Rogue Planets Detected Without A Parent Star
Many free-floating stars detected orbit around no particular star, claim the Japanese astronomers. They detected 10 Jupiter sized things with no parent star in the range of 10 Astronomical Units(AU). One AU is approximately tantamount to the distance between the earth and the sun. Writing in Nature, they said that they found 10 such objects, and they also believed that there are scores of them throughout the Milky-Way and they may be as common as stars.
These objects revealed themselves when they bent lights originating from more distant stars, a process known as <em>Gravitational Microlensing. </em>Albert Einstein had predicted that objects that have large mass can cause the bending of light. If the large object comes in front of a very distinct star, then the object acts like a lens, and amplifies the brightness manifold. The researchers then further analyzed the data collected from microlensing surveys, called the <em>Gigantic Bulge, </em>the centre of our own galaxy Milky Way.
#-Link-Snipped-#Based on the number of objects detected in the area of study, the researchers generalized that such objects may be fairly common. They computed that the number of such objects might be more than twice of the main sequence stars, such as the Sun, which is still fuelled by hydrogen.
Co-author Takahiro Sumi, an associate professor at Osaka University in Japan, said these free-floating planets were "very commonâ€, as common as a regular star. The existence of free-floating planets like this is expected from planetary formation theory. What is surprising is how common they seem to be.â€
As per the Astronomical Convention, if the objects do not have a host star, then technically the cannot be called planets, since planets orbit a star of stellar remnant. They may even have formed the same way as planets, but they are not supposed to be called so.
The Researchers also hypothesized that the objects once were formed in a planetary disc, like all other Planets in the solar system, before they were ejected out by the forces of Gravitation.
#-Link-Snipped-#According to Prof. Joachim Wambsganns of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who reviewed this study for Nature, this was “the most plausible theoryâ€. Nevertheless, he suggested that a possibility existed that planets formed the same way stars do, but failed to reach the critical point of thermonuclear ignition. He too agreed that the most “shocking†data was projected frequencies of these objects.
Dr Martin Dominik of the University of St Andrews in Scotland agreed, and said he would be "a bit cautious" about the results.
"There is this theory that planets formed around a star and due to the gravitational effects between planets, one of them gets ejected from the system, so people have predicted that there are planets out there that are no longer bound to stars, but they don't predict this number of them. " he said.
Source: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13416431" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">'Free-floating' planets found with no star in sight - BBC News</a>
These objects revealed themselves when they bent lights originating from more distant stars, a process known as <em>Gravitational Microlensing. </em>Albert Einstein had predicted that objects that have large mass can cause the bending of light. If the large object comes in front of a very distinct star, then the object acts like a lens, and amplifies the brightness manifold. The researchers then further analyzed the data collected from microlensing surveys, called the <em>Gigantic Bulge, </em>the centre of our own galaxy Milky Way.
#-Link-Snipped-#Based on the number of objects detected in the area of study, the researchers generalized that such objects may be fairly common. They computed that the number of such objects might be more than twice of the main sequence stars, such as the Sun, which is still fuelled by hydrogen.
Co-author Takahiro Sumi, an associate professor at Osaka University in Japan, said these free-floating planets were "very commonâ€, as common as a regular star. The existence of free-floating planets like this is expected from planetary formation theory. What is surprising is how common they seem to be.â€
As per the Astronomical Convention, if the objects do not have a host star, then technically the cannot be called planets, since planets orbit a star of stellar remnant. They may even have formed the same way as planets, but they are not supposed to be called so.
The Researchers also hypothesized that the objects once were formed in a planetary disc, like all other Planets in the solar system, before they were ejected out by the forces of Gravitation.
#-Link-Snipped-#According to Prof. Joachim Wambsganns of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who reviewed this study for Nature, this was “the most plausible theoryâ€. Nevertheless, he suggested that a possibility existed that planets formed the same way stars do, but failed to reach the critical point of thermonuclear ignition. He too agreed that the most “shocking†data was projected frequencies of these objects.
Dr Martin Dominik of the University of St Andrews in Scotland agreed, and said he would be "a bit cautious" about the results.
"There is this theory that planets formed around a star and due to the gravitational effects between planets, one of them gets ejected from the system, so people have predicted that there are planets out there that are no longer bound to stars, but they don't predict this number of them. " he said.
Source: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13416431" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">'Free-floating' planets found with no star in sight - BBC News</a>
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