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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."
...and it should be noted, by the IAU definition, this "rogue planet" is not a planet at all. It's a "sub-brown dwarf".
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Based on a quick scan of the paper, it looks like they did a spectral and photometry analysis based on it's estimated size, compared it to their atmospheric models, and determined a probable age. They did image it, BTW, just not very clearly since it is pretty far away (sticks out like a proverbial sore thumb on infrared, thanks to it's warmth). They also matched that to probable origins based on it's path and determined a likely group to which it belongs, which helps confirm the age slightly. Note that this estimate is rather tentative, since it's hard to say exactly.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You should have at least capitalized Eagles to give people a better hint that you were referring to Space: 1999. The way you did it was just kinda cruel to younger geeks and SF nerds.