Probable Rogue Planet Spotted

Maow writes with news of a sighting of a rogue gas giant: "'This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of 1,000 times the [area] of the full moon,' said study co-author Etienne Artigau of the University of Montreal. 'We observed hundreds of millions of stars and planets, but we only found one homeless planet in our neighborhood.' This planet appears to be an astonishingly young 50-120 million years old. The original paper is on the arXiv. Here's hoping the Mayan End-of-World-2012 people don't seize upon this as some kind of impending rogue planet on a collision course with Earth, but one can expect it'll be bantered about on such forums." From the article: "The team believe it has a temperature of about 400C and a mass between four and seven times that of Jupiter - well short of the mass limit that would make it a likely brown dwarf."

Comments

Maybe their eagles

[future assassin]

can reach earth before they get too far?

Fleet of Worlds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotted it! Those puppeteers are going to have to come up with a new plan now, or give me one million stars to not reveal the secret.

Re:Fleet of Worlds?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Well, you're bought easily. I'd have the information in a hundred scattered dead drops and ask for a General Products hull franchise.

homeless

[Quiet_Desperation]

we only found one homeless planet in our neighborhood

Either the galactic economy is going well, or they are good at hiding the problems.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Why hope?

[geekoid]

You are part of the problem. Let me explain.

", I don't want to live on this planet anymore."
should be:
", I don't want them to live on this planet anymore."

Think Ark B.

too primitive for my tastes..

[smitty97]

Let me know when they discover a nethack planet.