Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on May 18, 2011 11:43:26 GMT -6
NASA discloses renegade planets floating about
PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers, including a NASA-funded team member, have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds were probably ejected from developing planetary systems.
"Although free-floating planets have been predicted, they finally have been detected, holding major implications for planetary formation and evolution models," said Mario Perez, exoplanet program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The discovery indicates there are many more free-floating Jupiter-mass planets that can't be seen. The team estimates there are about twice as many of them as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This would add up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/planet20110518.html
Nibiru...?
Perhaps the Summarians were right!
