An extremely magnetic Rogue Planet

[ProtoJeb21]

A massive rogue “Super-Jupiter” just 20 light years away discovered back in 2016 was revealed to have an incredibly powerful magnetic field 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. For comparison, this dwarfs Jupiter’s magnetosphere, which is several hundred thousand times stronger than ours. Massive auroras were also detected on this planet. Since it has no star to fuel these light shows, they could be created by a volcanic moon like Io.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/08/free-range-planet

[Scotius]

Now that would be a sight to behold Dark planet illuminated only by massive auroras. And her dark moon, covered in ominously glowing volcanoes and lava flows.

[Mitchz95]

1 hour ago, Scotius said:

Now that would be a sight to behold Dark planet illuminated only by massive auroras. And her dark moon, covered in ominously glowing volcanoes and lava flows.

Someone needs to mod this into KSP, immediately.

[ProtoJeb21]

5 hours ago, Scotius said:

Now that would be a sight to behold Dark planet illuminated only by massive auroras. And her dark moon, covered in ominously glowing volcanoes and lava flows.

Since SIMP is so massive - about 4,039 times the mass of Earth - it likely formed with several planet-sized moons. Usually, satellites of gas giants have around 0.0001 times their parent planet’s mass. This can be seen with the Galilean moons and several of Saturn’s largest moons like Rhea, Iapetus, and Tethys. Any moons around SIMP would likely be around 0.35 to 0.45 Earth masses, large enough to retain a pretty decently sized atmosphere. While at least one has to be Io-like to produce those auroras, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that another moon could be heated to Earth-like temperatures where liquid water can pool on the surface, if it has a thick enough atmosphere. Who knows? Strong tidal forces plus multiple giant moons can lead to some very bizarre and amazing outcomes. 

Edited August 4, 2018 by ProtoJeb21

[kerbiloid]

Let them name it Pikachu.

[FireKerb]

This would be much more fitting.

Let's just hope it doesn't explode.

[YNM]

On 8/4/2018 at 11:19 PM, ProtoJeb21 said:

A massive rogue “Super-Jupiter”

I noticed that it's 12.7 Mjup yet it's only 1.2 Rjup... Does that mean it sits before or after the "bigger, smaller" point ?

I guess the magnetic field strength just comes from the metallic hydrogen. Though as always, I could be wrong.

[ProtoJeb21]

6 hours ago, YNM said:

I noticed that it's 12.7 Mjup yet it's only 1.2 Rjup... Does that mean it sits before or after the "bigger, smaller" point ?

I guess the magnetic field strength just comes from the metallic hydrogen. Though as always, I could be wrong.

It is still young and hot, so its radius will likely shrink with time as it cools. 

I’m assuming it’s from metallic hydrogen as well. Since there’s so much of it in such a tight space, it would explain why SIMP has such a strong magnetic field. I wonder if scientists can try to determine how fast it rotates; a quick rotation will also help explain its magnetosphere. 

[YNM]

1 hour ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

It is still young and hot, so its radius will likely shrink with time as it cools. 

Wouldn't that put it squarely under degeneracy, aka. Brown Dwarf ?

1 hour ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

Since there’s so much of it in such a tight space, it would explain why SIMP has such a strong magnetic field.

Yeah, I noticed that based off magnitude estimation it's 10x more massive and the magnetic field is also 10x more. Kind of makes sense ?

[ProtoJeb21]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Wouldn't that put it squarely under degeneracy, aka. Brown Dwarf ?

This "shrinking" is observed and predicted to happen to most, if not all, forming gas planets. A good example is the Kepler-51 system; in a recent study, it was determined that the three extremely puffy planets, all less massive than Neptune, are only about 500 million years old and will eventually become somewhat denser as their bloated atmospheres contract. However, this process is usually seen with directly imaged Jupiter-mass or Super-Jupiter exoplanets.