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'Homeless' Planets May Be Common In Our Galaxy

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the click-your-heals-together dept.

sciencehabit writes "Our galaxy could be teeming with 'homeless' planets, wandering the cosmos far from the solar systems of their birth, astronomers have found. In a paper published online today in Nature, the researchers list 10 objects in our galaxy that are very likely to be free-floating planets. What's more, they claim that in our galaxy, free-floaters are probably so populous that they outnumber stars."

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Dorsai65 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Which administration gets the blame for that?

    --
    --- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
  2. Homeless planets throughout the galaxy? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny

    I guess the economy's bad *everywhere*.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. Re:Not really planets by mcmonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    Tch, they're not really planets, right? I mean, if they're not orbiting a star, then they can't have "cleared the neighborhood of their orbit". Yet one more reason the IAU's current definition is so idiotic. (Besides the fact that it suggests that Mercury is more like Jupiter than it is like Ceres.)

    My first thought was also, these are not planets. But I don't know if that's an issue with the IAU definition.

    First, obviously not a planet--doesn't orbit a star. But I'd say that's a feature, not a bug, of the definition.

    Status as a 'Planet' tells you not only something of the objects origins but also it's current state. These objects share the origins of planets, but have a different current state. We just need a different term to capture that distinction.

    I suggest, 'objects formerly known as planets'.