know hyperdrives did that.

    9. Low threshold radiation is a big problem when you live to 1000.

    8. Too much static--we can't hear our MP256 players.

    7. Ringworld didn't work out.

    6. It's where all the good TV shows went.

    5. Data Havens.

    4. Jar-Jar doesn't live there.

    3. We were sick of those damn auroras.

    2. You just click on your planet browser to get there, so what's the problem?

    1. It's more like Finland.

    P.S. does anyone know how to make HTML list elements run backwards? This seems to be a serious oversight in the standards....
  • It's true that you need stellar fusion to produce heavy elements, but there are heavy elements floating around the interstellar medium. The more massive a star, the shorter its life. Therefore, in the 15 or so billion years we've already had, there's been plenty of time for supernovae and planetary nebulae to dump these heavy elements into the ISM. I suppose, after a while, you'd have enough for it to congeal into a planet.

    In fact, one of the ways stars in clusters are classified is by the presense or lack of heavy elements in the stars, which indicates whether or not they formed from heavy element-rich material.

    ccg
  • Perhaps at one time they were orbiting around a sun, and something happened to the sun (it blew up, got snuffed out, was stolen), and the planets got blown out into space, or had nothing to hold onto anymore and went wandering [slashdot.org] through the galaxy.
  • Because of all the dark planets out there. That big-eyed grey? Has big eyes to see infrared (heat vision.)

    You don't have to go to the nearest visible star to be somewhere. You really only have to go a small distance into the dark. It is probably a small jump from planet to planet. Space is full of dark planets. Stepping stones to everywhere...

  • Re:So? (Score:1)

    by ccg ( 34 )
    According to the article, the planets are 5 million years old. A star that could burn out in 5 million years would be absolutely massive! In other words, we'd have an easier time detecting the leftover black hole than its orbiting planets. :-) Besides, the supernova probably would have incinerated any planets left after the original star swelled into a supergiant.

    ccg
  • You could almost say that if they found more of these planets, we could use them to whiplash ourselves around the galaxy...Forget coming up with more efficient fuels. Gravity is the cheapest MOST efficient of all.
  • Turned Saturn on its side? Don't you mean Uranus?

    ccg
  • Erm, most known stars, including our Sun, do orbit around the nuclei of galaxies. Also galaxies form revolving clusters, and so on.

    The idea at the end of MIB is more like that our universe is contained within one of the elementary particles of a 'higher' universe. And since we cannot (so far) probe inside electrons and quarks, there may well be *tiny* universes inside them. This 'encapsulation' might go on indefinitely in both directions.

    --

  • Has anyone heard of something called Red Shift?

  • Well, if you think we're having trouble with nomenclature now, just think...

    If there can be so-called "planets" this big, can there ever be a case of a star-like object orbiting a planet-like object?

    Hmm... starlets?

    (Remember, you heard it here first! :-)

  • I actually am a smarty-pants, but I was expecting people to be talking about ponies and flowers. All this talk about speculative astronomy came as a total surprise to me.
  • Yeah, and what if English was wrong? Most of what we know about the universe we talk about in English.
  • I submitted this 2 days ago when it was breaking news. For the orginal story click here [spaceref.com] and if you are interested in wireless alerts on breaking space news try SpaceRef's wireless service [spaceref.com].

  • Actually, the core would remain hot enough for a long time. A planet like this is not hot enough to fuse hydrogen, but it certainly would have enough heat to radiate it everywhere for a long time. Sure it will eventualy cool down, but so will any star (unless it blows up, but then I suppose that cools it down too). The environment would be very volitile, but it would not be conducive to carbon-based life. Perhaps ammonia or methane based life could exist if certain circumstances were just right, but this is highly unlikely and nobody even knows if life could be based on these chemicals yet. Chemosynthesis (the reaction taking the place of photosynthesis that is found by the deep see vents off the west coast of South America) might be possible, but it's quite a stretch.

    Also, tectonic movement is not an issue for a planet of this size as it is almost certainly gasseous and not solid. Also, tectonic activity on rocky planets is likely caused by an active and hot core, not the other way around.
  • The next great movie: Giant balls that resemble planets are heading towards earth at incredible speeds... And they are COVERED in mutated space fungus!!

  • No reason. It's just that it is somewhat unexpected. Let's face it.... based on our incalculation by science fiction and Star Trek, which we all know to 100% verifiable in terms of science (sarcasm added), we expect anything in the depths of space to be debris-like. Not nice round planets, but rough asteroids, comets, the occassional interstellar probe, etc.

    Finding a planet without a sun is just a touch odd...

    Hrm... anyone know if they considered the possibility that the stars for these planets may have burned out completely long ago?

    Kierthos

  • Re:No planets without stars (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Indeed they are large, but these are not stars since no nuclear fusion reaction takes place in their interior.

    All bodies emit some radiation due to their temperature, but a too small body far from any star will basically be in equilibrium with the background radiation and be invisible. Larger bodies like Earth emit more heat for quite some time after they are born because of radioactive decay of heavy elements like uranium. Much larger bodies, Jupiter sized and above emit proportionally more radiation. AFAIR, the most important internal energy source is the slow but very long lasting gravitational contraction. These are planets.

    The fact that they are or not orbiting a star is irrelevant. Celestial mechanics in a complex system with several large planets or around a binary star can cause ejection of a planet outside of the stellar system, so such an object might actually have formed around a star. Would you change the classification of an object depending on the object around which its orbit is bounded (a star or the galactic center) ?

    By the way, etimologically planet means wanderer, so refusing to call these wandering objects planets goes against common sense, at least for people fluent in Greek.

  • Re:What to they orbit around? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to one account, this has already happened. There's a fascinating book called _The 12th Planet_ by Zechariah Sitchin, in which he describes a blood red planet whose orbit is highly elliptical from just this side of Jupiter to deep space near the Oort Cloud, orbiting every 3,600 years. The reason we have yet to discover it is that it was last seen almost 3,000 years ago and is still in deep space, and all memories of it have been lost in the sands of time, only vaguely referenced as an obscure Sumerian god named Nibiru.

    According to Sitchin, the planet started off as a rogue that was captured by the gravity of our sun a couple billion years ago, and when it came close enough, one of its satellites smashed into a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, knocking it out of orbit, where it settled back into an orbit between Mars and Venus. What is left of the satellite orbits what is left of the smashed planet to this day, and there is now a field of debris between Mars and Jupiter where the planet originally orbited.

    So far, the existence of rogue planets is coming to light, and there have been theories presented that say that the moon came into being when a planetoid gouged out a giant chunk. But where the book goes from the astronomically possible to Erich von Daniken's _Chariots of the Gods_ level of "you got to be kidding!" is that the Sumerians knew this because the aliens that inhabit the rogue planet told them so.

    Now even Sitchin won't say how the aliens got to inabit a planet with such a wild orbit that it takes a beating in the asteroid belt when near the Sun and takes a beating by comets in the Oort Cloud when furthest out and risks ending up smashing into Jupiter and igniting it into a new sun, but does go on to say that the aliens have been meddling in the affairs of humanity for our entire existence. Supposedly each time the planet is nearby and the aliens come, civilization advances. He postulates the Sumerian and Egyptian era cultures were aided by the aliens. So if it really exists, and we were able to spot this planet with the Hubble Space Telescope, we would have thousands of years worth of history books to re-write (or correct).

    "Mother very easily made a jam sandwich using no peanuts, mayonnaise or glue." - Robert Anton Wilson, in _Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy_

  • I bet someone already thought of this, but why couldn't these planets have just escaped their orbits around whatever star it is that they were from, some odd billions of years ago? Also, would it even be accurate at this point to call them planets? The definition of a planet requires that it orbits a star, which these obviously do not. Also, part of the reason they are so large could be attributed to lower pressure from solar winds from whatever star they orbited. Just like a balloon inflated slightly at sea level will inflate is it rises into the atmosphere, a ball of gas will also expand with less ambient pressure upon it. I could be wrong on all counts here, but it at least makes sense.
  • Actually, pretty much any physical object above absolute zero produces light of some sort, unless you mean visible light. If you mean visible light, stars produce more than just visible light. It just so happens that our Sun's radiation *peak* is in the visible spectrum (and our atmosphere is most transparent to visible light, interesting coincidence...), but it obviously also produces infrared, UV, etc. It's beautiful in the X-ray spectrum. Other stars have peaks outside the visible spectrum. For example, red giants are red because their peak is in the infrared.

    Stars act as almost perfect blackbodies, but even less-perfect objects like planets behave similarly. For example, your body is about 300K, which is why you emit infrared radiation. You are not a star, but you emit your own light.

    ccg
  • You seem to believe only what you read. It looks like you have missed out on some reading.

    This planet was probably placed in its current position by a race of advanced beings in order to create an isolated home free from the dangers of being near a solar mass.

    :)
  • They are probably coming back to our solar system with new orders

    "No! We told you to blow up the THIRD planet."
  • Ok, so 27000mph, the closest one is 1200 Light years away. When should we start updating our science books again?

    (BTW, there are 18 of these planets discovered by the same 'team'.)

  • A few notes on Pluto, MACHOs, Dark Matter, etc. (Score:3)

    by ccg ( 34 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @09:45AM (#724120) Homepage
    A few people here are arguing that these new planets don't fit the definition of planets. However, the definition can change. In fact, there is an ongoing debate whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet. Pluto is actually just a large lump of the Kuiper Belt, an icy belt of material extending from Pluto's orbit out to about 500AU. It is similar to the Oort Cloud, except that the Oort Cloud is distributed spherically.

    Furthermore, Pluto has a moon, Charon, like many other planets in our solar system. Unlike the others, Pluto is the only one that is so small relative to its own moon that their orbital barycenter is above the planet's surface. When any two objects orbit each other, the smaller one does not orbit the exact center of the larger one. There is a single point between the two, called the barycenter, around which they both orbit. The greater the difference in mass, the closer the barycenter gets to the center of the more massive object. Incidentally, this is why massive planets can cause a detectable wobble in their host star, which is one way we can detect extrasolar planets.

    Also, this planetary discovery sounds similar to the Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) proposed to explain dark matter. However, last I heard, the best estimates for the possible amount of MACHO mass still only accounted for a small percentage of the missing mass (the dark matter). I believe there is a search underway to detect MACHOs with gravitational lensing. Although the discovery of "local" planets without stars may provide legitimacy to the idea of MACHOs, it doesn't explain the missing matter. The missing matter is outside the visible disk of the galaxy, or at least at its edge, if I remember correctly. Adding more mass to the interior of the disk won't explain the high rotation rates at the edge. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

    ccg
    (the history graduate who wishes he were an astronomer)
  • Using gravity as an efficent fuel, eh? I better go pull some out of the Gravity Well out back!
    ----
  • This is probably far off and incorrect, but has anyone else speculated that this could account for all of the mass that scientists were calling "dark matter"?

    --
    EFF Member #11254

  • They would orbit around the center of gravity of their system. Our solar system actually does the same. Technically, the center of gravity isn't the direct center of the sun for our system. Mind you, the actual center is probably only a few meters, or maybe a few miles, from the center. Not worth doing the math over.

    Take two planets, send them past each other and, if they "get caught" in each others gravitational field, then they will orbit each other around the center. Add more planets, and you just have a more complex system, but there will still be a center of gravity.
  • Well then, the answer to this must be that God is deliberately screwing with the astronomers again. :P

    Kierthos
  • The central core would be hot, that plus convection would provide plenty of non-randomness. However these are jupiter-style "planets", so it would be very difficult for life to survive because there is no surface, perhaps an extremely fine mist of bacteria or algea could form but anything heavier would tend to fall towards the center and be boiled. I doubt anything you could ever talk to with form though.
  • There would be such atoms there, much as there are here. The non-hydrogen atoms on the earth did not form in our sun. They are from previous burned out stars, spread out into the general dust, gas, etc these so-called planets would have formed from. It is the same crud our solar system came from.
  • The so-called planets form just like stars form. They just don't have enough mass to become burning stars. People have known about brown dwarfs for a long time. These are just even smaller, the only surprise here is that we can find them. Since these items are smaller they are even harder to detect.

    They are not planets. Stars come in all sizes, some so massive they get so hot they burn out fast, some are even more massive they become so hot they break apart before they can even form a proper star. Generally, the smaller, the less light they give off, these are simply so small they can not "burn" hydrogen, and probably radiate very little heat. Some people think they should be called planets because they look like jupiter, and do not glow, but that is wrong. Their formation is the same as stars. Planets form in the wake of a star's formation.

    Maybe a very, very small number of them are planets blown out of a dying solar system, or from a forming system, etc. But the vast majority are formed exactly the way stars are formed, just not enough mass to ever glow.
  • If there's no central star, what gravitational pull is keeping them in place? Another big planet? If nothing holds them back, maybe these planets are just travelling through space at 27000 mph (hehe) and who knows, they could fall into orbit around our Sun.

    Just think of all the books that would have to be revised to accomodate the addition of a new planet in our solar system...

  • "My God, it's full of planets!"
    ---
  • If there's no central star, what gravitational pull is keeping them in place?
    Who says anything has to "keep them in place"? Are they going to fall down? (No, no gravity...)

    Seriously, though, they will probably be orbiting around the gravitational center of the galaxy, just like our sun and most of the other stars in the galaxy do.

  • No, it's not a planet... (Score:3)

    by robinjo ( 15698 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @03:28AM (#724131)

    it's a Death Star!

  • If the planets are rotating at a constant speed relative to the Earth, we will eventually be able to travel to them via telegraph wire with RFC-0001 MORSE-CODE protocol.

    This rare event could only take place because of heavy machinery polluting our air with toxic fumes.

  • Makes me wonder... is it possible to have life on a planet without sunlight? What kind would it be?
  • Planets form around stars, why wouldn't they form away from stars as well??
  • Not to sound like I'm trying to be a smarty pants, but this comes as no suprise to me.

    I've long wondered what kind of stuff we might find in the vast distances between stars. The stars all condensed from interstellar gas and dust. It seems reasonable to assume that chunks bigger than dust are out there as well. Who knows what kind of huge lumps of rock or whatever might be out there, too far away to see in the dim light of interstellar space. Of course they couldn't really be too terribly huge otherwise they would condense down into something that would self ignite. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and I doubt there are all that many places where you've got heavier elements in vast quantities without vast quantities of hydrogen as well.

    Not too long ago I heard something about a theory that there is a massive tenth planet in our solar system with a really long orbit that takes it out into the oort cloud. Not saying I believe it, but it was interesting.

    Lee Reynolds

    Lee Reynolds

  • Re:universe (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Brown Dwarfs, White Dwarfs, Red Giants,

    Don't forget Uranus

  • hehe Poing! There drops another planet! I was thinking more about inertia, but I guess your theory makes sense =)

    Aren't we all rocket scientists? hehe

  • Like you said, it makes sense (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I mean, aren't planets and stars made out of the same basic stuff? The big difference comes in how MUCH of that stuff they're made of. It makes sense that if stars can form out in the middle of nowhere, so could planets. Just luck of the draw, really. If there's enough material there, it becomes a star. If there isn't enough to become a star, it becomes a planet, an asteroid, a comet, etc.

    : Not too long ago I heard something about a theory that there is a massive tenth planet in our solar system with a really long orbit that takes it out into the oort cloud. Not saying I believe it, but it was interesting.

    Ah yes, the infamous Planet X. Remeber the buzz about that a few years ago, but haven't heard much since.

    Dark Nexus who can't remember his password
    "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
  • The defini tio n [enchantedlearning.com] of planet requires that it be in orbit around a star and does not product light on its own. In fact, the article refered to them as planet-like.

  • Why not? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Feral life exists here on Earth, so who not on a planet without sunlight? It's no different than creatures found near the bottom of the ocean or deep underground - they'd still get heat from a planet's magma core. Dark Nexus who can't remember his password right now "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
  • I submitted this story as well. And included far better details (1,200 light years) and commenting on how it would be funny if our astronomers made the same mistake as those in the dark ages. They called planets "wandering stars" because the orbits appeared random, turns out the orbits were around the sun not the earth.

    Way to go slashdot.
  • Is it possible that there's enough of these objects floating around out there to make up the matter deficit needed to make the Universe flat?

    If so, I guess the MACHO (MAssive Compact Halo Objects, or something like that) was right.
  • Heh, well thanks to rampant stupidity, and a "let's not confuse the children" ethos, the fact that miniscule Pluto is considered a planet means we might as well count lots of chunks of rock in our solar system as "planets."
  • Possible, but the article says the planets are very young, i think they said 5 million years old. i dont know if thats long enough for a star to burn out though.
  • Not really on topic, but one idea ive always played with is what if math is wrong? obviously most of what we know about the universe we get from math, we havent been observing it long enough to see all thease things. wouldnt it be funny if someone finds a fatal flaw in mathmatics and all of what we think we know has to be redefined. just something i think interesting
  • If these extra solar planets were really never born from a star, and are just collected clouds, then they might have another difference from Jupiter: no heavy elements. Instead of Jupiter's mix (though it still is mostly hydrogen right) wouldn't these "planets" basically just be big balls of hydrogren period? I mean, you need star fusion to create anything beyond hydrogen and helium at all don't you?

  • Re:my thoughts (Score:3)

    by plunge ( 27239 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:59AM (#724148)
    math isn't a "thing" that can be wrong. It's a representation of abstract concepts like number, and while these founding assumptions can be wrong, math itself is internally consistent and correct just as an abstract systm on its own. We can put digits in the wrong place, but we can't be "wrong" about the existence of digits. There is no such real thing as a digit. It's a concept we created, and defined it's parameters ourselves. It could indeed turn out that our math is a poor way to DESCRIBE what goes on in the universe, but's an entirely different problem.
  • What is the differece between an asteroid, planet and brown dwarf though? Just size?
    Let's break planet down into two categories: gas-giant (like Jupiter) and rocky (like Earth or Mars). An asteroid would be a rocky body that is too small to be a planet. The dividing line between asteroid and planet is vague, as is the dividing line between gas-giant planet and brown dwarf. Some would qualify Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as brown dwarfs. Throwing moons into the mix makes the planet/asteroid question even more interesting.

    For a detailed discussion of these differences and more, you might want to check out Lunar Colony [lunarcolony.com]'s article, "What's the difference between a planet and a brown dwarf star? [lunarcolony.com]". They also have an article "What's the difference between a planet and an asteroid? [lunarcolony.com]".

    Hope this helps.

  • Vivienne drew back, horrified. As obnoxious as most trolls were, they didn't deserve the cruel punishment dealt out by those petty dictators of /., the moderators. Of course, many of the little masochists came to enjoy severe moderation, but that was beside the point. She was alone in a parking lot with one of Malda's minions. Good thing the stilettos also came with extremely pointed toes.

    "What do you want?"

    "I want..." The moderator's voice trailed off. He took a heavy step towards Vivienne. She jumped back and aimed her M$ mace at the advancing figure. He took another step, and Vivienne pressed the spray button. The canister sputtered weakly. Vivienne silently cursed Bill Gates and all of his descendents, and threw the canister directly at the moderator's face. He stumbled and fell to the pavement, and Vivienne realized that something was wrong with this moderator. He wasn't hiding behind the usual shield of power.

    "Are you hurt?" Vivienne couldn't leave him on the ground like that, even if he was a moderator. She helped him to his feet. He unsteadily made his way to lean on the car again.

    "What happened to you?"

    "I... I.." his voice failed him again. Against her better judgement, Vivienne unlocked the passenger door and half helped, half pushed him into the seat. He was barely conscious. She closed the door, and went around to her door. After one last moment of hesitation, she started the car and began to drive.

    Stay tuned for the next installation...

  • Uh, discus or discuss?

    What's up with the lameness filter? Not enough words?

  • A planet like Earth has a liquid magma core, correct? So it follows that other Earth-like planets might also have magma cores.

    It's this magma core that creates volcanic vents that are found deep in the ocean, providing the heat needed to sustain life at those low depths were sunlight never reaches.

    Mind you, according to the article [cnn.com] on CNN [cnn.com] we aren't dealing with planets like Earth, which isn't suprising. Supposedly they're much larger, currently larger than Jupiter and Saturn. The question of life on a Gas Giant is a whole different ball game. Like with Jupiter though, it's possible that they've also got moons that could, theoretically, support life.

    Dark Nexus
    "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."

    Dark Nexus
  • Who cares what it is, how do we round up all the lawyers and send them there?
  • The defini tio n of planet requires that it be in orbit around a star

    Uh, whose definition? Planeton are simply wanderers in the sky -- which these would be in a cosmic sense, but not in the "point of light that wanders relative to the fixed stars" sense.

    Of course, on the latter logic, planets in other solar systems wouldn't be planets, because we can't see them and because, if we could, they wouldn't wander relative to our eye. Indeed, the Greek definition of 'star' didn't (for most) include something not visible by the naked eye, from the surface of the earth.

    Definitions change :)

  • Christ, I'm tired of this... (Score:3)

    by dbarclay10 ( 70443 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @07:37PM (#724155)
    I hate it when people say, "Oh, there can't be life on these because ...." or, "life can't for in an environment that hostile ..." Really pisses me off. What the hell do you guys/gals know? Damn-near nothing, that's what. You have experienced a smallish percentage of ONE world. So, what was the weather like on Jupiter yesterday? What, you don't know?

    Listen, guys. Here, on *this* planet, is life that can thrive on Jupiter. Yeah, that's right, it exists already. They're hidden in sealed-off caves beneath the ocean floor. There's microbes in the Antarctic.

    The people who say life isn't likely to exist on these planets because of the extreme environment are probably the same people who think we're killing the Earth with pollution. We're friggin' *gnats* compared to the Earth. We try our hardest to destroy the Earth - and I mean bend *all* of our global effort towards it - and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference a million years from now. And according to our best knowledge, a million years is the blink of an eye. At *best* we'd be a tiny high/low point on a graph, and you'd need a magnifying glass to see the damage we did.

    So, to sum up:
    a) We don't know a damned thing about these planets, and we have absolutely *NO* idea whether or not life exists on them.
    b) Life here on Earth, in our own backyard, can stand extremes like you wouldn't believe. Pressures that makes diamonds out of coal, cold that comes close to absolute zero(coldest known temperature is something like -200C, which is only 72/73 degrees above absolute zero), heat that would melt anything humans have ever produced are nothing to life.
    c) Okay, offtopic, but I'm on a roll ;) We can't destroy the Earth. At this point in time, the worst we could do wouldn't make a dent in the scheme of things, Earth-scale.

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • Could this possibly be an alternate origin of a solar mass?
    It being "all alone" out there leaves nothing else nearby. It's gravity although relatively low, is the only 'well' around, and should therefore grab everything close enough until it's own mass becomes critical enough to form a solar mass....See, that WAS stupid.
    Also, perhaps these 'stand alone' planets(assuming their gaseous like all the other ones found out there) were formed by the after effect of a singularity.

    Let me elaborate on that one before I call it a stupid idea.

    Let's assume that a singularity needs to 'exit' somewhere in this Universe. There have been theories saying this could explain the presence of "white holes" elsewhere in the universe. But what if the energy doesn't come out as violently as it went in?

    Or what about really SMALL singularities which formed during the early expansion of the universe? If they indeed 'exit' elsewhere in the Universe, couldn't they just form objects such as planets.

    Not immediately of course, but after entropy has chewed away at it for a while(on both ends that is).

    OK, now THAT was a stupid idea...

  • Oh Oh, I got another one.
    What if these planets ARE flying through space at 26,000 k as the result of some supernova of a star they were previously a member of?

    Or what about some other phenomena that sent it out of orbit?

    Did they even say if these bodies are moving at a faster rate than the expansion of the Universe?

    I had better go check that article over again...
  • What if some civilization out there decided the only way they could escape their dying star was to take the whole bloddy planet and find another one?

    Sure beats the heck out of interstellar travel doesn't it?
  • Yes. But you don't actually have a point now do you?
  • I know there was... one in the original series...

    Anyway, the CNN article I linked to earlier in this discussion has a quote from one of the astronomers that found these planets:

    "Perhaps these objects were ejected from their orbits from their original birthplaces around the stars."

    But as for civilization, since these are all gas giants that were found, and the fact that there's more than just one planet indicates that it probably wasn't a conscious decision by some alien civilization. At least not by a civilization that could possibly fit any definition of life & civilization that we currently have.

    Dark Nexus
  • By jove, he's got it!
  • perhapse this is futher proof for the big bang theory... as the big bang theory goes it was an exsplosion we pretty much took for granted that the small matter chunks chose a "power source" to revolve around .... whit this proof along with the red shift and blue shift proof we are a step closer to proveing the big bang, im sure the religious freaks are going to go nuts over this but quesadia (i think that either latian for what will be will be or spanish for cheasy poofs =P~)
    DD..III.EEE.TTT.U.U.X.X
    D D..I..EE...T..U.U..X.
    DD..III.EEE..T..UUU.X.X
  • Dammit! He just let out the plot of my next blockbuster sci-fi epic adventure! Oops.
  • First off, I think the post this guy replied to was just as insightfull as the one I am repling too.

    I think what he was trying to say is that what if we discover that 1+1 != 2, that there is really *something* else going on. With how math relates to physics I can definatly see that being true. Your right, it's not that "math" could be wronge, it's that maybe whatever we always concedered 1 of something tangably really isn't one. maybe it can't be discribed that way at all.

    Also, I like that he is thinking differntly (no, I dont like Macs). People shouldn't be slammed for thinking something that contredes the common way of thought. He's not crazy, just injoys thinking "what if" thats all.

    -Jon
  • At first thought I imagined that without sunlight there wouldn't be enough energy to sustain life, however, I then thought about the example of Europa.

    It's too far from the sun to receive enough energy to be useful, however, there are some theories that suggest a magnetic interference from Jupiter could cause enough warming within the core of Europa to generate the necessary energy to sustain life.

    So, while it's not likely we're going to find a lot of complex life on these rogue planets, a couple of large ones may have smaller moons in a similar configuration as Jupiter and Europa. It's becoming accepted that bacteria can survive under the most harsh conditions imaginable.

  • In my humble opinion, I think the work being done with string theory and ten dimensional math will explain the dark matter in a fantastic way.

    A few months ago, Scientific American ran a great article explaining it pretty clearly. I won't get into here since it's off topic, but needless to say, my guess is that the dark matter is a result of us being able to observe the effects of gravitons that are radiating from beyond a distance that we could travel normally. In other, crazier sounding words, the gravitons are being emitted from objects that are beyond our current dimension.

    Trust me, try and get your hands on the article. It's fascinating stuff. And while I'm so far off topic already, may I recommend the book Hyperspace [amazon.com] by Michio Kaku.

  • Life without sunlight -- not for long, if at all (theoretically, something could eat up complex compounds that randomly formed, but that would quickly be exhausted without sunlight to catalyze reactions).

    However, that isn't the case here. First, this isn't just a collection of random gas giants. What was actually found was a loosely bound cluster of young dim stars, brown dwarfs, and gas giant planets. Based upon the surveyed area and the estimated size of the cluster, we're actually talking about several hundred objects. In fact, the reason they were looking there at all was because of spectroscopic anomalies in the vicinity of a visible star (the brightest star in the cluster).

    Check out this article in Science magazine [sciencemag.org] for full details.

  • What do they do for Must-See TV? "All the most random Joes are on NBC Thursday!"

    ChicagoFan

  • Problem is, a planet which is not under the effect of any local gravitational or magnetic fields will not maintain tectonic activity for long (in cosmological terms, anyway). Probably not nearly long enough for life to develop, let alone evolve in any significant way.

    It's the earth's proximity to the sun and the moon's gravitational fields that help prolong our own tectonic activity, and for moons like Io circling Jupiter, they've got both crushing gravitational tides and magnetic fields to keep them active.
  • I haven't used slackware for quite some time but back then the default hostname
    was darkstar maybe these astronomers should recycle that name
  • I thought the same thing.

    Arent they just huge asteroids then??

  • True, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I figured there might be some other effects that a star may have on the development of life, but I didn't know anything about them and wasn't going to pretend I did. But back to your point, in theory it's possible for free-floating binary planets to exist. If a free floating planet is formed by the same process as a star (but on a lesser scale), then couldn't the same thing happen with binary stars? In theory, the effects of each planet's gravity on the other would be somewhere between that of the sun and the moon on earth. Less powerful than the effects of the sun, with a longer period than those of the moon. Dark Nexus who can't remember his password right now "Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."

  • Better Headline (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 07, 2000 @04:42AM (#724173)
    I'm posting anonymously because I hate when people whine about their submissions being rejected, but I sent this story in a couple of days ago with a *much* better headline: Scientists Find Planet Sized Balls [excite.com]
  • There is a a theory that this "Planet X" passes through the Ooort cloud every so many million years and sends a few comets to the inner solar system - possibly causing a regularity in mass extinctions.

    I heard, a couple of years ago (maybe less), about some astronomer that claimed to have discoverted a new planet orbiting the sun. I dont think I've heard anything since thoguh.

    What is the differece between an asteroid, planet and brown dwarf though? Just size? You could say that there are millions of "planets" orbiting in the Oort cloud, and indeed any asteroid in a near circular orbit.

    If I remember my Star Trek history correctly, the original Foudners homeworld (well, the one we saw in "The Search" was also a "rouge planet", without a star orbiting (yet it was class M for some reason...)
  • From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) : 1. (Astron.) A celestial body which revolves about the sun in an orbit of a moderate degree of eccentricity. It is distinguished from a comet by the absence of a coma, and by having a less eccentric orbit. What is described is more of a gigantic asteriod, as it has no star.
  • To boost your point, one thing people commonly don't realize is that ANY concept of life, no matter how different from life on Earth, would require complex, yet stable patterns. But this sort of thing requires materials- namely- complex molecules. Even if these planetoids WERE violent and random, nothing would happen, because they probably don't have anything more complex than hydrogen, and maybe helium. Without nuclear fusion (which is exactly what these things lack) those molecules can't really do anything other than bump into each other. Life on earth is possible mainly because we have atoms like carbon, oxyegen, and nitrogen, which allow all sort of complex configurations, ranging from simple protiens to DNA. But unless these balls are castoffs from a supernova, it's doubtful that they'd have many, if any, of these heavier atoms. So even if conditions WEREN'T terrible for life as WE know it- they're still terrible for ANY life.
  • These have been theorized for a long time and they were first observed years ago. Slashdot has even run stories on this before. It's not a shocker.
  • Similar to life found at the bottom of our oceans with no sunlight? Of course, this assumes that the planets have an active heat producing core
  • What certainty is there that these planets even Have ammonia or methane? If they just collalesced from could of hydrogen, and there's been no nuclear burning, then carbon and oxygen can't even exists, much less more complex molecules like ammonia and methane.
  • There truly is a 10th planet in our Solar System that revolves around the Sun in a 3600 year eliptical orbit. Every 3600 years, this planet which is called 'Nibiru' which means 'Planet of Crossing' comes near Earth between Mars and Jupiter. About 4 billion years ago, Nibiru entered our Solar System as a 'stray' planet from somewhere unknown and caused complete chaos. At the time, 'Earth' did not exist as we know it today - instead, it was a planet 4 times the size of Earth which the Sumerians called 'Tiamat' and it was located between Mars and Jupiter. Ironically enough, Mars happened to be in an orbit around the Sun that is similiar to where Earth is today, hence giving the planet credibility that it once, indeed, could have been very hospitable, but that is completely off topic. Once the stray planet Nibiru came into our Solar System, it did many things - the first thing it did was 'rip' one of Saturn's moons away from it, because of it's emense gravitational pull; that moon which was ripped away is what we call Pluto. The second thing that Nibiru did was turn Saturn on its side (don't ask me how it did). Because of this, Saturn's gravitational pull counterattacked Nibiru's gravitational pull and sent the stray planet on crash course toward Tiamat. Nibiru's Moons collided with the Planet Tiamat and literally tore it in half - one half becoming Earth, and the other half becoming the well known asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. For more information about this subject, please read: The 12th Planet by Zecharia Sitchin The book gives details about the 10th planet Nibiru and also mentions about our 'creators' - the Anunnaki. If you do not have time for the book, then please read this very descriptive essay on the subject which is located here: http://www.concentric.net/~Freer1/index10.htm
  • Don't asteroids have to be some species of rock? These sound like glorified gas clouds.
  • could you make a Beowulf cluster out of these things?
  • Geez, sorry. The last thing we want to do is offend people who are fluent in Greek. They might discus us to death!
  • What I wonder is whether the planet might exhibit the same behavior as the rogue planet in Charles Sheffield's McAndrews stories [baen.com].
    --
  • If I understand my basic astronomy correctly, most planets form at about the same time stars form. When the big ball of gas that will be a star begins to be drawn in by its own gravity, it starts to spin (someting about angular momentum). As it spins, sometimes a disk of gas and whatever was in the gas forms around it. These gases and other materials begin to form clumps and eventually some generate enough gravitational attraction to suck other clumps into them until they too form a somewhat dense ball. These clumps in the disk surrounding the forming star become the planets and eventually suck up most of the stuff the star didn't.

    If we find an isolated planet like the one mentioned, it simply means that there was enough gas to cause contraction, but not enough to create a central pressure great enough to cause a temperature of aobut 10^7 Kelvins (I think that's the right temperature) so that Hydrogen fusion will take place. It probably formed from a small, somewhat isolated, interstellar cloud. That is precisely what a brown dwarf is, except they are usually bigger. It is a would-be star, but there just was not enough raw material available for hydrogen fusion. Jupiter is the closest thing in our solar system to being a brown dwarf. We might have had a binary solar system had enough gas collected where jupiter is, however, it did not. Instead the pressure at jupiter's center only causes temperatures high enough for metallic hydrogen (I think that's what it's called) to exist. It's not nearly hot enough for fusion. I believe that a brown dwarf has to reach about 80 times Jupiter's mass to be considered a brown dwarf.

    I think I saw someone ask something about life on a planet like this. It is highly unlikely because of the volitile environment, enormous (by earth's standards) gravity, and presumably very hot surface (think Jupiter). The planet would almost certainly not be solid like earth because of its size and because of the concentration of material in space. If there is enough material to form a solid rock that size, then there is probably an ass-load (couldn't think of a better term) of material around and you could bet that there would be a large star near the planet.

    Another thing that could be an issue is the definition of a planet. Generally the definition of a planet includes the fact that it orbits something. If an isolated planet-like structure exits wihtout a star and it is not large enough to be a brown dwarf, then we may have a new category of atronomical object on our hands. Either that or we have to change the definition of one of these things (most likely brown dwarf or planet). Or it could be that a planet doesn't have to orbit something by the astronomical definition and I'm completely wrong. Either way is fine with me.

    Ok, I think that is plenty of information. Sorry if I've bored you or made lots of mistakes typing/spelling. Also, my facts may not be exactly correct, but I believe they are all correct in a general sense. If not, feel free to call me an idiot and correct me.
  • How do things like these loner planets form? From everything I've learned, planets form in clouds of particles surrounding stars. If there is no star for the particles to gather around, how did these planets form instead of just stray particles knock each other around? If the star they formed around ceased to exist, the process must not have destroyed the planets as was previously thought to happen. If these turn out to be real, we've got many a question to answer about how the universe works.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Re:Life? (Score:3)

    by bonzoesc ( 155812 ) on Saturday October 07, 2000 @05:14AM (#724199) Homepage
    Life would probably not form, because a planet that is not directly affected by a star will not have an enivronment volatile and random enough for the random particles to collect and form self-replicating molecules.

    The lack of tectonic activity mentioned in another post would mean that the core of the planet would not stay hot enough for life forms resembling those at the bottom of our oceans to survive for long.

    However, if life did form, we might not recognize it for what it is. Sadly, by the time we get there, the planet would probably be a dark, dormant, and extremely boring rock, if it still existed.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

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