Dozens of starless 'rogue' alien planets possibly spotted

The space.com report says, "If the microlensing events spotted with Kepler were to reveal a host star, or a star that has planets in its orbit, scientists might expect a longer signal. So, by finding evidence for these planets but without the longer signal typically associated with a host star, the team suspects that the planets might be free-floating. It's possible that if these are, in fact, rogue, starless planets, that they may have originally formed around a host star and were pulled away by a gravitational force by a more massive planet or object, according to the statement."

These are hard to identify and confirm. Reference paper, Kepler K2 Campaign 9 – I. Candidate short-duration events from the first space-based survey for planetary microlensing, https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/505/4/5584/6315707, 06-July-2021.

Back in October 2020, a report of a free floating or rogue exoplanet was published. An Earth-sized rogue planet discovered in the Milky Way, https://phys.org/news/2020-10-earth-sized-rogue-planet-milky.html, October 2020. OGLE-2016-BLG-1928

The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia — OGLE-2016-BLG-1928 (exoplanet.eu)
 
I don’t doubt this at all. During a system formation, bodies collide forming bigger bodies. Look at the Earth and Uranus. They were hit by something big to cause their obliquity, and reversed Venus’ rotation. More so, close encounters caused bodies to alter orbit closer or farther than the original, hence the Oort Cloud. No doubt a sizable portion of the original was ejected either as debris or planets. I suspect there could be as many rogue planets as orbiting ones.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Catastrophe

Latest posts