Are there thought to be any planets floating around loose in space from long-gone solar systems?
Question:
Answer:
there are definately "planets" or planet like bodies drifting in interstellar space. planets can be ejected by a # of phenomenon such as two stars passing close to eachother or a large planet in a solarsystem can gravitationally disrup a smaller bodies orbit and also eject it. also a planet like body formed in a nebula could just drift even before anothe star is formed. so the answer is YES! dont listen to the answer above about supernova explosions, although i see his reasoning, he hasnt taken into account all other mechanisms by which a planet might be found away from a star. astronomers beleive that there a inumerable amounts of objects like these drifting in interstellar space! hope this helps!!!!
There is some thought that there could be a planet circling our sun in a perpendicular orbit to the other planets, thereby giving us a chance of cataclysmic destruction.
very unlikely but not impossible, the stars has the nasty habit to grow very big before they explode, so they consume most of the near by planets, the remaining ones are gone by the explosion and the amount of heat and debris will destroy any other planets... but maybe some has dodged all this and survived the initial explosion (very unlikely we are talking about a the mother of all explosions) or maybe some lose dust and gas in the inter galactic space might group and form a planet by gravity, with out a shining star, but un less it has a very hot core it will be a frost planet, an ice cube. at least that's what I think and I'm no Carl Sagan or something like that so i'm not realy sure!
Hi Icarus.
My favorite author is the late Isaac Asimov, and he wrote essays setting forth the idea of free planets in space. These are not planets ejected from solar systems, however, but aggregations of matter that did not grow large enough to ignite into stars.
It makes good sense. We know that exceptionally large objects are relatively rare. There are many more small dim stars than giants out there. Science knows of no particular reason why celestial bodies should not form below the threshold of nuclear ignition.
It is quite likely that there is a myriad of Jupiter-sized objects and probably earth-sized ones, that we cannot now detect because they don't shine.
We don't know for sure as we haven't observed such an occurrence yet. What we know for sure, though, is that there are thrown away stars so there might be thrown away planets as well.
But this raises the question on what to call such an object given the current definition of a planet (a planet has to rotate around a sun remember?) Maybe thrown away planet, run-away planet or ejected planet could be a good term for that.
More Questions & Answers...