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.
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.
Re:Interesting but not big suprise
by
nyet
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· Score: 2
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.
Re:Interesting but not big suprise
by
plunge
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· Score: 2
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.
Re:No planets without stars
by
empesey
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· Score: 2
The fact that they are or not orbiting a star is irrelevant.
Well, not exactly. The only reasonplanets 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.
Top 10 Reasons why Intelligent Life...
by
Googol
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· Score: 2
...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....
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 through the galaxy.
The next great movie:
Giant balls that resemble planets are heading towards earth at incredible speeds... And they are COVERED in mutated space fungus!!
--
There is no.sig
Re:No planets without stars
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2
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.
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.
A few notes on Pluto, MACHOs, Dark Matter, etc.
by
ccg
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· Score: 3
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)
Re:Light speed Extra Solar travel is dangerous
by
webrunner
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· Score: 2
Using gravity as an efficent fuel, eh? I better go pull some out of the Gravity Well out back! ----
-- ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Re:What to they orbit around?
by
Sir+Tristam
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· Score: 2
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
Interesting but not big suprise
by
leereyno
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· Score: 2
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
-- Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Re:Interesting but not big suprise
by
plunge
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· Score: 2
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."
Re:Interesting but not big suprise
by
Sir+Tristam
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· Score: 2
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.
Re:Interesting but not big suprise
by
isorox
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· Score: 2
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...)
The defini tio n 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.
Re:No planets without stars
by
plunge
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· Score: 2
Don't asteroids have to be some species of rock? These sound like glorified gas clouds.
Re:No planets without stars
by
plunge
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· Score: 2
Geez, sorry. The last thing we want to do is offend people who are fluent in Greek. They might discus us to death!
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.
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?
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.
Christ, I'm tired of this...
by
dbarclay10
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· Score: 3
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,
--
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
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.
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.
-- "So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
Better Headline
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4
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
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.
--
Trying is the first step toward failure. - Homer Simpson
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
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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....
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 through the galaxy.
The next great movie: Giant balls that resemble planets are heading towards earth at incredible speeds... And they are COVERED in mutated space fungus!!
There is no
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.
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.
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!
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Well then, the answer to this must be that God is deliberately screwing with the astronomers again. :P
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"My God, it's full of planets!"
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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.
it's a Death Star!
Makes me wonder... is it possible to have life on a planet without sunlight? What kind would it be?
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
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The defini tio n 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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
;) 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.
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
Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
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
this is my sig.
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.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
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
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.
could you make a Beowulf cluster out of these things?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
gravity.
What I wonder is whether the planet might exhibit the same behavior as the rogue planet in Charles Sheffield's McAndrews stories.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
No.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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.
Trying is the first step toward failure. - Homer Simpson
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate