![]() ![]() It's entirely possible that, at some time, our solar system had more planets than we currently know of. On a related note, solar systems could attract and trap nearby nomad planets into wide orbits. Like we said, the theory is that these chronic meanderers may develop from the same clouds of gas and dust that stars are born from or solar systems may eject them from orbit. The news lit up space junkies' Facebook walls and Twitter feeds faster than a "Next Generation" movie announcement. Sumi and his colleagues detected 10 planets with roughly Jupiter-sized mass that didn't seem to follow a recognizable orbit. The technique relies on the light of a background source like a star being distorted as an object passes between the background star and Earth in fact, that light is temporarily magnified. Sumi's team relied on gravitational microlensing, which is the same technique used to discover exoplanets across the galaxy. Much of the world first learned of nomad planets in mid-2011, courtesy of a study authored by Takahiro Sumi, an astrophysicist at Osaka University in Japan. There's a lot we still don't know about nomad planets, but that's part of what makes them so exciting. In this article, we'll explore how nomad planets are made, how they may go rogue, where they're headed and, finally, if they could sustain life. Since this is such a new concept, the scientific community is still hard at work confirming the existence of planets that aren't bound to a star. Louis Strigari, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Yep, nomad planets may number in the quadrillions, according to one estimate from Dr. In fact, we might have far more company than is provided by just exoplanets. Could Earth get the boot, too? Could a rogue planet come crashing through our solar system? The discovery of nomad planets has forced us to re-examine some very basic concepts, ranging from how planets are formed to how they hold their places in orbit.Īt the same time, these wanderers have made us realize that we're not as alone as we thought on the planetary level. In either case, they wind up roaming the Milky Way. Existing in the netherworld between solar systems, these planets may arise after being ejected from their orbits, or they may form after an interstellar cloud collapses. ![]()
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