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Most Planets In the Universe Are Homeless
StartsWithABang writes: We like to think of our Solar System as typical: a central star with a number of planets — some gas giants and some rocky worlds — in orbit around it. Yes, there's some variety, with binary or trinary star systems and huge variance in the masses of the central star being common ones, but from a planetary point of view, our Solar System is a rarity. Even though there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy for planets to orbit, there are most likely around a quadrillion planets in our galaxy, total, with only a few trillion of them orbiting stars at most. Now that we've finally detected the first of these, we have an excellent idea that this picture is the correct one: most planets in the Universe are homeless. Now, thank your lucky star!"
don't planets need some kind of gravity source to pull all the dust and shit together?
If they're not circling a star, they're not planets. That's what planet means.
so much resources out there for the taking, no need to come to earth
This impacts Drake equation and might shed light as to why we have not detected any other sentient life in the universe.
>> most planets in the Universe are homeless
I wonder if they also smell like urine (http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/10/26/1226209/rosetta-probe-reveals-what-a-comet-smells-like).
Just because most planets belong to a solar system doesn't mean that most solar systems don't have planets. That it is atypical for a planet to orbit a star in no way indicates that it is atypical for a star to have orbiting planets.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I always wondered why wandering planets couldn't be used instead of dark matter to explain where all the missing mass is.
Now not only do I have to be thankful that I have a roof over my head, now I have to be thankful I have a star over it to.
you'd think most of them were captured in larger gravity wells rather then wizzing around.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Do people say "our" Earth? No, it's The Earth, there is only one.
Why do people say "our" Solar system? "The Sun" is named "Sol", the term "Solar system", refers to the Sol system, of which there is only one.
Our star system = the Solar System
Our planet = the Earth
"Our sun" and "our moon" are fine.
Actually these are not planets according to the new classification.
First, it must orbit the Sun.
Second, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball.
And third, it must have cleared other objects out of the way in its orbital neighborhood.
http://missionscience.nasa.gov...
Yay unreadable website.
I tried to read the article. But then I got to the end of a sentence, and there was an exclamation point! They should be reserved for truly remarkable things. If you have more than two in an article that size, you're devaluing them! I stopped counting at five! Just got annoying.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Sounds like some of these stars were able to kick their youngins out of the basement.
Space 1999 was so prescient!
2) These should be called slacker stars. They had so much potential, but just blew it all and eventually their parent's kicked them out.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Dark Matter is rogue planets!
(repeat over and over until it becomes paradigm)
I wonder if the basic formation of a planetary system can occur without the center mass becoming large enough to be a star. Could you have a system of only unlit planets orbiting around each other. If the gas and dust is swirling around and clumping together, it could conceivably do that even though the mass at the center never gets big enough to ignite. Perhaps something about the way the center star is supposed to push the lighter elements out further away would cause something to not work out right, but to me it seems like it should still work in a similar fashion.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
If the theoretical simulations are correct (these would be the theoretical simulations based on a small number of observations and a lot of conjecture about the underlying forces at work), then the vast majority of planets are homeless. But of course, the headline and the summary state it as a fact.
I'm sure those planets would prefer to be thought of as "free".
I will naively assume planets generally form around stars during stellar formation, and don't just spontaneously show up.
So, the homeless planets either spun out during formation ... or ... what, are subsequently ripped away by some other phenomenon? Possibly passing gravity? That about right?
So, if they're hard to see because they don't emit light ... can they possibly be part of the whole dark matter thing? Or is that one different?
If there's quadrillions of planets, and trillions orbiting stars ... there's 3 orders of magnitude more homeless planets than ones in orbits?
The mind truly boggles. Suddenly Space 1999 seems much more plausible to me (I mean the moon flying through space part, not the rest of it).
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
With a few trillion planets in orbit, makes me think that if life is a 1 in a million chance, we've got millions of planets with life just in our galaxy....with at least trillions of planets of life across the universe.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I thought orbiting a star was one of the criteria for an object to be called a planet.
A star with planets are born because of (a part of) a gas cloud pulled together by gravitation, and the sum of all particle movements results in the rotation of said system.
But when a gas cloud is not large enough to form a star (needing a lot of matter to get the pressure in the centre (by gravitation) high enough for fusion), it can form a dark planet, or probably even a dark system of a central heavy body with one or more dark satellites.
summary says there are hundreds of billions of stars, and a million billion (quadrillion) planets, with a thousand billion (trillion) orbiting stars. That's ten thousand planets per star, and 10 orbiting planets per star. Then the conclusion state's most stars don't have planets. I don't follow.
"Now, thank your lucky star!"
As I read those words, all of a sudden I started hearing Madonna's voice singing inside my head...
Before one of these hobo-planets comes our way, we should already have a Rotor colony.
You can't handle the truth.
Sheesh. So is this the simple explanation to "dark matter" problems in cosmology?
We're out in the backwater. All the action is happening in the core.
Dark matter accounts for something like 90% of the gravitational effects that we see.
I've always suspected that "dark matter" very likely isn't matter at all. I suspect it is simply a gap in our model similar to how relativity filled in gaps for Newtonian mechanics. Dark matter (and dark energy) are basically placeholders for observations that do not match our model. That means one of two things. Either there is something we haven't observed yet OR there is something missing from our model. Both are quite possible but we seem fixated on that former when it could very easily be the later.
I actually do have some background in physics (college minor and worked in some research labs) and I've never have any "real" physicist give me a satisfactory explanation as to why invoking some mysterious matter/energy is a more likely answer than a gap in our models. We understand gravity probably the least of the four forces and we don't have a model that integrates it into our Standard Model. Seems to me that the place to look may very well be in the math rather than in the stars.
We've seen that with Jupiter, if it were not for being in orbit around Sol, Jupiter and its moons would effectively be their own dark solar system.
Systems composed of multiple stars (binaries, etc.) are more common than singular stars, like our Sun. A binary system is a risky place to be -- there is a strong probability that the gravitational interaction between the paired stars would, given enough time, eject any planetary body which forms there -- the "stable" regions depend on the orbital parameters of the two (or more) stars and can be limited to very narrow bands. So, if planetary formation is a typical process around stars and binaries are more common, then it's likely that the galaxy has a large population of planets ejected from unstable orbits around binaries.
For what it's worth, conjecture is that the Sun formed in a cluster and was, itself, ejected. Nearby stars with identical spectra (implying they formed from the same source material) have been identified.
Most really advance races will have probably passed through their singularity – being mechanical-beings they won't really need stars providing warmth to live by. It could be that a huge percentage of these planets are colonized by post-biological-entities and the planets around stars are left as garden areas for new post-biological-entities to emerge from.
Perhaps this is a new direction for SETI
Letter To Iran
Oh great. Now we have to worry about killer zombies planets?
the definition of planet includes orbiting a star ( past or present )
Spooky action at a distance!
It's true, just saw one on the corner. Had a cardboard sign, "Will orbit for $$$".
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
As AC, I'm entitled to throw this out even if it sounds like non-sense to some of you: Can't dark matter be explained by massive objects outside of our 3-dimensional space?
We can only detect giant planets due to the resolution of our instruments, so of course the author of this piece has made the assumption that only galaxies with giant planets have planets in them. False assumption.
How can they claim that there's more of these homeless planets than not when they've only found one of them...ever!
I understand that we don't have to see something for it to be there but, this leap is just too big to bear.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Maybe. The core's probably a pretty unpleasant place though, with radiation levels so high i's unlikely that life could evolve. Though admittedly by the time a race masters interstellar travel it's probably well on it's way to being able to colonize the galactic core, provided they don't mind living entirely indoors.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But here’s the funny thing: when we work out the numbers of our best theoretical calculations, the ones produced by getting kicked out of young solar systems represent far less than half of the rogue planets that we expect.
So the author tries to explain a huge number of expected rogue planets, but fails to describe how we've arrived at the number in the first place. "Work out the numbers"? Yes? Could you please share? Why didn't you start with that in the first paragraph?
Also what's with all the exclamation marks? Is this article pitched at grade-schoolers? Fine but if so, what is it doing here?
Greetings... That depends upon one's perception of what "alien" and "invasion" is. Apparently, not all life forms within the creation share the same frequency we humans currently do/have awareness of. There are life forms residing within all the various octaves of the creation... they can see (have awareness) down, but we can not see above our own frequency just as they can not see above their own. As far as "invasion"... we are a conquered race.... aka our emotions are food/fuel for higher vibrational frequencies. Many life forms aid to create mistrust and warring within "us" then feed off of our fear much the way a physical parasite feeds off of a hosts blood plasma; http://www.focusonrecovery.net/mattersoffaith/Holyland.html
What we're really talking about here is lots of failed stars. Basically innumerable Jupiters orbiting nothing (if there were enough H in the solar system when it formed, Jupiter would have become a star, our solar system would have been binary, and we probably would not have existed). If the solar system had a little bit less H, Sol would not have formed as a star (i.e. a mass of light elements large enough to initiate a fusion reaction) and would instead be one of these "planets". In that case, we definitely would not be here.
So humanity has detected around 700 planets. Let us low ball the estimated planets around stars at 1,000,000,000,000. We have "concluded" after gazing into the past, over distances we can't begin to travel to with generations, with a simulation that assumes model components, and based on detecting 0.0000000007% planets... we can now "correctly" state most planets are homeless. *shakes head* I think is is a bit early to declare what is correct at this point in time. Looking forward to the upcoming telescopes that may reveal more data.
"most likely"
It might impact one of the variables in the drake equation, assuming its even right. I think its pretty laughable that we're drawing up broad conclusions about the universe based on the infinitesimally small dataset we currently have. We don't even have any direct data validating our current planet detection systems.
This would be true to the acceptable knowledge we know today. But being that our technology is still not sophisticated enough to find "earth like planets" in mass that we wish we could, doesn't mean that all planets provide Zero life. We also can't assume that all life in the universe is hydrocarbon based (like humans), or that require the same temperature / pressure to thrive like humans do.
I thought they wanted our wimmin.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
A lot of physicists, including Neil deGrasse Tyson, have said that "Dark Matter" is actually a pretty poor name for the phenomenon because it's almost certainly not just some exotic form of matter
No clue who this Tyson guy is but either he, or you, have confused Dark Energy with Dark Matter. Physics is not determined by majority vote but I very strongly suspect that the numbers will come down massively in favour of Dark Matter being an exotic form of matter by which I mean some as yet undiscovered particle. Dark Matter is a very appropriate name for it since it almost certainly is matter and, lacking any electrical charge, will not interact with light at any wavelength. Attempts to explain Dark Matter by modifying newtonian mechanics are vastly more complicated and fine tuned than just adding an as yet unknown particle ever since the Bullet Cluster (and others like it) were discovered. While that is not proof that these models are wrong they fail Occam's Razor and, in general, solutions which fail this test turn out to be wrong which is why it is often used in science to select promising avenues for study.
Dark Energy on the other hand is definitely not a form of matter, for a start it is gravitationally repulsive, and is completely unknown. It is effectively Einstein's cosmological constant but when you use existing physics to try to predict this you end up with a constant 120 orders of magnitude (yes you read that correctly: 10^120) too large so it is safe to say that we are missing something here, even cosmologists worry about discrepancies that large!
Too much of a good thing can be bad. The centre of the galaxy will have rather unhealthy levels of radiation. To find life similar to us, we got to look in similar backwaters.
penis
Your comment was modded down for the following reason:
Submission too short.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
The subject novel impressed me with a realistic setting for stories in a relativistic (i.e. sub-light travel only) universe. For how, read the book. One concern I had with its realism was that it assumed many more sunless planets than stars. This article clears that up pending confirmation. Anyone know when this theory started getting serious interest?
Slashdot: the platform for any retard's invalid opinion.
Actually, most planets in the universe are teeming with life, you fucking fagot.
No clue who this Tyson guy is but either he, or you, have confused Dark Energy with Dark Matter.
Then you should spend 20 seconds on Wikipedia before making an idiot of yourself in public by not knowing who one of the most famous astrophyscists in the world is. Here's a clue - watch the series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. He certainly isn't confused about the difference between dark matter and dark energy and I'm pretty certain I'm not confused either.
Physics is not determined by majority vote...
I don't recall anyone claiming that it was.
...but I very strongly suspect that the numbers will come down massively in favour of Dark Matter being an exotic form of matter by which I mean some as yet undiscovered particle.
Based on what evidence? You might be right and it may very well be exotic matter but like you said it isn't a vote. Show me any credible evidence that favors exotic matter over a flaw in the model or vice-versa. Science works on proof so go get some. Until then I remain skeptical.
They're actually the galactic equivalent of potholes. Alien spaceships keep breaking apart every time they hit one.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Now that we've finally detected the first of these, we have an excellent idea that this picture is the correct one: it appears that some planets in the local area where we can actually take a measurement are homeless. The broader aspect of our universe's distribution of homeless planets remains completely unknown, as does the explicit state of the local area.
FTF TFS and perhaps even for TFA.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
More importantly, it means there is probably something larger than an asteriod to settle on a lot closer to us than Alpha Centauri. Of course we'd need a buttload of reactor power to survive in such an environment.
Someone had to do it.
How much mass would be involved in this population of planets wandering between the stars?
Is it enough to provide an explanation for the orbital mechanics of the galaxy that doesn't require "dark matter"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
-1 not just offtopic but off their meds
Rocket Robinhood's depiction of the Cosmos is starting to look more and more accurate >.
I thought I had read something about this being a study? So why do we get an opinion piece written by a single individual? April Fools was a while back.
Star System?
now if we could just get that naked-bongo man to drive his lincoln there to drop them off.
Given that I am a physicist and work on Dark Matter I *very* strongly doubt that.
Really? You work in physics and have never even heard the name Neil deGrasse Tyson even in casual conversation. Perhaps he isn't so famous outside the US but he is very well known even to people with no connection with physics at all. Granted he's known more for his efforts as a science communicator than for his physics work but that's important too. Carl Sagan was well known for similar reasons. Or maybe you think explaining science to the general public is not important? Anyway he's legit even if he isn't "hard core" enough for you. He certainly understands what dark matter and dark energy are. (for the record I get it too - the terms are misleading but I get what they mean)
I'm not in the US, have never seen or heard of that TV program and while I'm not an astrophysicist I can name quite a few and he would not be one of them.
So because you haven't heard of him, he isn't famous? Curious logic you have there.
The fact that I am a physicist, talk everyday to physicists and go to conferences with physicists and I know only one physicist who reportedly believes that DM is likely to be due to a MOND-like effect
The fact that you are a physicist means precisely nothing in this context and you should know that. Appeals to authority don't mean a thing in science. I'm an engineering and an accountant but that doesn't mean I'm always right. The number of people working on one theory versus another means (almost) nothing. That easily could mean a lot of smart people are working on a dead end. That's happened before and will happen again. Show me the evidence (for or against) dark matter being matter versus it being a modeling problem. I don't have any invested interest either way so you won't hurt my feelings. But I'm pretty sure you cannot. Unless it is being kept a secret we don't actually know precisely what is causing the phenomena we call "dark matter" is, not yet anyway. Strong possibility it is matter (obviously) and our models are fine but we can't prove it either way just yet. We simply don't have the evidence as far as I can tell.