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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!"

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Classification by sproketboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

  2. Re:TopSlot by halivar · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is the most insightful and informative ever to follow from the word "penis".

  3. Re:TopSlot by halivar · · Score: 4, Funny

    And of course, I accidentally a word.