Wandering Worlds

Artist's conception of a Jupiter-like nomad planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Artist’s conception of a Jupiter-like nomad planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Would you believe me if I tell you that there are 10^5 planets like objects for each star in our Galaxy that are just wandering around, not bound to any star?

I told one friend about this news and he was all like it would be great to live on one of this natural space craft, one that can travel the galaxy.

In a recent study published by Louis Strigari et al. (http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2687), the scientist team came up with this interesting information, that in the range of 10^-8 and 10^-2 Solar Mass, there are lots of compact objects of unknown origin, maybe failed stars or planets that escaped their stars, objects unbound to any star, called “free-floating or rogue planets”.

Microlensing provide perhaps the only way to detect objects that are not bound to a host star. The MOA-II collaboration reported the discovery of planetary mass objects either very distant from their host star or unbound from it entirely, giving a clear proof of their existence.

Future observation mission like WFIRST or Gaia, can check this numbers and provide a much needed estimate of the numbers and maybe origin of this wandering worlds.

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