Discovered: 10 giant free-floating gas planets believed not to be orbiting stars.

reply to post by Illustronic


Actually i've read an article or two recently in the last year from space.com suggesting the habitable of these purported (Now possibly Confirmed) Rogue planets. They were talking about Planets even Earth size generating enough heat from their cores etc... i'll try and find the Article.

On a different not i'd say this commenter from space.com Hit the Nail on the head with what i agree on.

More proof we gotta quit calling these things stars, planets, brown dwarfs, planemos, etc. I’ve been tryin to get people to realize they should called mascons – mass concentrations.

If you gotta classify them use qualifying terms like Primary Fusing Mascon, a star, Secondary Gaseous Mascon, a gas giant, Secondary Rocky Mascon, a rocky planet, Primary Gaseous Mascon, a rogue gas giant like this and so on ad nauseam, Especially useless is the term planet, a word from Greek meaning wanderer.

The word was not officially defined by science until 2006 when it was defined as (A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals.)

Originally there were seven planets the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn all had one characteristic in common “they were wanderers” they moved the stars did not, therefore they had great mystic power. As the science of astronomy advanced the Sun and moon were understood to be different and were re-classified.

The 2006 definition seems to have satisfied almost no one. No wonder, we’re still trying to fit this square peg into a round hole. Drop the word and realize that these are all concentrations of mass and differ only in terms of mass and circumstances of formation (and perhaps composition).

I’ve been trying since 30 years ago, a time when none of these things had been discovered (but were perfectly predictable), to get this outdated terminology changed. No luck so far but discoveries like this keep proving me right.

Star and planet are fine words for the lay public but science needs a consistent classification scheme. One objection to this scheme is that is too complicated, Nuts. Sitting on my lap as I type this is a Felis Sylvestris Catus, I call it a cat. If you want to see complicated take a course in organic chemistry.

I'm actually glad now this blows the damn IAU's planet definition out of the water. Because in their definition a planet most orbit a sun to be a planet. So much for their hogwash.

reply to post by Terrorist


Yes i read the same site Space.com all the time this site is pretty good explaining things in layman terms. Some of the articles are just horrible though.

I remember a few articles on Habitability of Rogue planets too; since i constantly visit the site everyday...

Originally posted by Illustronic
If anyone finds a Nature Journal article confirming the data I will eat crow.

You better get your bib out:
www.nature.com...

Thanks to all those who have replied! and YAY this is my highest Flagged thread!! once again, thanks, and right now, Im proud to be a kiwi!

As some have mentioned this is pretty amazing, and I also am suprised no Nibiru fans have partaken in this, maybe thier jaws are still on the floor

But seriously this is pretty ground breaking news and im lovin the comments so keep em comin peeps!!

On a side note, tho these planets are pretty far away, people seem to think that if a planet the size of jupiter were near us, even light years away, it would have catastrophic results on our solar system?? 10 X jupiter size planets?? flying through our galaxy??

Someone explain plz?

reply to post by grindhouzer


Esta muy interesante. The fact the we see this is either a good thing or a bad thing. for all we know insteadof going to the center they come to us, and become part of our orbit, or they go to the center and we never are bothered by them again.

reply to post by grindhouzer


ew $18 for an article? and I thought Milk and Bread were expensive!

here's the space.com link

www.space.com...

Originally posted by grindhouzer


On a side note, tho these planets are pretty far away, people seem to think that if a planet the size of jupiter were near us, even light years away, it would have catastrophic results on our solar system?? 10 X jupiter size planets?? flying through our galaxy??

Someone explain plz?

No need to worry, gravitational pull, Hill Sphere, and tidal forces of objects have an easy calculative drop off. I put the numbers to it on an Elenin thread. Long story short, Jupiter has 1% the gravitational pull on earth as the moon does. If you are interested in seeing the numbers you can view this post.

Besides, there is a triple star system in Alpha Centauri that is as close as 4.2 ly away, I won't say it has zero effect on our system, but its effect is probably dwarfed by a typical Shuttle launch.

The discovery raised the possibility that smaller, Earth-sized free-floating planets are yet to be detected and that such planets could support life

Absolute rubbish. How on Earth is a planet supposed to be capable of supporting life without a star to provide heat and light?

I mean according to celestial mechanics, it would be almost impossible for planets to escape the gravitational pull of the host star around which they have been orbiting for eons!

Gravity assist, my dear Watson. Close approaches between two large planets could result in one of them being ejected from the system altogether. Another possibility is that of a planetary system being completely disrupted by the extremely close passage of another star, sending planets flying off all over the place!

Originally posted by XRaDiiX
reply to post by dalloway

 

The problem with your statement is this has nothing to do with Nibiru. Nibiru is a purported planet; Tied gravitationally to the sun.

These rogue planets ( I've always thought it was possible for them to exists) are not gravitationally bound to a star so we can throw that out the window.

The only thing we can really think about thats possibly ties this with Nibiru is if our sun and/or other stars catch one of these rogue planets into a highly elliptical orbit like Nibiru's supposed to be.

edit on 19-5-2011 by XRaDiiX because: (no reason given)

Yes, that is probably the most widely accepted explanation about the existence of Nibiru, but I've seen many different theories about it such as Nibiru is actually a comet, Nibiru is actually the Sun's companion star which is also known as Nemesis, etc.

Also, the Sumi, Bennett, et al Nature article does, in fact, support the most widely accepted explanation of Nibiru because it acknowledges that at least some of the planets that seem to be wandering aimlessly may actually be planets with highly elliptical or distant orbits. While I have not read the Sumi, Bennett article yet, several of the news stories discussing their Nature article provide some of the points of the study.

While some of these exoplanets could potentially be orbiting a star from very far away, the majority of them most likely have no parent star at all, scientists say.

Source: www.usnewsweekly.info...

And another:

As the known number of more conventional exoplanets — that is, those that actually do orbit stars — has grown to more than 500 in recent years, astronomers have begun to realize that our own well-behaved Solar System isn't necessarily typical. The eight planets orbit the Sun in nearly circular orbits, all moving in the same direction as the Sun rotates. But plenty of alien worlds orbit their stars in eccentric, somewhat egg-shaped orbits and surprising numbers move around their stars in highly tilted orbits as well.

Source: www.time.com...

Okay?

I started a thread on this subject that was closed from this link.

www.nytimes.com...

I think this discovery links well this another thread I participated in earlier.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

If you follow the links on this thread you can download a file that discusses some major problems with the current way that science determines what bodies are stars, and the distances to stars. I found it pretty interesting, and think that it is relevant to this discussion.

astronomyinformation.org...

From the downloadable article.

Chapter 2
The Parallaxes of Stars

Astronomers have tried to determine the distances to many stars by a method called Trigonometric Parallax. The distances that astronomers calculated using this method are used as yard sticks to determine distances of much farther objects. If this foundation is proven to be doubtful, then, automatically, the whole scale of measurements in astronomy regarding the distances of stars, star clusters, galaxies, etc. comes into question.

...

However, in practice, astronomers do not look through a telescope to measure the angle p for finding absolute parallax. After centuries of trying, they realised that measuring the angle is too difficult and complicated and for this reason, astronomers have abandoned measurement of absolute parallaxes completely. Instead, they have turned their attention to relative parallaxes.

...

As will be explained later, the parallaxes of background stars themselves could be so significant as to cancel all or a large proportion of the parallax of the object of interest and, as a result, give a totally false distance for the object.

...

The fact that a very large percentage (over 25%) of all the parallaxes that astronomers measure happen to be negative indicates that all those allegedly ‘background’ stars are actually closer to us than the stars of interest. It shows that there is a fundamental problem with the assumption about the background objects. Unfortunately, any measurements that happen to be negative or greater than an arc-second are discarded or ignored as systematic and random error.

...

In the following Chapters, evidence will be presented that many objects in the Milky Way that appear as distant stars are actually nearby planets. Further evidence will be given that at a distance of several times farther than Pluto there exist billions of large asteroids, thousands of planetoids and hundreds of planets that together with clouds of gas, dust, rocks and minerals appear as billions of stars. Since all these objects are very close to each other, from earth they all would show very small relative parallaxes, giving us the false idea that these objects are stars and are located at such great distances that the nearest one is thought to be 4.3 light-years away.

The reason Pluto is an exception is because it seems to appear as a star (that is a point of light with no visible disc) even with a large telescope. The reason Pluto could be classified as a planet rather than a star was on the basis of its apparent motion against other background objects.

“Pluto doesn’t stand out very well against the background of stars. It is detectable as a planet only by its very slow motion with respect to the stars.” 1

“The planet is so small that it looks like a star and it is only its motion across the sky that allows it to be distinguished as a planet. (McDonald Obervatory)”2

This is about as much as I should quote. The article goes on to point out that a great many stars are identified as blue stars do not have most of the qualities of our sun, or non-blue stars. It brings up a reasonable argument, that these blue stars may in fact be planets. This clearly fits in with this new discovery.

Basically, they might need to rewrite the books on astronomy.

Link to thread I started which was closed, for the other point I made.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Mogget


www.wired.com...

Rogue planets could probably harbor life. Maybe Under the Surface and/or Above the Surface. Its up to us to find out what kind of life can exist on such planets.

But all is still just speculation.

reply to post by poet1b


Really i never thought of it that way; just one question though all these purported "Blue Stars" Wouldn't the light be much much dimmer than seen now if they were just planets?

If all these rogue planets were out there they wouldn't be emitting barely any light not even Brown Dwarfs purportedly emit much if any light at all so how do these rogue planets Emit any light?

reply to post by dalloway


Does our inner solar systems planets Orbits show evidence of Planet Interruption from a Nibiru type Object entering the Solar System? I think not we can probably rule out Nibiru coming into the Inner Solar System from this Fact alone.

reply to post by TheUniverse


As far as I know, there has been no such planetary disruption that might point to a Nibiru arrival. I think the whole Nibiru thing is just silliness, but I can see how this study could be used by the Nibiru believers to support their claims.

reply to post by dalloway


I concur. I'm surprised we didn't get to many Nibiru Followers. Maybe the thread was just posted at a time when they weren't on.

You know, its fine that people question the methods in astronomical data interpretations its the scientific process to prove data from multiple sources. Its one reason why discoveries take years to be accepted as discoveries, and not false positives. What gets me is the eagerness for some people to jump all over even the flimsiest of proposals that the consensus in the scientific community has it all wrong, and some going so far as saying the the whole consensus of relativity fails. I mean just read through this one posted experiment on how astronomers are mistaking distant stars for closer planets and the proposal is just laughable in its presentation. I understand its a synopsis but its basis is seriously flawed in several ways.

A Revolution in Astronomy

Later in that thread someone did lend a PDF link (the only one that worked), I'm not sure why I even saved it as I doubt I'll ever read very much more of it. More data from WISE and other spacecrafts should clarify a bunch of crackpot math ideas being thrown around about mistaking planets for stars. As crowded as some make it sound out there its a wonder neither Voyager hasn't crashed into one yet.

some food for thought...i posted this on another thread which popped up shortly after this...

actually, according to astrobiology, there are four types of civilizations:

" Type 0 Civilization

Essentially, our civilization. A type 0 civilization has only just begun to tap planetary resources such as solar power, geothermal power and wind power. Most of its power generation is still based on non-renewable fossil fuel resources, for example, oil, coal and natural gases.


Type 1 Civilization

These civilizations can effectively control the entire resources of their planet; they can predict weather patterns and earthquakes very accurately, and even control them using artificially induced greenhouse effects or space-based lasers. A Type 1 Civilization could conceivably halt an ice-age.


Type 2 Civilization

Type 2 Civilizations have extended their power to their entire Solar System by harnessing the power of their suns through Dyson spheres. Having colonised or at least extensively explored all the planets within their Solar System, they are a largely space-faring race and have already mounted expeditions to other stars using interstellar craft.


Type 3 Civilization

At the cusp of their power, type 3 civilizations span entire galaxies having colonised all the stars by wave after wave of interstellar craft. They can harness the power of galaxies. Astrophysicists theorize that this may be done by exploiting the fact that black holes can be used as a source of energy as they slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation. By utilising the millions of black holes that are believed to reside within galactic nuclei, type 3 civilizations would have sufficient power to conduct truly universe-changing high-energy physics experiments and examine matter down to the Planck length.

At this point, the exact potential of type 3 civilizations becomes unclear due to our hazy knowledge of ultrahigh-energy physics. It is conceivable (as physicists such as Michio Kaku and Lawrence Krauss believe) that such energies could unravel matter down to the superstring length and thus possibly access other dimensions. However, we must stress that this is only informed conjecture and frankly we'll never know what type 3 civilizations will be able to do until we either become one or encounter one."

that being the case, if planet x/nibiru exists they would presumably have the technology to move their home world and seek out new solar systems having already exhausted the resources of their own suns...

if phycisists categorize civilizations in this manner, there is no reason NOT to believe that a planet COULD move around freely without the need of a star to orbit...

if anything, this report lends credence to the idea that such civilizations ALREADY exist...

reply to post by Illustronic


If the synopsis is so flawed, and the point made so wrong, it should be easy to show why these claims are wrong, yet like all supposed debunkers, you make absolutely no valid points as to why the theories are wrong.

Are these statements wrong?

However, in practice, astronomers do not look through a telescope to measure the angle p for finding absolute parallax. After centuries of trying, they realised that measuring the angle is too difficult and complicated and for this reason, astronomers have abandoned measurement of absolute parallaxes completely. Instead, they have turned their attention to relative parallaxes.

The fact that a very large percentage (over 25%) of all the parallaxes that astronomers measure happen to be negative indicates that all those allegedly ‘background’ stars are actually closer to us than the stars of interest. It shows that there is a fundamental problem with the assumption about the background objects.

The reason Pluto is an exception is because it seems to appear as a star (that is a point of light with no visible disc) even with a large telescope. The reason Pluto could be classified as a planet rather than a star was on the basis of its apparent motion against other background objects.

All these years, we have been told stuff about space as if it was absolute, when like so many claims by mainstream academics, who weren't even the people who made the major break throughs in the first place, all this stuff has been presented as absolute, but when you look beyond the surface, it becomes very apparent that mainstream science has exaggerated their accuracy by a great deal.

Additional information from the same PDF

The fact that the sun is a star with a high temperature and that it is a strong source of infrared radiation, it is reasonable to assume that any hot stars must be strong sources of infrared radiation. However, when astronomers mapped the sky and determined the infrared radiation from the blue and allegedly hot stars in the neighbourhood of the sun they were surprised and puzzled to learn that all these objects were not hot at all1. The following is a quote from NASA about blue stars that are not visible in the infrared spectrum, indicating that these blue objects are cold and do not radiate sufficient heat to be visible.

“Moving away from visible light towards longer wavelengths of light we enter the infrared region. In the near-infrared region, the hot blue stars seen clearly in visible light fade out and cooler stars such as red dwarfs and red giants come into view. …..…

Another method to distinguish a star from a planet is spectrum analysis of the light coming from any given object.
Stellar spectra were first observed in the middle of the 19th century. Harvard Professor Edward C. Pickering, the leading astronomer of his time, lettered the stars according to the strength of their hydrogen spectral lines. It was he who realized that all objects in the Milky Way had spectra very different from the sun.
Pickering examined various parts of the sky visible from the northern hemisphere. A large number of stars were studied by capturing their spectra on photographic plates. The conclusion he arrived at was very significant. He found that stars that resemble the sun in character are distributed with near uniformity over the surface of the sky. They almost evenly spread elsewhere as they are over the surface of the Milky Way. The whitish or bluish objects such as Sirius that have a group of strongly marked dark lines in their spectrum (indicating the existence of hydrogen as an important constituent in their atmosphere), are however, much more numerous, relatively speaking, on the Milky Way than in other parts of the sky.

A method that could be used to differentiate between stars and planets is to find out which ones are strong sources of x-rays or gamma rays. If we compare the sun with all the planets in the solar system, we see that the sun is a strong source of x-rays and gamma rays, whereas planets are not. If the sun is a typical star, then other stars must also be strong sources of x-rays and gamma rays. A strong detection of x-ray or gamma ray emission from any luminous point should therefore be taken as an indication that it could be a star. To the author’s knowledge, to date this method has not been used to differentiate between stars and planets.

Simple physics tells us that a star with a mass 60 times the sun should have a volume about 60 times the sun. Nevertheless, astronomers believe that the diameters of some of the giants are hundreds of times larger than the sun. This means that the volumes of some of the giants are millions of times larger than the sun; a huge jump in scale! The densities that have been attributed to these stars are similarly unreasonable. For example, some astronomers claim that Betelgeuse has a diameter 600 times greater than that of the sun1, while some others claim the diameter is 1500 times the sun2. An object with a diameter 600 times the sun means that its volume is 216,000,000 times larger than the sun. Notwithstanding, astronomers calculating the mass of Betelgeuse, by looking at its movement claim that its mass is only 20 times1 the mass of the sun2. Such a large volume with such a mass gave astronomers the idea that the average density3 of Betelgeuse is 0.000,000,1309 g/cm3. This means that the average density of Betelgeuse is 9,874 times less than the density of the earth’s atmosphere, at sea level. In other words, the space inside Betelgeuse is almost a vacuum.

Now if you can provide some links, with legitimate information that proves that the points being made by Bahram Katirai are scientifically incorrect, please provide them.

What I see is more evidence that backs the old statement, "the more I learn, the less I know".

When one puts reality on stage with a hypothetical model, they should be prepared for the colossal dismantling such a model as that will experience from reality.

Reality dictates that for 'planets' (as we know them at least) to exist there must be gravity... ESPECIALLY to maintain atmosphere. The kind of gravity Jupiter possesses is great when it is counter balanced by that of our sun. Take away our solar system gravity well and see how well Jupiter will hold up as a planet then.

On the other hand, instead of labeling them as planets and allowing the possibility of them instead being microscopic black holes possess a more reasonable answer...

Simple physics tells us that a star with a mass 60 times the Sun should have a volume less than 60 times the Sun.

No, simple physics tells us that a star with 60 times the mass of the Sun will have a stronger gravitational field than the Sun. A more massive star will have a more compressed core. A more compressed (and hotter) core will result in more nuclear fusion reactions taking place. More nuclear fusion reactions will result in a greater amount of energy being released, which in turn will heat the star to a much greater extent. More heat radiating outwards from the core results in the entire star expanding to a considerable degree. This means that the average density is much lower than that of our Sun.