Cast Adrift in the Milky Way, Billions of Planets, All Alone
"Astronomers from two groups — Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics, based in New Zealand and Japan, and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, based in Poland and Chile — monitor the light from a vast field of background stars, looking for brief blips of increased brightness caused by a planet and its host star passing in the foreground.
The group recorded 10 such events consistent with being caused by planet-size objects but did not detect the corresponding blips from these planets’ host stars, suggesting either that they did not belong to any star, having been ejected by gravitational pinball games earlier in their lives, or that they were very distant."
-Could be gas giants circling very far out or totally separated from their sun's gravity.
atm gas giants are the easiest to spot but it wouldn't surprise me if some solid chunks of rock are found eventually as well. Would be a good setup for a new scifi series, planets out in the middle of nowhere mean you could do everything on a dark lot with only artificial lighting.
"Astronomers from two groups — Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics, based in New Zealand and Japan, and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, based in Poland and Chile — monitor the light from a vast field of background stars, looking for brief blips of increased brightness caused by a planet and its host star passing in the foreground.
The group recorded 10 such events consistent with being caused by planet-size objects but did not detect the corresponding blips from these planets’ host stars, suggesting either that they did not belong to any star, having been ejected by gravitational pinball games earlier in their lives, or that they were very distant."
-Could be gas giants circling very far out or totally separated from their sun's gravity.
atm gas giants are the easiest to spot but it wouldn't surprise me if some solid chunks of rock are found eventually as well. Would be a good setup for a new scifi series, planets out in the middle of nowhere mean you could do everything on a dark lot with only artificial lighting.
