Finding Planemos

[KerBlam]

What do you guys think about Rogue Planets?

They say this one PSO-J3185-22 is about 80ly from earth, and is a relatively young planetoid/planemo without a star.

How is it possible? Not enough matter to create a star? Ejected from orbit by another, larger massive object? Or is it the Death-Star?

[Scotius]

If it is radiating in infrared, it might be a brown dwarf. If it's cold, then probably it was kicked out of its system. For nightmare fuel - imagine it was inhabitated by intelligent beings at the time

[KerBlam]

Here is an article from the Gemini Observatory, which contains a link to the research paper on this ESO (Extra-Solar Object)

They describe it as a 'reddest known field dwarf'!

the free-floating planet PSO J318.5-22 from the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, in the constellation of Capricornus. The planet is extremely cold and faint, about 100 billion times fainter in optical light than the planet Venus. Most of its energy is emitted at infrared wavelengths. The image (in OP ~ KerBlam) is 125 arcseconds on a side.

[Nuke]

If it is radiating in infrared, it might be a brown dwarf. If it's cold, then probably it was kicked out of its system. For nightmare fuel - imagine it was inhabitated by intelligent beings at the time

you could probibly maintain habitation on an ejected planet for some time on core heat alone, just not on the surface. many would die in the transition yes, but the species could continue for some time, perhaps enough to evacuate to another star system.

[RainDreamer]

If it is radiating in infrared, it might be a brown dwarf. If it's cold, then probably it was kicked out of its system. For nightmare fuel - imagine it was inhabitated by intelligent beings at the time

For awesomeness, imagine they managed to turn their planet into a massive spaceship and is currently using it to travel around in space.

[KerBlam]

For awesomeness, imagine they managed to turn their planet into a massive spaceship and is currently using it to travel around in space.

That's essentially what every planet is doing anyway, but if you mean by strapping huge boosters to it, then I highly approve!

[Bryce Ring]

I'll Have it. Always like stuff that is free

[Nuke]

if the atmosphere would solidify then you just need to build large mass drivers and start throwing chunks of iron into space at escape velocity (or any other engine with exhaust velocity > escape velocity). you might not be able to go on a galaxy cruise but you might be able to set up an intercept with a potentially habitable star system some thousands of years in the future.

[KerBlam]

I'm imagining that the race was advanced enough that they could construct a dyson-sphere to utilise 100% of the energy of their host planet, and they are traversing the galaxy searching for another race to share their knowledge with...

They are also insanely good-looking.

[Hannu]

They say this one PSO-J3185-22 is about 80ly from earth, and is a relatively young planetoid/planemo without a star.

How is it possible? Not enough matter to create a star? Ejected from orbit by another, larger massive object? Or is it the Death-Star?

Astronomers think that there was many collisions of planet sized objects during beginning of our solar system. There are also much gas giants near stars and current knowledge is that they have formed more far away and drifted closer to their stars. Therefore it is probable that many planets are thrown away from their solar systems when systems evolve to stable configurations. Some paper said that there may be as much rogue planets as there are planets in solar system. It is more than stars in our galaxy.

[magnemoe]

If it is radiating in infrared, it might be a brown dwarf. If it's cold, then probably it was kicked out of its system. For nightmare fuel - imagine it was inhabitated by intelligent beings at the time

Low probability, I guess 99% of free floating planets is ejected during the creation of a solar system, they estimate that our solar system held 60 or more planets at the start, some merged into the one we have today the rest was ejected. Many gas giants was probably created alone like stars but far to small.

Low chance for some close pass event who is able to expel an planet.

[ScriptKitt3h]

they estimate that our solar system held 60 or more planets at the start, some merged into the one we have today the rest was ejected.

I just shivered thinking about what would happen if an intelligent life form with a tech level like ours was on one of those ejected worlds... who knows, maybe we'll find some ejected planets out past Pluto, in the Oort cloud?

[KerBlam]

If they were as dumb as humans, they have frozen to death for sure.

'We think we may have left our orbit, but we don't have enough data to verify this?'

'What should we do?' 'Doesn't matter, Sky-daddy will save us'

Government has blamed the loss of orbital stability on the opposition.

A campaign has been launched by Richard Branson to tow the earth back into it's proper orbit.

Bear Grylls has drank his own urine in order to show how to survive in extrasolar space.

[Ralathon]

If they were as dumb as humans, they have frozen to death for sure.

'We think we may have left our orbit, but we don't have enough data to verify this?'

'What should we do?' 'Doesn't matter, Sky-daddy will save us'

Government has blamed the loss of orbital stability on the opposition.

A campaign has been launched by Richard Branson to tow the earth back into it's proper orbit.

Bear Grylls has drank his own urine in order to show how to survive in extrasolar space.

Humans aren't that bad. Calm your raging hate boner.

[KerBlam]

Nah, nope... Humans are stupid. No hate, but we're doomed to idiocracy.

[Mighty1]

Low probability, I guess 99% of free floating planets is ejected during the creation of a solar system, they estimate that our solar system held 60 or more planets at the start, some merged into the one we have today the rest was ejected. Many gas giants was probably created alone like stars but far to small.

Low chance for some close pass event who is able to expel an planet.

Have a look at this. Planet X may be out there.

http://www.space.com/28284-planet-x-worlds-beyond-pluto.html

[cantab]

As for how it was formed, I don't think we'll know for any individual, but I can hypothesise for the statistics:

If rogue planets are formed like stars, there ought to be a fair number of binaries, possibly even as many in percentage terms as there are binary stars. Some of these binaries may be tight, others quite wide.

If rogue planets are formed by ejection from solar systems, they ought to mostly or almost all be solitary. What binaries there are ought to be tight, a planet with a close moon that were ejected together.

If they can form either way, the statistics will be somewhere in between.